The small sign under my mother-in-law's front door bell in France says "J. Pouget." "J" is the first initial of her long-gone husband's first name, "Jean" -- a kind man who died 34 years ago after a lifetime of working in a Citroen factory and dreaming of the time he would one day retire. The two of them met, as young children, during the war, in a Catholic orphanage, where Henriette lived -- or tried to live -- for 12 long years. Jean, I learned, today, would travel, once a month, by train, from his orphanage more than two hours away, to visit his sisters -- girls who had become Henriette's best friends.

Her mother died in childbirth -- not Henriette's, but her sister's. Suddenly widowed and now completely overwhelmed, her father, a conductor for the local railroad, decided to take his six daughters to the local orphanage and leave them there -- a not uncommon act, in Europe, during the second World War. Henriette was six at the time.

Once a day, her father would eat lunch there, the orphanage being conveniently located on his train route. That's when Henriette and her five sisters would press their noses up against the glass and watch their father eat. When he was done, often late for work, he would meet them in the lobby, allowed only five minutes for a hug, dig deep into his black satchel and secretly give a handful of candies to the eldest for her to distribute to the little ones at the end of a long tiled hallway where the nuns couldn't see. There, the girls would rip the wrappers off and eat their candy quickly, dreaming of the time their father would next return.

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Posted by: rolan at July 1, 2017 09:29 AM

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