By Anna Von Reitz
There are often more than a dozen sides to a single story, but there are always at least two.
Time flows backwards for me this time of year. Always, it is like a mental tide sweeping toward Normandy, that singular terrain and people who have had such a profound influence on history --- our family's history, as well as the world's history.
Seafaring expeditions that changed the face of history and trade set sail from Normandy. For better or worse, Christianity entered England from Normandy. Armies gathered in Normandy and fronted the Norman Conquest, forever changing the history and fate of the British Isles. The Romans trained the Gallic Legions in Normandy. Guillaume of Normandy, a distant ancestor of William the Conqueror, rang the bell in the courtyard of his castle at Joyeuse Garde as he left for a journey to visit relatives who ruled in Powys, England, less than a hundred years after the Romans departed.
Another two hundred years before his journey, the fishermen of Armorica -- which included the Brittany Peninsula and much of Normandy, discovered the Grand Banks and Nova Scotia, beginning a trans-Atlantic trade in salt, fish, and furs, that would last into the Napoleonic Age and lead to Armorica lending its name to two new continents, North and South America.
The Armoricans left more than their name in America; they left behind their genetic code, forever entangled with Native American tribes from the Lenape and Delawares to the MikMak and Iroquois, to the Cherokee and Seminoles in Florida. Their strong French noses and high cheekbones are forever emblazoned on the faces of Native Americans from Hudson Bay to Florida and beyond.
No amount of British rewriting can change that.
Normandy was the ancestral home of my husband's clan and family, a place where fate and history have always collided, and only a little farther north, stands the cold silhouette of our cousin, La Bataille de Dunkerque, with the same sea standing between us and our family in England. It's a strange place and stranger stories abound there, concerning what the British call "the miracle of Dunkirk".
From May 26th to June 4th 1940 the greatest amphibious rescue mission in world history centered around Dunkirk, a fortified port city in far northern France, just up the coast from our old stomping grounds, and even closer across the English Channel to England. 338,000 soldiers and sailors had to be evacuated --- with no evacuation plan, and no fleet to transport them.
They did it with ancient ferries and fishing trawlers and barges, motor sailors and yachts. Any boat that would float, any dinghy that could be towed, even pontoon boats and river barges formed a line and faced the brine of the North Atlantic. Asked about it afterward, old men and children all said the same thing, "We had to do it, for our boys." Had to, and did.
Five years later, on June 6th 1944, the tide would flow in the opposite direction as an unimaginably massive invasion fleet unloaded 156,000 soldiers across the beachheads of Normandy. And once again, Normandy stood in the thick of it. The crossroads of history.
It's a place and a people that are nothing if not enduring. And all over the world, I see their faces and hear their names transliterated in a thousand ways, transformed, made new, and I realize that so many scions of France live their whole lives never knowing where their heritage lies.
My husband has the nose of his French ancestors, broad but finely sculpted. His funny conical chin comes straight from Rouen. People comment on his high cheekbones and ask if he has American Native blood? He smiles, no, it's French -- the Natives inherited those high cheekbones from their French ancestors. He shakes his head.
Once you see it, you see it, and can't forget. It's the map of France indelibly imprinted, the red blood of France flowing under skins of every color, the faces of France greeting you everywhere. The dimples, the indents, the hallmarks of France. The Belle Chers left France over a thousand years ago, and yet....Jim still drinks his coffee strong and black. He still detests a soggy biscuit. And any kind of food has to be better with some kind of sauce or syrup or condiment. Dinner has to be savored. Wine has to be sipped.
A gentleman, he says complacently, as if God came down and ordained it, will never be rude to a lady, and never be less than gallant. He will never be indelicate or inconsiderate. His voice will be raised in defense of the poor. His hand will strike down injustice. His heart will beat with passion until his dying breath and his word is his bond. His loyalty and honor know no bounds, no limits at all.
When such a man, deeply loving life, but unafraid of death, pledges his heart and gives his word, you know that it is true. It is immutable. And the same boneheaded utterly obdurate stubbornness that grates against your daily life like a grindstone and which never gives in, never, not an inch -- is what you come to rely on the darkest days of winter and wartime.
Jim is always Jim. He never wavers. He never shirks. He never turns a blind eye to any suffering or injustice. He never passes by, uncaring. He is always grateful for every comfort and every beauty in his life, and yet, he remains stoic in the face of suffering. He is proud without being prideful, generous without any fanfare, kind without imposing on anyone. This is the way the Belle Chers are, the way history proves they have always been.
So when you chance to wonder, as I often do, how this one family could stand at the crossroads of history for centuries, could adventure all around the world, and could endure on a mission and honor a duty to the American Government for 164 years, the answer is -- he's Norman French. He is what he is, and he comes from a long, long line of the same whole cloth; his ancestors carried forward the duty we now share, to stand as witnesses and inheritors of the American Government.
Like the rag-tag fleet at Dunkirk, like the men storming the beaches of Normandy, we're here in our Assemblies because we have to be. Fate landed the duty on us, and here we are.
Every day that Jim is stubborn as an ox, every day that he is picky, every time he calls forth just one more effort, just one more task, just one more little improvement in my job performance.... when I think I can't possibly stand it anymore....he smiles at me, that little quizzical smile, as if he is amazed and can't quite understand, that I am not as strong as he is, that my will is not fashioned from the same hardened steel, that my vision doesn't extend a thousand years or more, and he squeezes my shoulder in silence. I draw a deep breath.
Somewhere in that silence, we find the strength to stagger on for the sake of something so much greater than we are. For life. For beauty. For love. For the green shoots pushing up from the brown earth. For the twelve year-old boat pilots at Dunkirk. For the soldiers who stood knee deep in blood-soaked surf and kept coming. For dignity. For security. For freedom. For honor. For all the things and people who make life worthwhile. For our ancestors, and for our children.
These are the ties that bind us, the blood and the memories and the meanings and the dreams, even the nightmares. As we remember the history that haunts this week, let us also dream of a future that is filled with peace. The past is the past, with all its lessons learned.
The future is only limited by what our hearts dare to dream of.
Granna.
--------------------------
To support this work look for the Donate button on this website.
How do we use your donations? Find out here.
