Clarity of a painful memory

'There are moments when history and memory seem like a mist, as if what really happened matters less than what should have happened.'

Karen Joy Fowler: We are all completely beside ourselves.

As I read my letters written from Paris during our two year stay between 1986 and 1987, I am continually surprised. Both by what has stuck as a memory and by what I do not recall or at best as a misty recall.

I am starting to think about our Easter Plans so I went looking for one specific incident in my letters which has stuck like glue.

Barry falling down a flight of concrete stairs.

Our house at 2 Ave Corneille in Marly-le Roi had a very useful basement which we accessed from a door off the downstairs passage. I had the washing machine and tumble drier down in the basement, along with all sorts of kitchen stuff, so I was up and down these stairs all day long.

They were unfinished, raw concrete and angled steeply into the basement. We also used the space along the wall of the stairs to hang the vacuum cleaner and brooms etc.

Here is my letter to Mom telling her about his fall.

I had been happily describing a 'pillow house' that I was knitting - this is one of those misty moments, I have forgotten how much knitting I used to do, and as I was reading the detail, I can picture the knitted house in a far recess of my memory.

I can still feel the shock of finding him lying at the bottom of the stairs, the panic about how to deal all of the next steps with my barebones French and the awful aloneness, Fred was in the USA on a business trip.

Sally, once again was the go to phone call for help. I see that a neighbour helped out with Shawni, not something I remember, oh my did I thank them....

I look at these darling photos in my album. Barry with his black eye and my heart still tightens. The irony was he survived the stairs, it was the vacuum cleaner hanging on the wall that caused the black eye.

I finish off the letter to Mom listing the lovely gifts Fred brought home for us.

I must go looking for the photo of Shawni wearing her dress with its straw hat. He had gone into Macy's in New York and was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things to choose from, so he asked for the dress on the model, got to love it and he would do the same today.