France calling....

Wonder of wonders.... how does a letter get from here to France in less time than it takes for a letter to get from here to the west coast?

I sent a letter to the man in France who knew my dad during the war..... and the phone rang this afternoon and it was the interpreter who had written the initial letter to our family, asking for information about my father. Was he well? Did he remember the family in Cremieu?

My father is indeed well (as well as an old man can be, he says) and he did remember the family.... and he asked me to write a letter to the interpreter. Which I did. And four days later, the phone rings and the interpreter is thanking me (in beautifully accented English) for answering his letter on behalf of the French gentleman who spent so much time with my dad. The French gentleman is now as old as my dad, and still speaks no English. When the interpreter told his friend that my father's daughter had answered their letter and sent photos, the man cried like a baby.

So now, of course, I will be writing back and forth to the interpreter. They will also send my dad a letter--- I told them to write fairly large, to make it easier for my dad to read. I called my father and told him about the phone call, and also told him that he might be getting a telephone call from France. He said they probably wouldn't call him because they were very poor people. I told him that their circumstances might have changed a bit since 1944.

My father kept in touch with that family after the war was over. They wrote letters back and forth for a couple of years. Then they both just stopped writing. My dad said "The war was over and everyone went back to work and tried to get a life together. There was no time anymore for letters."

So now, both men are in there late 80s. And they both have time. "But who knows how much," says my dad.