(A revised excerpt from A Cup of Redemption, an historical novel) 

“When were you born?” I asked Marcelle Zabé, my 83-year-old French guest.  My question must have floated out of the blue, but Marcelle immediately put her coffee cup down on the table and sat forward.  The deep lines in her face smoothed as her rich voice lifted.

“I came into the world with a bang!” Marcelle Zabé resounded. “Gunshots, shouts of wild rejoicing, cries of joy and great jubilation echoed through the streets of my hometown, Vannes in Brittany,” she said, as her hands took flight.  A new sparkle danced through her eyes.

“Music played in the streets for the first time in four years. People danced, sang, hugged and cried. It was quite a wild affair, I was told. Not just for my birth, of course,” she laughed, “and, not just for Brittany, but for all of France. I was born on November 11, 1918…Armistice Day, the last day of World War I.” Her voice held a triumphant lilt.

She stopped talking for a moment, picked up her fork and stabbed a morsel of lemon tart.  Popping it into her mouth, her eyes rolled, and she swooned.  I was pleased that she approved of my meager culinary talents.  Then, Marcelle continued her story. 

I had been interviewing Marcelle, along with her adult daughter, Josiane, about French foods, recipes and family stories in the comfort of my own kitchen.  As a retired family therapist, I had been relaxing into the idea of gathering stories for a book I was thinking of writing.  It could be more like a cookbook with family anecdotes, I remember considering.

“My Grand’mère often told me the celebration was just for me,” Marcelle continued.  “Why, they even thought of naming me ‘Victory.’”  She laughed again at the old family tale which rolled off her tongue as being oh, so familiar.

“Grand’mère used to tell me many things about that time, as she was the one who raised me.”  Marcelle closed her eyes for a moment as she reflected back over her more than eighty years.

“What did people do during the Great War, Grand’mère?’ I used to ask her. I must have been seven years old when we first started this game. ‘Well, ma Cherie, it was a difficult time,’ she would respond. ‘The men who marched off as soldiers in November 1914 expected to return home in time to eat their Christmas goose. Everyone was surprised when the war lasted four very long years. No men were left to handle the fishing boats,’ she would say, waving her hand in the direction of the nearby sea, ‘and, no men were around to bring in the few crops which grew. War was not a time for choice, Marcelle; only a time for survival.’

“‘So, what happened after the War?’ Marcelle said as she continued to recount her grandmother’s words, “and always I received the same response, ‘The losses of men left mothers, fathers, young wives…all weeping in the still of the night or filing into the Church to pray to their saints. Your mother was among them, you know. Many a day, the only sound to be heard was the chink…chink…chink…of the masons chiseling the names of those who died into stone on the village war memorial.’

“‘Was my father’s name among them?’ I would ask her.”  Marcelle stopped short, she turned to me, and said, “But no answer ever came my way.”  Her eyes dropped to her now-empty coffee cup.

My head instantly snapped to the side to catch her daughter’s reaction, as Josiane had been quietly translating her mother’s every word.  I know my eyes must have been boring into her to prompt her to give me some clue.  Where should I go from here?  As a therapist, I knew the importance of her mother’s statement and this was huge!  I didn’t want to pry, but I also didn’t want to blithely continue a simple interview about French food and families if this was uncomfortable.  Josiane continued to stare into her own cup.  After a moment, she looked up at me and shrugged.

* * * * * * * * *

Marcelle Zabé was born 100 years ago today – November 11, 2018 – into a world celebrating the end of the Great War.  But what Marcelle was forced to contend with during her entire 84 years of life was the lasting burden of war.  She carried the last name of a father she never met—knew nothing about.  Had he died during that cataclysmic war or just failed to return home?  Were her parents even married?  Any conversation on this subject was always swathed into silence.  Abandoned, too, by her mother due to economic circumstances, her greatest influence was her grandmother. Despite her difficult start in life, her subsequent trials as a single mother during World War II, and her contentious marriage to a former Maquis (World War II résistance fighter), she achieved the highest goal she had set for herself. She was the proud mother of four fine children and an appreciative and loving passel of grandchildren.  Why?  Because she had learned the hard way – what war steals away from family can only be restored with patience and love.