Jocelyn Curry

Perhaps all rights-of-passage come unexpectedly. I have never given the matter much thought. But 51 years ago to the week, I began my experience of one when I, as a homesick-prone child of 12, left my own family home in Casablanca, Morocco, to travel with our French neighbors to their summer home in southern France.

The trip lasted a full month. My travel journal documents the four-day road trip preceeding the four weeks spent in the tranquil, verdant village of Les Cammazes, 35 km from the historic city of Carcasonne. The population of Les Cammazes in 1962 was 164. The population in 2006: 290. Astonishingly, the town was established in 1384 AD. It was a classic, rural village consisting of one main narrow road tightly lined with stucco and stone buildings. Surrounding the village were farms. There was a broad stream (technically it was a flume) running across the main road, creating an X from an aerial view, a stream which played an important part in my time spent in the village.

I alluded to the tiny, lined notebook that became my travel journal in a post to my professional site. The week after doing so, I found the journal itself, tucked away in a scrapbook recently excavated from an old steamer trunk in our basement. When had I last seen my little book? Perhaps 40 years ago. Reading it has launched me into deep memory recall of a pivotal time. I left my parents and sister as a child that June, and returned to Casablanca at the end of July as a person with a greater awareness of herself in the world.

The road trip was arduous. Extreme heat, a crowded car, a rough ship passage across the Straits of Gibraltar and car trouble while crossing the Pyrenees made it an endurance test. In great detail, I recorded all of this in my journal. Here is a spread, one of the few that includes a sketch:

In French Morocco in the 1960's, it was common to have live-in household help. The men were referred to as "houseboys." Mohammed, sketched here while sleeping in the car, was the family's houseboy who traveled with us to be in service during the summer stay. His passage on the ship taking us from the African coast to southern Spain was his first boat ride. He was seasick, according to my journal.

Almost exclusively, we spoke French. This contributed to my homesickness because communication was difficult; I had only picked up a little conversational French from our ten months of living in French-speaking Morocco.  One of the daughters was close to my age, so she was my adventuresome daily companion in Les Cammazes. At the end of the month with the family, I spoke informal French with considerable facility and a convincing accent.

Here you see me between two of the siblings. While digging around in an old trunk of clothing, we found some vintage woollen swimsuits.

During my four weeks in the village, I wrote letters to my parents who were in Italy during part of that period. The letters, describing daily activities such as "fishing in the creek with a burlap bag," always ended with, "I miss you so much. Please write to me." The letters mailed to the American Express office in Naples never reached them, but were returned to Les Cammazes. 

"Unknown. Return to Sender."

So penetrating was my homesickness one time that after an upsetting incident with my companion, I had to go to bed because I appeared to be physically ill. Alone in a large bed in an airy upstairs room (a special place, as there was some resentment that I got to rest in it), I recall studying the vintage toile wallpaper at close range. The repeat-pattern images of happy groupings of full-skirted, parasoled ladies in the countryside with romantic little villages in the distance made me all the more aware of how far away from home I was.

The two returned letters I have described our fishing activities more than anything else. Madame saw our obsession with fishing (and catching crayfish), so she bought us some tackle which immediately yielded fish that were big enough to cook for the family meal. With our growing success at fishing, we spent more and more time at the creek. One episode has always stayed with me, and that was the time we found a villager's hat snagged at the end of a stream culvert where rushing water emerged from a fairly narrow passageway. We found out from a village shopkeeper that the fisherman whose hat we saw had evidently lost his balance while fishing the day before, had been swept into the pipe, became lodged, and drowned. It was darkly sobering, especially after hearing a graphic description of the victim's appearance.

The photo below, also found in my scrapbook, immediately evoked other, more pleasurable memories of my stay:

Until I saw this photo in my scrapbook, I had forgotten our visit to this ivy-covered stately home near the entrance to the village. I recall the sun flooding into the parlor on the west side of the house, where a friend of the family welcomed us three girls. I don't remember the reason for the visit, but the romance of the place comes back to me.

Built of stone and surrounded by lush gardens, the house pictured above was just downstream ( I think) from the village laundry facility. This consisted of three massive stone basins with built-in stone washboards. Diverted water from the stream ran directly through the tubs. Women doing their washing began at the first tub, punishing the garments against the stone washboards with muscular arms using brick-sized bars of olive oil soap. I can still see them in my mind's eye. There was a method and rhythm to the work that left a lasting impression on me. The second basin was for the initial rinse. The third, for the final rinse in fresh creek water. I have to wonder: are the stone basins still in use today?

It came as a surprise to me when a friend of the family, a French teenaged boy who was also in Les Cammazes for the summer, developed a crush on me. This was a big contributor to the right-of-passage factor, as I was entirely unprepared for something like this. I look at the photos of my childish, flat-chested body, my bangs and my bob haircut, my toothy grin, and I still wonder to this day what intangible forces may have come into play. Of course, I was flattered, if taken aback. I became self-conscious when he suggested to me that it was time for me to start shaving my legs (French women never shaved theirs in those days!).

We had a dance one night in the cool, rustic stone wine cellar beneath my French neighbors' villa. We strung a bare lightbulb up, on extension cords, as there was no electricity in the cellar. I believe that the teenaged boy's name was Joe–but I'm not sure. We all had glasses of wine, which, in spite of my having been drinking diluted wine, French-style, with our dinners, was much too strong for me. I didn't know what to do with it. I was dancing with "Joe," awkwardly I'm sure, and something inexplicably compelled me to pour my wine on the lightbulb dangling against the stone wall. The lightbulb, predictably, exploded. Everything went dark, and there was animated chaos in the wine cellar as the music continued from the record player. I think I may have claimed culpability, because I vaguely recall a lecture on the physics of pouring cold liquid on a very hot object.

As I read through my little journal a few days ago, I was puzzled by the last entries. Once we had finally arrived in Les Cammazes, I officially ended my journal (THE END). There are numerous blank pages following THE END. But on the last page, and on the inside of the back cover, were these entries:

On the left is a poem written down, I believe, by "Joe." Here is my translation of the poem:

They have departed, the beautiful days of friendship-

All my friends have left the cotton plants-

It is no longer here, the beautiful day of the grand repose-

I UNDERSTAND THEIR SWEET SINGING VOICE.

[I don't know what the last, partially written line means. And, the name "Joe" could actually be the beginning of "Jocelyn." There may have been an interruption.]

Now, I have no explanation for why I would have written (and why so crookedly) the words to The Battle Hymn of the Republic on the facing page. I always liked singing this strong hymn when I was young, but why would I have written it as almost a reply to Joe's lyrical, parting poem? Why the juxtaposition? I'll never know.

I returned to Casablanca on an Air France jet, by myself. I have the telegram that Madame sent to my parents letting them know when I would be arriving. The stewardesses seemed to treat me like a grown-up, with sweet graciousness and respect: la jeune fille Américaine. This is a keen memory because I realized at that moment that I had grown, and changed. It almost seemed magical, that flight back. I could be apart from my parents, cope with a host of situations I had never faced before, and even fly alone on a jet.

Joe wrote to me after my return home. I was slightly embarassed by his letters, and I don't remember replying because I really was not ready for his amorous focus upon me. Mom asked me about the letters, of course. I couldn't bring myself to keep them, evidently, because they are not in my scrapbook. I couldn't quite explain what had transpired with Joe, or perhaps I didn't really want to, because Joe's attention to me was part of my private awakening, my right-of-passage to an expanded world.