THE OLD LADY WATCHING THE SEA by Giedrė Maria Kumpikas, Ph.D. ’58
Giedrė at Notre-Dame de Paris, 1964. Photo by Daniel Lalardie. Reprinted, with permission from Bridges Magazine, the LithuanianAmerican News Journal Sometimes, we come across a scene whose image stays with us and comes back to mind now and then. So, it was on one of my frequent visits to France, to Normandy more specifically, when I visited my French friends, who invited me to come to their seaside house in Réville, on the English Channel, or La Manche. They were a true French couple, stemming from the very roots of French culture—their language perfect, their sense of humor very Gallic, his especially. The great quality of the French is that they can laugh at the world, but also at themselves. The political discord can be virulent; if not violent, but then, everyone calms down, the delicious Brie comes out, and “un petit rouge” and all is
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well and friendly. It is a quality that has taken centuries to evolve and is unique. I remember when I first flew to Paris, with a very proper letter of introduction from my father to his friend, a former Lithuanian regional consul, asking him to chaperone me on my trip to France. I was petrified to leave my hotel on the Boulevard St. Michel, but the gentleman came to pick me up, and we went on a little tour of a former Jewish Quarter, Le Marais. It was not an elegant quarter, but it had a distinct character. One of the images that I remember is that of an elderly man in the street carrying a dead chicken by the neck. My father’s friend bought some raspberries in a local market, and with the box of raspberries, we got on the Metro. People looked at us quizzically while the gentleman said that I should eat some raspberries. I wondered if it was a Parisian custom to
eat raspberries from an open box on the Metro, but “When in Paris…”. That day was my first encounter with an example of Gallic humor—funny, light, somewhat self-deprecating, and philosophical. During our ride, the train suddenly lurched to a halt, and I stepped on a man’s foot. I immediately began to apologize profusely, “Excusez-moi, Monsieur!” But he, very indulgently, turned to me and said quite philosophically, “Mademoiselle, si ce n’était que ça!” (Miss, if it were only that). To add to the charm of my first trip to Paris, his son Perkunas, tall and handsome, took me for a ride on his scooter. As he was weaving in between the cars on the Champs-Elysées, I was thrilled but also frightened and clung to him for dear life. He drove me up the hill to Montmartre, where artists painted tourist portraits,