The Disappearing Mamies

In the 1980s, I first noticed the mamies after I shared a house with a couple of anthropologists in the French village of Argles-sur-mer, which has existed since before the time of Charlemagne.

Mamies were old women who put their chairs outside their homes on the narrow streets and chattered away in Catalan. They wore what my grandmother would call house dresses and  aprons. Some days they might watch their grandchildren (J.D. Vance would have loved that), snap beans, peel potatoes, chuck peas as they talked.

On subsequent visits, I noticed some of the old women had disappeared and were replaced by younger old women.

I bought an attic studio two blocks away, my dream, for my own retirement. It was then I got to know the remaining mamies. By then, I could speak French, although they told me I should learn Catalan. That will not happen.

The village has changed over the 30+ years I've been there.

The old gray houses have been bought by retirees from the north and for summer homes for people coming from all over Europe. Locals as well as interlopers like myself renovated the houses and their shutters were now gay blues, greens, red etc. One new owner, who designed stage sets for the London theatre, painted mini-murals.

The remaining mamies and I often chatted. I learned about their lives and their friendships since childhood. 

They told me who had owned the houses before: the man who made his living as an anchois fisherman, the family that had cork and olive trees that they harvested.

I married: my studio was too small for the two of us. We moved two doors down to another 400-year old house, once owned by Antoinette. 

According to the mamies, she was a shrew, not to be trusted with any secret. She made her husband's life a hell on earth but was devasted when he died visiting him almost every day in the cemetery, where she too now resided.

I learned the woman across the street who refused to speak to anyone had been an old maid school teacher but had lost her mind and refused to leave her home.

One by one the mamies died off. Madame Fernadez was one of two left. She'd been a good neighbor, watering my plants when I was gone. A widow, she had suffered her share of tragedy. Her son had shot himself in her living room, but she persevered. She has dialysis regularly with the local taxi taking her to the hospital for the treatments.

Rosemarie, who sat on her front steps and knitted countless sweaters, pocketbooks and hats, sang in the 14th century church at the end of the street. She was a regular at the town hall where she went to suggest improvements to village life. Her daughter moved her to a home when ill health made living alone impossible.

Unlike bygone times, the mamies's daughters did not become mamies as they aged. They left their childhood friends to develop careers and lives in Toulouse, Mantpellier, Lyon and even Paris.

I'm now older than most of the mamies, but I wear jeans and a sweatshirt more often than not. My friends are the locals, summer folk and retirees. I have a patio and do not put my chair out to talk to friends but meet them in the many small cafés.

The village in summer swells ten times and there are fests and entertainments along with the traditional celebrations. 

Sometimes on a Sunday afternoon when the village becomes a ghost town and I walk the dog, I feel the spirits of the mamies in their house dresses and aprons, sitting in their chairs and chatting in Catalan.