When I was in middle school, we were offered two options for studying a foreign language, French and Spanish. As my father spoke French, it, too, became my language of choice at the tender age of eleven. Although I have forgotten the names of virtually all my middle school teachers, the name of my french teacher stuck with me, Monsieur Dupuis.
I remember thinking it was the quintessential name for a french teacher.
Monsieur Dupuis was known far and wide in the halls of our school for his rakish mustache and his popsicle stick constructions. He would collect the sticks from students who purchased popsicles and other such treats from the "canteen," the snack store that the eighth graders ran during afternoon recess to raise money for something I no longer remember. As the weeks and months passed, the secret project would grow. Sometimes students recognized it immediately as was the case when I was in the sixth grade and he constructed the Eiffel Tower.
The following year presented more of a mystery. It was not until the school-year neared its end that we discovered he was building a guillotine. He even added a blade made of copper sheeting. Monsieur Dupuis was gone the next year and we, his students, always wondered whether his threat to cut off the tongues of those whose pronunciation was lacking could have been the reason for his departure.
Monsieur Dupuis was succeeded by Miss Fitzgerald whose name did not conjure up images of the Eiffel Tower or Versailles. However, Miss Fitzgerald had something that Monsieur Dupuis did not - the desire to take her students to France. By this time, I was in the eighth grade and she planned on taking eighth and ninth grade students to Europe during spring break.
How I wanted to go. Although I was not one to beg my parents for anything (we will not mention the clock radio I desperately had to have when I was 12 which followed me all the way to law school), I made a case for being allowed to go on the trip. There was one small, itsy bitsy problem: My confirmation fell smack in the middle of the trip. This did not deter me from my mission to get on that plane. Eventually, my parents relented and I was confirmed weeks later in another church.
That trip began my love affair with travel. We flew into Paris and made our way around the city before venturing further afield, to the chateaux of the Loire Valley, to the beaches of Normandy and, finally, to what became my favorite place on earth, Mont St. Michel, the iconic fortress off the coast of Normandy.
I had only my Kodak Instamatic back then in 1974 and the years have dulled the colors of those 3x3 inch photos. Now, all these years later, I think my thirteen-year-old self did not do a bad job in taking photos of this amazing fortress. For some reason, however, this odd little picture was always my favorite. I always wondered who, if anyone, got to live in that little house outside the walls.
Years, of course, passed. I was blessed to be able to return to France several times - as a recent college grad and then, much later, as a wife with my husband.
But I never returned to Mont St. Michel.
And then children arrived and European travel became a pleasant memory with a hope for the future.
During all those years, though, I sang with a chorus in northern New Jersey. In 1989, the chorus went on a concert tour of Italy. Later, there were trips to Prague, China, Vienna, and Australia, but I had small children and sadly remained behind.
By 2014, however, my children were grown and I was ready to hit the road. In 2014, my chorus went to France. The plans included the beaches of Normandy, but not Mont St. Michel. My appeal to the trip planners was successful and thus came the day, exactly forty years after that first visit, when I returned to Mont St. Michel. A dream fulfilled at long last.
Of course, the Kodak Instamatic had been replaced many times over and, therefore, the photographs of that remarkable, unique island improved accordingly.
During our tour, I began looking out the windows. I wanted to find that little structure on the beach, the one that seemed to be outside the walls of the fortress. Having no luck, I was about to give up when it accidentally came into view.
Almost completely obscured by trees now, I could only make out the edge of the roof and the chimney as well as the small round tower at the corner of the walls. Nonetheless, there it was.
When people ask me where it is I would go on vacation, the answer, no matter where I had just been, is always France.
And I would give anything to climb the hundreds of stairs of Mont St. Michel yet again. By now, I bet that little building and the guard tower are completely hidden by nature.
No matter. I know they are there.
Prints of the 2014 photographs from Mont St Michel as well as other photos of France are available from echopointphotoarts.photoshelter.com.
