Mama at Chartres
March 22, 2020
The summer of my senior year of high school, my father, who was the tightest man there ever was—he once handed me a dollar bill to buy gas—shocked us with his idea that we celebrate all our upcoming life passages by going to Europe together. He was retiring from his job as a tobacco grader with the US Department of Agriculture, Mama was retiring as the minister of music at church, Walker was leaving his job teaching at Emma Willard School and headed off for a year of study at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, and I was graduating from high school.
The plan was we’d piggyback on Walker’s trip over, and take advantage of his language skills—German, French, and Italian—and knock around countries with those languages. We all prepared in our own way. I stayed up late boning up on my French. Daddy continued to wade through Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of Civilization and memorizing most of it, it seemed. Mama flitted about buying very loud patterns of polyester pantsuits, I guess in case she got lost, she could be detected by satellite. I’m not sure what Walker was doing other than perhaps polishing up a few sardonic remarks. We knew this was going to be the trip of a lifetime.
I had never been on an airplane before. Walker had managed to get us on a charter flight with a big private school group traveling to Europe which weirdly flew out of Connecticut. We drove up and spent the night with Mama’s friend who had been the director of Macy’s summer camp for its employees, where Mama had worked during the war. Can you even imagine? And here’s what we were served for dinner—filet mignon. Yup. Not peanuts. The only other things I remember from the flight were writing in a very tiny red spiral notebook, the kind that Daddy used to keep in his glove box to record his gas mileage, which I somehow thought was sufficient for recording the memories of a six-week trip to Europe, and a student who sat in the window seat next to my brother and me, who after listening to our commentary, looked at us like we were some pretty odd ducks and said, “You two have a very strange sense of humor.”
We landed in Paris and checked into the Hotel Jack, and Walker took the train to Frankfurt to pick up the yellow VW bug he had ordered. We were enthusiastic tourists. Walker looked very European with his over-the-shoulder bag and Michelin guide, the three of us not so much. I think the plaid bell-bottoms gave us away. That and everything else.
We saw a lot of cathedrals, castles, and chateaux in the Loire Valley. Daddy provided the historical background, Walker and I took care of the photography with our Minolta SRT 101s with Ektachrome, Mama bought postcards and exuded enthusiasm from every pore. Walker drove and translated, I read the map and every morning packed every last piece of luggage into the front of the bug, Mama screamed “Oh, isn’t that beautiful!” (giving Walker a start every time) and Daddy paid for everything.
We had been looking forward to seeing Chartres, for so many reasons, not least of which was that, after the original one was burned and the veil that Mary was supposed to have worn apparently lost, the townspeople found the veil, saw it as a sign, and pitched and built this gorgeous gothic temple in 70 years, when other cathedrals took centuries. How in the world did 12th-century townspeople get the skills to create such a thing? As sort of a joke, Walker and I exaggerated the pronunciation of Chartres—SHAR-RUH-TRUH. The French actually say just SHART.
My first memory of Mama is approaching the cathedral. Like most cathedrals, it sits above the rest of the town, so we had to climb quite a few stairs, and even though Mama was relatively fit and slim, she got a little bit out of breath and I put my hand behind her back and gave her a little push forward.
Once inside, we joined a guided tour and walked around, necks craned heavenward, transported by the spires and stained glass, agog at this magnificent human achievement to the glory of God, and I noticed that Mama had fallen behind. I stopped to see what she was up to. She was slowly, nonchalantly, sashaying –she often walked with one foot crossing in front of the other—in her bright spring dress, cathedral guide in hand, seeming to take it all in, but sort of in her own little world. Then I heard a little toot. And then another. Toot toot. Pause. Sashay. Toot. A little farting symphony right there in Chartres Cathedral. Mama looked at me. I raised my eyebrows, and she knew that I knew. She collapsed over into giggles, as she often did, and I escorted her outside. That was it for our tour.
Walker titled this event: “Fah-ruh-tin’ in Chah-ruh-truh.” Translates to farting in Chartres for those who don’t know French. And that’s what I remember about Chartres Cathedral.
©2021 Joy Cunningham