Mon Père

I phoned my parents today. It took them a long time to answer the phone, but that is a good thing! The reason it took them so  long time to answer is because it's summer, the days are long and my mother is in the garden watering her plants. Dad is most likely watching sports, the world cup in soccer is on, or maybe he is relaxing after spending the day on a project around the house. Actually, as I learned in my conversation with him, he just came home from a 300km bike ride. He loves to ride his bike. He drove all over the place, North West, towards the Jura, then into France. I have a great story about my Dad and riding bikes, but that story has to wait.

First, let me state here why I am writing this blog about my Dad. Yes, I have this secret hope that some publisher will read this blog and think what a great writer I am and offer me a multi-million contract to write a book. Hey, we can all dream! But really, I decided to record my phone conversations with my dad because they are interesting. Unfortunately, in my dysfunctional family, no one cares about my dad's stories. My sister decided to sever her relationship with my mother and  father a long time ago. Why? I don't think anyone still really knows. It's one of those things, someone said something, it was not well received, and the decision was made never to talk again. Now of course, my sister refuses to back down and make peace, and for that matter so does my dad. It's too bad, and it's really, really sad. I know, my parents are really suffering because of this! I also have two children, two girls. Unfortunately here too something happened; a divorce, and the decision was made to never talk to me again. Too bad! But maybe, years from now, somebody will ask why, somebody will ask who was Georges, and maybe they will find this blog and will be able to learn just a bit about the life of a man who grew up in Paris France during World War II. If not, that is OK too. I enjoy my talks with my dad, and I love to write. Writing is my way to spend my leisure time.

Today I called my Dad to ask him about General de Gaulle. I heard and read recently about the 70 year anniversary of General de Gaulle's broadcast from London to France. In fact, and I did not know this, his broadcast was made on June 18. 1940, my birthday (but of course not my birth year). De Gaulle began his speech with: A Tous les Français – La France a perdu une bataille! Mais la France n`a pas perdu la guerre ! Historians are saying that this call was the start of the French Resistance that gave the Germans so much trouble during the occupation of France. My question to him was if he remembered that broadcast. He did not; he was too young to understand what was going on. My follow up question was, was his family involved in the resistance? His said, no. Maybe his grandfather. According to my Dad, his grandfather who also lived through WW I, and was a POW, either listened to the broadcasts or talked about the broadcasts from de Gaulle. But he really didn't remember the details.

My father never knew his parents. Something bad happened to them. I know it's bad. I think I know what, but I am not sure, and I really don't want to ask him about it. It's one of those skeletons in the closet, and for now, we will leave that skeleton alone and not open that door. In any case, my dad was an orphan, and had it not been for his grandparents, he would have been placed in an orphanage.

Something strange happens to kids that are born into a war. They adapt. This is horrible, but what can you do? They learn how to play with real war toys, such as burned out tanks, pretending to be soldiers, kill and be killed. They know about death, they learn about hate… but they also learn about how to game the system. My dad learned a few German words: "Maenner, Brot bitte!", which translates to men, bread please, which sometimes yielded a piece of bread, Not much, but better than nothing. My Dad told me, another way to get bread was to use really poor copies of fake food stamps, according to him, they were so bad you would know it was a fake from a mile away. So, he took those fake food stamps and went to the Boulangerie, the bakery, beforehand he made sure his hands were really dirty, grabbed a baguette tore off a piece of bread and started to eat it while proceeding to the cashier. Of course the Boulanger, the Baker would know right away that the food stamps were fake; took the bread out of my Dad's hand in great anger, cut off the portion of the bread that my dad touched with his dirty hands, throwing my Dad and the dirty bread out of his store hurling all kinds of insults after him.

For me, growing up with my father who grew up in the war was not easy. There was no such thing as wasting any food. I mean any food. As a kid, I never understood that, but looking back it makes sense. How can you forget going roaming through the streets of Paris, begging or stealing food because there was not much at home? I remember once getting into really big trouble because my sister and I threw bread away. Let me explain, we did not throw bread away but… Here is how it started. Sunday morning we got up and we decided to make breakfast for our parents. The day before, my mother baked one of her famous Baerner Zuepfe. We were still very young, I really don't know how old we were, but I know, we still had a coal fired oven in our apartment. We lived in a typical row apartment home on the Polygonstrasse in Bern. In fact, those apartments are still there, looking the same as they did when I grew up. Each apartment had its own heating system and a coal cellar where we kept the coal. Winter mornings were cold, there was no heat in the apartment until the oven was lit, and even then, it took a long time for the oven to heat up the water in the boiler that then would heat up the radiators in the rooms. Back to the bread story… we were preparing breakfast for our parents and that included cutting the bread into slices, spreading butter and comfiture on them and making tea or instant coffee. Anyway, in our attempt to cut slices of bread we butchered the bread so badly, that some slices could not be used. So,  afraid that Mom would be mad at us because of our butchering her bread; we stuffed the worst cut slices into the oven which was not lit, hoping that would take care of our sins. I don't remember if our parents were happy about the breakfast we prepared, I only remember getting a beating for throwing away bread. I am sure at the time I did not understand why they got so mad at us, but now I do. How can I blame either one of my parents to be obsessed about waste, my parents, especially my father who grew up knowing what hunger is. I never went to bed hungry, nor did I ever worry if I would have anything to eat the next day.

On my next call I will get a few more details on where exactly he grew up in Paris. I know I have been there as a kid with my parents, but I have also visited the area as a young adult. I wonder if he remembers the address.