Marie, My Mother

Marie, my mother, is the third child of my grandparents, Henri and Annick. She was born in May 1921, in Brest where Henri was posted at the time. Brest is the major French military port on the Atlantic ocean.

Brest, the "Château"
(source)

In this photo, you can see a part of the port and the Château (castle) were the admiral commanding the French Navy in the Atlantic resides with his staff. The Château has been started by the Romans at the end of the third century and is thus the oldest castle in the world still in use.

Marie was a very obedient child and a very good pupil and high school student. She has fond memories of living near Saint-Malo when Henri was commanding the "École des Pilotes de la Flotte" (See Part 6).

Being the eldest girl, and the family growing, Marie was asked to help her mother to raise her younger brothers. So, she stopped going to school at the end of the equivalent of Grade 11 and she never graduated from high school. In France, you graduate from high school if you pass an examination call the Baccalauréat. Marie never attempted the Baccalauréat and never went to university.

One of my brother, Benoît, also did not pass the Baccalauréat when he was young. At the age of 50, he lost a bet with one of his daughters (a bet he was happy to lose) and was constrained to pass the Baccalauréat. He studied for two years every day and he succeeded. When Marie learned this, she told us that she never thought of doing the same, but being over 80 years old, it was too late for her.
She also told us that when she was 16 years old, she wanted to become an engineer and study at the École Centrale de Paris. That was not to be, and she did not regret anything, because she had an interesting life. Knowing her, I am sure she would have been a very good engineer.

Marie studied Latin and English in high school, but not ancient Greek or Russian. Our father, a classicist, insisted that we needed to learn Latin and ancient Greek. Of course, our first foreign language was English. For reasons that I will explain later, most of us also had to learn Russian in high school.
Marie was regularly checking our homework. I can still see her doing this while nursing one of my younger brother, or ironing clothes. And she was checking our homework in ancient Greek and in Russian, although she could not read any of these languages.
She would ask me to read my translations from ancient Greek or Russian to French, and she would regularly say: "This does not mean anything, I am sure that you are wrong; go back and do it again". I would ask her how she could say that when she could not read the original text. And she would tell me that the ancient Greek and the Russian author was surely writing something meaningful, while my translation was pure gibberish.
And, of course, she was always right.

Marie was 18 years old when World War II started.

Continue to Part 18

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Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4
Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8
Part 9 - Part 10 - Part 11 - Part 12
Part 13 - Part 14 - Part 15 - Part 16
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A Brief History of my Family in France - Part 17 - Marie, My Mother

Marie, My Mother