Disappearing Mammies

 

Most streets in Argelès in the 1980s, when I was first there, had its Mammies. 

They were women in their 60s,70, 80s and more. Usually mornings, they would take their kitchen chairs and put them on the narrow streets. Sometimes they shelled peas or snapped beans. Some knitted or repaired clothes. Often, they watched their grandchildren as the chattered away in Catalan and French.

Since I spoke neither language, I could only guess what they were saying. As years went by, and I learned French, I talked with them, I learned they'd been friends since leaving the womb, had gone to school together, married, had children, shared their frustration with their husbands, who were fishermen, cork gathers, farmers, even plumbers and electricians.

Some feuds between groups happened, but the boundaries varied although everyone agreed that Antoinette, who visited her husband's grave daily, should have been nicer  to him when he was alive.

Over the years, one by one, they disappeared until only two are still living. 

Madame F., now a widow, had suffered the suicide of her son by gunshot in her living room. The local ambulance picks her up twice a week for her dialysis. 

Madame C., who was always on some type of crusade to make the village better, after eye surgery and had a heart attack was taken by her daughter along with her cat to the mountains to live with her. We've exchanged postcards. 

I walk the same streets. Now I am older than most of the Mammies were when I first came to Argelès. I don't wear house dresses like they wore but jeans and T-shirts. 

The Mammies homes have been bought as second or retirement homes by outsiders from all over France and Europe. Their gray exteriors have been painted bright colors. Those of just stone have been repaired.

The streets have a different feel, but when I pass the houses, where I listened to the Mammies, I still see them with their knitting and veggies. 

I miss them.