Madeleine, Madeleine, Madeleine
I sit beside you
Madeleine.
I sit beside you and
I hold your hand in sorrow.
When the grass was tall.
And when the grass has grown tall.
And it will grow tall.
I sit beside you Madeleine
And I hold your hand in sorrow.
This poem is about my mother. The last thing she wrote before she died was called "La Petite Madelaine" and I didn't understand why she wrote it at the time, but I think I do understand now.
My mother was a French school girl, but she was also aware that she was half Jewish, because my grandmother had had an argument about Jewishness with my mother's aunt Elise, an opera singer, in front of her. The argument with Elise was about whether Lisa, my grandmother, who was German, should pin a yellow star on my mother's coat. My mom, Eve, must have been about six at the time.
Mom took refuge in reading the books by the Comtesse de Ségur and in writing poems and in pleasing her mother by getting the best marks in class and also in being one of a happy bunch of little French girls moving round Paris in crocodile formation.
But I think, despite the swaddling, loving protection of her mother and despite her chirping school friends, understood her situation. At the age of four she had asked my German granny to - rather let her ask for things in shops. She understood. She must have noticed when one day her auntie Elise, proudly wearing her yellow star, did not come back.
Mom told me how she looked on in envy as her school mates took their first communion at age seven. But she could not because her mother said they were Lutherans, but mom knew there was another reason too.
The weight of racism and antisemitism emboldened pressed down. The monsters took flesh and conspired to crush my mother, portraying her to herself as a cuckoo among the Madelaines.
My mother was put up three classes as a reward for her marvellous precocity. At the age of eight she was studying with 12 year olds. She stopped eating; she was giving all the little food that her mother gave her - an egg, a bit of cheese, to her classmates.
My grandmother, (perhaps being close friends with the mayor of Surenne in the absence of her husband helped), managed to convince the school authorities and the hospital where she worked to let my mom come and stay with her and saved her daughter again.
There is a picture of my mother with a big yellow bow in her hair aged 8 or 9 sitting in the long grass of the hospital grounds, her gaze is lost in thought. I accompany her.
I sit beside you
Madeleine.
I sit beside you and
I hold your hand in sorrow.
When the grass was tall.
And when the grass has grown tall.
And it will grow tall.
I sit beside you Madeleine
And I hold your hand in sorrow.
This poem is about my mother. The last thing she wrote before she died was called "La Petite Madelaine" and I didn't understand why she wrote it at the time, but I think I do understand now.
My mother was a French school girl, but she was also aware that she was half Jewish, because my grandmother had had an argument about Jewishness with my mother's aunt Elise, an opera singer, in front of her. The argument with Elise was about whether Lisa, my grandmother, who was German, should pin a yellow star on my mother's coat. My mom, Eve, must have been about six at the time.
Mom took refuge in reading the books by the Comtesse de Ségur and in writing poems and in pleasing her mother by getting the best marks in class and also in being one of a happy bunch of little French girls moving round Paris in crocodile formation.
But I think, despite the swaddling, loving protection of her mother and despite her chirping school friends, understood her situation. At the age of four she had asked my German granny to - rather let her ask for things in shops. She understood. She must have noticed when one day her auntie Elise, proudly wearing her yellow star, did not come back.
Mom told me how she looked on in envy as her school mates took their first communion at age seven. But she could not because her mother said they were Lutherans, but mom knew there was another reason too.
The weight of racism and antisemitism emboldened pressed down. The monsters took flesh and conspired to crush my mother, portraying her to herself as a cuckoo among the Madelaines.
My mother was put up three classes as a reward for her marvellous precocity. At the age of eight she was studying with 12 year olds. She stopped eating; she was giving all the little food that her mother gave her - an egg, a bit of cheese, to her classmates.
My grandmother, (perhaps being close friends with the mayor of Surenne in the absence of her husband helped), managed to convince the school authorities and the hospital where she worked to let my mom come and stay with her and saved her daughter again.
There is a picture of my mother with a big yellow bow in her hair aged 8 or 9 sitting in the long grass of the hospital grounds, her gaze is lost in thought. I accompany her.
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