The Story of My Life so Far - Part 87 - Family Life in Fresnes

This is the story of my life so far: 68 years and counting.
Prequel: A Brief History of my Family in France

The story starts here
Previous episode: Part 86

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When Syrille and Gaëlle arrived in France from Cameroon, they were basically illegal immigrants. The only identity papers they had were their Cameroonian birth certificates. And on these birth certificates, the year of birth of their mother, Madel, has been modified from 1963 to 1968. For Syrille that was supposed to be born when his mother was only twelve year old, this could have seemed suspicious, but nobody ever made any remark about that.

However, that did not prevent them to go to school. At this time at least, the schools would not object to welcome a child that was living in its catchment. So, Gaëlle went to pre-school as soon as she arrived, and the three others, Roseline, Betty and Syrille went to elementary school.

Gaëlle who knew no French at all when she arrived was very quick to learn, mostly by interacting with her siblings and the other children at the pre-school. Before Christmas 1987, she was able to have an intelligible conversation with us.
For the pronunciation, she had a hard time mastering the 'R' as it is pronounce by most French people. She tried to pronounce it as the 'J' in Spanish. It took her several more months to get the correct sound.

At the dinner table, Gaëlle was sitting on my left. Often, in the middle of a conversation between myself and the other children, she would pull my arm and say "Papa, papa ...". To teach her that it was not correct to interrupt a conversation, I would ignore her, until there were an opportunity. Then, when asked what she wanted to tell me, she would look very sad and tell us: "A cause de vous, j'sais plus c'que j'voulais dire!" (Because of you all, I don't know any more what I wanted to say!).

There was a small courtyard at the back of the house in Fresnes, with a cherry tree. The children were able to play there after school. And they were climbing on the cherry tree, of course.

Roseline had a desire to grow plants. On the front of the house, she had planted some strawberry plants, and every day, after school she was checking the fruits, that were slowly becoming red.
One day, she was sadly disappointed to discover that the strawberries were gone: Syrille, that has returned from school before her, had picked them and eaten them. More than 30 years later, we are still talking about this incident!

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[If my children are reading this, and I hope they will, and I made some mistakes, please tell me before the seven days period]

Continue to Part 88

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Summary
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8
Part 9 - Part 10 - Part 11 - Part 12 - Part 13 - Part 14 - Part 15 - Part 16
Part 17 - Part 18 - Part 19 - Part 20 - Part 21 - Part 22 - Part 23 - Part 24
Part 25 - Part 26 - Part 27 - Part 28 - Part 29 - Part 30 - Part 31 - Part 32
Part 33 - Part 34 - Part 35 - Part 36 - Part 37 - Part 38 - Part 39 - Part 40
Part 41 - Part 42 - Part 43 - Part 44 - Part 45 - Part 46 - Part 47 - Part 48
Part 49 - Part 50 - Part 51 - Part 52 - Part 53 - Part 54 - Part 55 - Part 56
Part 57 - Part 58 - Part 59 - Part 60 - Part 61 - Part 62 - Part 63 - Part 64
Part 65 - Part 66 - Part 67 - Part 68 - Part 69 - Part 70 - Part 71 - Part 72
Part 73 - Part 74 - Part 75 - Part 76 - Part 77 - Part 78 - Part 79 - Part 80
Part 81 - Part 82 - Part 83 - Part 84 - Part 85 - Part 86