Talking with my "French Daughter"

When I first met my “French daughter” she was barely three and was scoffing down black olives at a Parisian restaurant. Over the years on frequent visits I watched her develop into a very determined, intelligent young woman. She always has resembled Jackie Kennedy, a quite beautiful person inside and out.

I lived with her father when she was in "college" French junior high. We first communicated in German as she poured out her heart on her parents’ divorce while we were camping, giving my faltering German a workout. Convinced that I wasn’t learning French fast enough she prepared lessons that not only helped me advance, they were fun. I suspect the lessons were prompted when I told her in French that I ate her cat instead of I fed her cat.

When I separated from her father and returned to the US to care for my dying mother, she visited. Within a couple of weeks we were holding in-depth conversations as the sun set on my deck. Her language skills now means she’s fluent in French, Dutch, German, English and has a good knowledge of Italian. I am jealous of her abilities, but I know it is part natural gift and part hard work.

She visited me wherever I was: spending a boring New Year’s Eve in Môtiers, Switzerland, studying for university entrance exams in Grand Saconnex, Switzerland and celebrating more than one Easter in Argelès. I visited her in Toulouse and Aix-en-Province.

We were sitting in an Argelès café after she graduated from university and was job hunting. RB2 was with us. “Why don’t you look outside France,” he said.

She ended up in Germany and then Holland and she has just gone to work for the UN in New York. “We have a white city,” she said to me from her Roosevelt Island flat last night when I talked to her on the telephone. Although I don’t take credit for her successes, I have a great deal of pride in her strength, her intelligence and her courage to forge her own way often in difficult circumstances. She is a good person, and although she will never be my real daughter, I think the world of her as I do my own child. My life has been enriched by having her in my life.

What struck me after I hung up was she is now close to the age I was when I first saw her scoffing down those olives.