09 February 2018

Versailles and Fontainebleau with MA

I've been scanning a lot of photos that my mother had put aside in a box with my name on it. I don't want to carry a lot of paper back to France, so I'm scanning the prints and saving them on a USB flash drive. These go back to 1982.


It was my mother's first trip to France. We saw Paris, Versailles, Fontainebleau, and Rouen. The photo above shows my mother admiring the Grand Canal at Versailles. She was 52 years old that year. I had already spent a total of five years living in France.


Here's another one, again at Versailles. It was the same day, of course. It was July, I think, and we had beautiful weather for all our touring around. I was to return to the U.S. in August of that year, so my mother wanted to come see a little bit of France before it was too late to do so with her son. Little did we know...


Finally, we also went to Fontainebleau. I knew somebody who lived near the château grounds there and who could put us up. That's me in the photo with MA, in my plaid shirt, jeans, and loafers. By the way, my mother passed away last weekend at the age of 87.

15 comments:

  1. So this was just six months before you came to work with me in Washington, D.C. Time flies!

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  2. That's right. I had been in France for three years (1979-1982) and had decided to return to the U.S. to live in Washington DC and start a new career. MA came to Paris for the first time in her life to see the place with me before I moved back. Lucky for me, you were looking for an assistant in DC a few months later and I turned up. You definitely changed the course of my existence by hiring me, and I stayed on a track that brought me back to France many times, including our meeting in Paris on that vacation in 1992, after I had re-located to California with Walt — and especially since you also were spending a lot of time in California at that point. Une amitié est née.

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    1. That was one of the best decision I ever made, and it endures.

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  3. Sorry to hear of your mother's passing. Take time and take care of yourself.

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    1. Thanks for the nice comment. I'm doing fine. Most of our running around to take care of administrative and financial affairs is done. Tomorrow is the open house/memorial service.

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  4. Recognisably you. I hope your Mum appreciated the country where you chose to live.

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    1. I was 33 years old. I'm more than twice that now.

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  5. Great pictures of you and your mom. And so interesting to see the facades being cleaned and repaired in your pictures.

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    1. Considering that those are 35-year-old snapshots that I quickly scanned, the quality of the images is not bad.

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  6. Good idea to scan the images! I love the one of your mother looking at the canal, her casual pose, her lovely sandals. And, of course, it's great to see young Kenny, too! Thanks for sharing this and your family history as well. Hope you're doing OK. Love, Ginny

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  7. I'm glad your mom sorted these wonderful photos for you. Les temps perdus...She was a fine looking 52 year old.

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  8. Going through old photos and papers is a wonderful pastime. Just a week before my mother died, the day before I left to come back to France, my brothers and I went over to the storage place and I was asked to please take a couple of suitcases of such photos and papers. I did. (This was still when we had a two suitcase baggage allowance per person and my daughter and I only had one suitcase between us!) I started out with gusto but then lost steam, so more than 10 years on, I haven't finished scanning it all.

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