Forgotten words

 

Geraldine's story

Forgotten words

 

-Well, can you just remind me where this place « Puttelanges aux Lacs » is situated.  In Lorraine I think !

- Yes, It’s not far from Metz and on the way  from Nancy, we could pay a visit in the afternoon and see if we could come accross these Ancestors Francesca told me about and find a few tombs there !

- Yes, we are looking for people who lived more than 2 centuries ago, so I must say I am not very optomistic.

- Oh ! you never are, but it’s worth trying though !

 

So, off we started from Nancy, through the hilly roads of the region, which happened to look much nicer than I had thought : countryland with smooth hills, forests, cows grazing in the meadows and quite a few windmills around for sustainable energy.  Francesca and John, in there very sporty Morgan and Michel and I in a normal everyday car.

 

We arrived first and stopped in front of the cemetery settled behind a little Chapel.  One of these untidy places, where some graves were to be replaced with a little notice on them : « this tomb has to be removed, please call the « Mairie ».  They were shaby and weedy and old.  Most of the dates were in the 1800’s .  So, I decided to call the Mairie and the Secrétaire de Mairie was very helpfull although she didn’t have much time to dedicate as she was going to fetch her child from school.  But, she did take the necessary time to look up the list of names on her excel spreadsheet and confirm they had nobody with the name of « Hirsch ».

By this time Francesca and John had joined us and we still spent a little time going from one grave to the other searching for the Great Grandfather’s name. 

We felt quite sad : John had done all this genealogy research finding the names of 5 generations before my grandfather Alphonse, right up to Nathan, all born in Lorraine.  Were we just going to give up ?

So - thank you technology - we started looking at what this small town Puttelange was like in those years and we found a very interesting article explaining that as from the middle on the eighteenth century, 2 or 3 Jewish families started living there and apparently, within years, the Community grew very large.  We came accross a photo of the Synagogue that had been one of the biggest in the East of France and discovered that it had been destroyed at the end of the first World War, when Lorraine was attached to Germany….

- Look, said Francesca.  There was a Jewish cemetery in the town !  And there were these photos of this cemetery with standing stones in a very disorganized way in a green meadow.  Then, reading the article on the I phone, she discovered an address : 6, rue Mozart.

- Do you think this street still exists ?  Do you think there could be another cemetery in such a small town ?  After all, Puttelanges aux Lacs is smaller than Semur-en-Auxois….

- I don’t know, but rue Mozart is only about a 5 minutes walk from here, So lets get going !

And so off we started with the help of all these new technology devices, following the GPS’s indications, and all of a sudden, behind a wooden fence were these big grey stones standing in the green grass.  John hasted  the pace and shouted : it’s open !  By this time, we were all really excited, with mixed feelings as to what we would find.

We walked in and started looking at the tombs and the writings to find out about dates and names and …oh…. Forgotten Words…. All the writing was in Hebrew.  What a deception !  We wouldn’t be able to know and find out about our Ancestors.

The meadow was quite large, and there were quite a lot of these Stones, sometimes well apart.  So, each one of us sarted at a point and all of a sudden I heard my sister Francesca saying : « here’s one, here’s one ! ».  She was kneeling down trying to decipher the inscription.

We all dashed to see it and the name upon it was written in French « Nathan Cahen Hirsch »  - born in Puttelanges in 1800 – dead in Puttelange in 1894 .  We checked with the genealogy sheet  that John had written down and there we were, in front of the grave of our Great Great Grandfather !

Waouh ! How wise and advised we had been not to give up in the main cemetery where we wouldn’t have found anyone !

-Let’s see if there are more.  As I was walking on the uneven ground I found another one which wasn’t so difficult to read : « Henri Hirsch » born in Puttelange in 1828 – dead in Puttelange 1901 . My Grandfather ‘s Uncle, according to John’s family  tree.

I had never been that interested in family resarch, but all of a sudden I realized what it means to have roots !

We had heard that we were of jewish origin, but without religion, as it is usually the mother who passes on the religious practice.  We were all baptized as Catholilcs and my father and Uncle had changed their name and ours in 1949, after having experienced hard times before and during the war.

Then, as we were to leave the small town to go to Metz , we stopped for a drink in the little local « café ».  There were quite a lot of retired men drinking their beer together and we got talking to the man nearest to us.  And that’s how we learnt that Puttelanges aux Lacs had been a major mining town as from  begining 1900 , and before, they excelled in making hats out of hemp and a lot of commercial exchanges.  That’s probably the period when my family settled there…

 

It’s the end of a research, and perhaps John will be incline to look up for the activities they developped in this  area of France called Lorraine, which will be the begining of another story…

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 from Jackie:   

           Forgotten words   

They were there –  just on the surface – I could almost touch them, I could almost spit them out – …I could feel their presence floating, hovering, hanging in the air suspended and waiting to be thrown into a conversation,  an explanation or even a chat or gossip.  

Words.

Instead they remained hidden, blocked, sliding into a no mans land of sound escaping into the atmosphere  – or, perhaps they were hiding behind an ear, up a nose or diving deep into lungs in the opposite direction of the vocal cords  – far away from what they were meant to do ….that is …speak

Words  - there they were on the very tip of an icebergs brain, melting, flowing into nothing disappearing when they should be out speaking, conversing and dialoguing – instead,  the grey matter was smoldering, fuming with searching, delving, trying in vain to unblock the brainpower – as words failed.

 

The brain motor revs then stalls wracked up like an old motor car of days gone by - on a block of useless cells – unable to remember – the simple word-     that word that I know  …..  Of course, I know – it’s there - I shall spit it out – and then, there it shall leap – into the air jumping over that forgotten fence -  happy and laughing with the knowledge that it has come out at last – showing off as to have proved wrong –

Shall I tell you how not to forget words  … just give me a a few minutes, or even a day or two perhaps a month or a year and I’ll probably remember eventually

 

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Annemarie's story

Forgotten Words

Deirdre and Connor Kelly  were about to celebrate his seventieth birthday which, they decided, would take place at home, overlooking  Dublin Bay. They set off early to shop for ingredients as Deirdre planned to make all the food herself with the help of her sister. Looking at her list, she said,

 “For starters I think we'll get the beechwood smoked salmon from Connemara; then I'll make a traditional Irish stew - huge pot of it and everyone can dig in.”

“And what'll ye do for pudding?” chipped in Connor.

“Well, of course your favourite… erm…what's it called?…ye  know, the white one..”

“Oh, you mean zabaglione!”

“Of course not,” snapped Deirdre, “ye know that's not your favourite; the white wobbly thing - how can you forget what's  your favourite?”she muttered frustratedly. “ Oh never mind, keep driving - it’ll come to me,”.

They drove on in silence while Deirdre envisioned the 'white, wobbly pudding’ -  two words and she felt they were hovering somewhere up there in her brain; if she could only grab a letter or two. She shut her eyes, concentrated but nothing; it was like stretching for a delicious sun-baked peach tantalising her from a just out-of-reach branch and then a mist coming down. And why on earth did Connor always forget the words she couldn't remember? Why? Change the subject, think about something else and then the name would come back to her.

“Connor, did ye remember to make an appointment with Dr.Patrick?”

“And why would I need to do that, Deirdre?”

“And weren't ye  saying the other day ye had little red, itchy bumps on your tentacles..?”

“Tentacles, woman? What do you mean tentacles?” and he started to laugh. “Oh! Ye mean testicles, dear…ha!ha!ha!” He slapped the steering wheel, chortling to himself. “What I  could do if I had tentacles; it'd save me a lot of bending. And the bumps on the other things have nearly disappeared, so no, I've not made an appointment.”

They were both silent for a while until Deirdre had a sudden idea.

“Do ye know, I think I’ll get some erotic fruit to go with the white wobbly thing… the oh what is it called?”

“So…” chuckled her husband, “ye're planning some sort of an orgy for my seventieth, are ye?”

“No, ye eejit - I meant exotic fruit. I'm so frustrated because I can’t remember the name for the flipping pudding. It's buzzing around in my head - I know but just can’t get it from my brain to my mouth.”

As they turned into the carpark Deirdre caught sight of an old friend scurrying through the drizzly rain, clutching her raincoat hood over her head.

“Look! there's Clodagh Doyle. Do you know, I haven’t seen her for years and now twice in one week. I had coffee with her in that new place in the high street - they make really good chocolate mac..mac ... macaroni.. no, no.. macaroo…yes macaroons. We could order some for your birthday, Now let's get this shopping done,”

They walked down the aisles popping carrots, meat, milk in the trolley but all the time  Deirdre couldn’t help trying not to think of the elusive name for the pudding. 'Close your eyes and think of something else' she told herself. 'When you get home you can always google wobbly white pudding - if I remember what I want to google by the time I get home!'

“Connor, I think with all the people we’re inviting it's going to need quite a lot of orgasm…orgasimisation…I mean organism.. no… organisation.  One more thing - I need to go to the garden centre; get some summer bedding plants ”said Deirdre as she ticked off the items on her list. “Some gerbils - gerbils? I don't mean gerbils…ger-..gerberas! and some cannas…ohh! Panna cotta! Your favourite pudding ! How on earth could you forget that, Connor!”

 

 

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