Julienne

There is a channel now on television that is very nostalgic, Antenna TV, and it has shows that take me back twenty, thirty years. I also have come across shows that are nostalgic to my husband who is eight years older than me at sixty-three. One of these shows,  along with Dennis the menace, Leave it to Beaver, is Hazel, about a maid in a well to do household. I found myself wondering why I became interested in the antics and wisdom of Hazel when I realized she created a sense of nostalgia in me for a wonderful woman who was an important part of my and my siblings' childhood, Julienne Fiew-Donatus. She came to our house as a housekeeper-maid-cook-nanny, when I was eight and was still in my parents' service when I left for the US  at nineteen. She rode to our house on a motor-scooter, and eventually bought a Carmanghia car in bright orange. She was always in a good mood, had a great sense of humour, was bright, patient, kind and a great storyteller. I loved going to her house, that was only about fifteen minutes from ours and have great memories of spending a week with her family one summer and going to the fields with her to harvest potatoes, which she did in the summer for extra money. I look back on that now, and remember scooting along on my knees with the other women and girls, feeling the burlap sack scratching my knees, and the heat beating down on my back. The women would laugh and sing, and all eat lunch together on their break. If my knees hurt at the end of the day, at age ten, I wonder how Julienne's knees felt at age fifty. Her husband had a rabbit hatch and a vegetable patch and knew his way around killing and plucking chickens. She had two daughters and a son, and a granddaughter, and later on her two daughters married and each had a son. I remember going to her oldest daughter Rita's wedding reception. Julienne was as much family as she was our housekeeper. The one thing of value Julienne left me with that has lasted a lifetime is an appreciation of how hard humble people work for a living, how much tenacity and unspoken wisdom it takes to keep a family together, financially, emotionally, socially, culturally and spiritually. Even though my mother treated Julienne well, in private to us, she would complain of  "working class" people as lacking "sensitivity artistically speaking", making us feel like Julienne and "her kind of people" lacked important qualities as far as she was concerned. I was rather drawn to Julienne's "people", and I think often of her still, as I feel to this day that some of the commonsense wisdom, knowledge, compassion and practicality were and are important survivor lessons for a person like myself who was sheltered unduly when growing up, making me an educated but socially awkward teenager up to the time I came to the US at age 19. The neighborhood I live in is modest and very working middle to lower middle class, much to my mother's chagrin always, but I just smile when I think of Julienne, and how what I learned from her made  and makes me feel at ease right where I am here in my home in Olympia with very loyal friends and neighbors that are my wonderful "kind of people". My mother always looked down on me once I married, and probably before that, because I failed to impress her with important social and monetary connections, but happiness is peace of mind, true dignity and heart, and those are not for sale at an exclusive boutique. In the end , her illusions did not make her or any one following in her footsteps, like my father, very happy. Julienne was real, and so was her world, and I love her for it to this day. My mother taught me mostly to feel inferior to her worldly ways of sophistication and luxury and it took a lifetime to finally become free of that inferiority complex. Julienne was my fairy godmother, without ever even realizing what a soothing and positive influence she was and remains, long after her death almost 20 years ago now at age 70, from breast cancer. To me, she remains very much alive in my heart and its memories and when I think of her I feel warmth and gratitude.