Saturday, March 12, 2011

Memories

When mom and dad came down last spring, they brought a whole bunch of my stuff with them. Mom had long wanted to get rid of it, and I would have just as soon gone through it up in Boston and thrown out at least half, which I did at some point a few months ago A lot of it I hadn't touched since it somehow ended up at my parents' house--class notes from college, postcards, some old photos, rail passes, old library cards (mostly from Geneva--the city library and various university libraries). When it got to the more nostalgic stuff, I couldn't bring myself to deal with it, so I just left it in what was the room I'd rented out. Well, since another renter's about to move in, I decided to tackle the rest. I still couldn't bring myself to toss the rail or bus passes or even the library cards. Among all that stuff, I found a note from Gina:

"A., Mme. ____ n'était pas là when I got there at 1150. Could you please arrosser ma plante?"

I don't remember the circumstances that connected those two sentences. In any case, the note made me smile--that really was how we communicated those days. Not just in paper/in person--the idea of e-mailing was absurd because you had to go to a university building across town to do it, and the computers were brutally slow (and most people you knew lived in the same building). It was the language--half English, half French was just the straightforward, intuitive way to talk. It was what came out. Anyway, I didn't throw out the note. Who knows what I'll think of it when I come across it again, maybe in another ten years?

1 comment:

Tmomma said...

your post reminded me of the time my friend karen and i were to meet up at the train station in munich. we weren't on the same flight but she had been there before and gave me instructions and told me what hostel to meet her at if we didn't meet up. well, we didn't meet up at all that evening which was pretty scary at the time since that was day 1 of our month long post study abroad eurorail trip. we met up the next day after i finally went to the person who can announce things over loud speaker at the station. what she failed to mention was that there is a lower and upper part of the station. the best was the email i've saved all these years that she sent me hoping i'd find it. i just checked my old hotmail account to and discovered that they upgraded hotmail and all my old emails are gone...so so sad :(