100 Books, #6: Martine Fait la Cuisine
Jun. 20th, 2012 03:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerOn one of her trips to France before I was born, my mother bought Gilbert Delahaye’s Martine Fait la Cuisine. I contracted rather an obsession with the book in first grade. Never mind I couldn’t read the French text - it’s not like I was reading much of anything at that point anyway - the rich, detailed pictures sufficed me.
My mother also filled two albums with photos from France: gold-crusted gates and marzipan shaped into little fruits. Between her photos and Martine, I thought it very likely that France was fairyland.
I didn’t see my mother as a particularly brave person as a child: to me she seemed quiet, reserved, a little old-fashioned. It didn’t occur to me that for her to be only a little old-fashioned signified a tremendous break from her childhood in rural southern Indiana in the fifties. When we went to Turkey last summer, she commented that when she was growing up, Turkey might as well have been the moon for all that it seemed possible that someone could visit it. A girl traveling on her own in a strange land was absolutely foreign to her upbringing.
I grew up traveling, and I love traveling, and I still have to screw up my courage to plunge into trips. My mother’s family never traveled; she didn’t even see the Great Lakes till she was in college. It must have taken tremendous courage for her to fly off to see England and France by herself.
My mother also filled two albums with photos from France: gold-crusted gates and marzipan shaped into little fruits. Between her photos and Martine, I thought it very likely that France was fairyland.
I didn’t see my mother as a particularly brave person as a child: to me she seemed quiet, reserved, a little old-fashioned. It didn’t occur to me that for her to be only a little old-fashioned signified a tremendous break from her childhood in rural southern Indiana in the fifties. When we went to Turkey last summer, she commented that when she was growing up, Turkey might as well have been the moon for all that it seemed possible that someone could visit it. A girl traveling on her own in a strange land was absolutely foreign to her upbringing.
I grew up traveling, and I love traveling, and I still have to screw up my courage to plunge into trips. My mother’s family never traveled; she didn’t even see the Great Lakes till she was in college. It must have taken tremendous courage for her to fly off to see England and France by herself.
