Walk Down Memory Lane's Sidewalk...

When I was a few years old, and my brother a brand new threat to my hegemony, summer visits to Grandmère d'Albi were always a treat, because of the bevy of older ladies ready to lavish affection and treats on me. Diana was one of those, about a decade younger than GrandMother, and mother of one of Mom's childhood friends. She would bicycle down to our big house where she'd rented a room with her husband decades ago, early in the morning, and bring the croissants, brioches and pains au chocolat without which French petits déjeuners are just slices of bread dipped in café au lait. She was always joyful, smiling and kind, very sharply dressed, blond and too beautiful to be pretty. A kind of fairy godmother of summer breakfasts with a smoky contralto laugh and an attention to what you liked, wanted, or cared about. What kid could fail to love her? Today was her 88th birthday, and her mind and body are still sharp. Both she and I were happy that I could attend the lunch-party along with my parents before leaving the country.

I don't remember when I learned that she had been a working girl. Perhaps I've always known it, and that one of the things about my grandparents that my mother is most proud of, is their acceptance of Diana, her husband (an honest working man I remember as a hulking bear, with a laugh like a rockslide) and their little daughter. From all accounts, Diana was a loving, nurturing mother, and my grandmother trusted her with her own daughter, and has treated her as a valuable friend up to this day. She hung up the stilleto heels years later when French law outlawed the trade and continuing meant a prison term and losing her daughter. Because, you see, she'd already lost her firstborn in the divorce from her first, wife-beating husband. The divorce that had stranded her in Paris without a job just after the war... too beautiful to be pretty. Perhaps it takes a fallen angel to fully appreciate how precious basic human love and kindness is, and the best of them shed that surprised, joyous yet calm strength like heat from a chimneyfire on a sweet October evening. I'm priviledged to have had grandparents who judged her by her worth, and to have a mother who grew up, in part, basking in that glow. I'm priviledged to have felt it myself, those long gone summer mornings sitting at the kitchen table amidst the babble of adult voices, munching on a croissant while the Angel spoke to me, to ME! and no one else.