by Gina Cariño
Home >> Postcard from Normandy
My father wanted to be a soldier, but he was colour-blind. So he just became a World War II buff. Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, Montgomery, also Rommel and Runstedt, were all like his best friends. His favourite read was Cornelius Ryan’s THE LONGEST DAY. He made several trips to the scenes of D-Day. These were WWII pilgrimages combined with gastronomy. He thought it amusing to say that camembert was good because the region’s cows grazed on grass fertilized by “all that bloodshed and all those corpses.â€? Twice he took along my brother. But he never took us daughters. Battlefields were for boys. Perhaps in vengeance, I myself became a bit of a WWII buff, and I just had to one day come to Normandy.
How exciting to see it all “in personâ€?: the town where the first paratroops landed and John Steele got stuck to the church roof; the beachheads of Omaha, Utah, Sword, Gold, and Juno; the same waters that blurred the lens of Magnum photographer Robert Capa; the placid farm landscape of hedges and ditches that made Normandy a defender’s paradise and an invader’s inferno; the Pointe du Hoc cliff that the Rangers scaled to disengage some big Nazi artillery, many dropping to the sea in the process, only to find when they got to the top that the big guns had been removed; those forbidding, igloo-shaped structures of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall, seen so clearly in the animated film VALIANT; the huge American cemetery, so Cartesian in formation, seen at the start and end of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN; the German cemetery, evocative, so different in color, texture, and choreography, balancing… War graves scream: “Never again!â€? They are supposed to be reminders.
Travelling, for me, has to be a homecoming of sorts. Otherwise, stay home. By coming home I mean touching base with something that is part of you, whether real or read. Here in Normandy, I feel my father’s presence and ultimate approval. And I meet Oskar Matzerath and Robbie Turner. Yes, especially Robbie, one of my greatest loves ever. The novels they belong to, Günter Grass’s THE TIN DRUM and Ian McEwan’s ATONEMENT, contain terrific descriptions of June 6th and the before and after, one from a German soldier’s and the other from a British soldier’s point of view.
There’s more to Normandy. My dad completely ignored that other Normandy story, that other Anglo-Norman epic that also crossed the English Channel but in the opposite direction and in Viking boats. It’s wonderfully depicted in a 75-meter embroidery called the Bayeux Tapestry. The really most exciting thing about this Norman Tour that coincides with the French Tour is that we keep flitting from 1066 to 1944 and back again. And again it’s a homecoming, because William the Conqueror of England was great-grandfather to the Henry II who married another favourite of mine, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and therefore great-great-grandfather to the same Richard Lion-Heart and John Lackland who are in the background of ROBIN HOOD and IVANHOE!
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Posted on http://www.weeklyletter.com at 2006-07-27 11:00:00 +0200
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Hello Gina,
Nice article! I enjoyed reading it
I am a true ignorant on the subject so I better don’t say anything.
Regards,
Cristina
Cristina, were your parents totally cool about your football career?
I can’t say much about Normandy but I can say something about sexist education. Sure, I could go on for hours about things that my parents and other people’s parents did wrong but this week’s letter brings to mind exactly what they, or at least my mother, did right. My sisters and I could do the activities we wished to do and play with the toys we wished to play with. Nothing was given to us or taken away from us simply because of our gender.
If I asked Santa Claus for a Barbie, Santa Claus brought me a Barbie. If I asked him for toy cars, he brought me those, too. If one of us went to a football game, we all went to a football game. It didn’t matter.
This was not only the case for privileges but also for responsibilities. Each of us had to do the washing up and each of us had to scrub bathrooms. Household chores were taught to and required of all of us. At the time, I hated my mother for it but now I have to admit that it was the right thing. Another day I will talk about useless Spanish adolescents who expect mommy to do everything and mommies who serve boys hand and foot but make girls clear the table.
It is very important to be well-rounded and if we decide that only our boys can see battlefields and only our girls can take ballet, we will end up with loads of mediocre soldiers and clumsy dancers!
When I was 8-9 years old, I went to a very old-fashioned school. It was co-ed, meaning that boys and girls were together in the same classroom. BUT… four hours a week, boys and girls were separated.
Two hours a week, we had separate craft classes. On one hand, the boys learnt things like how to fix a bike or how to make things out of wood. On the other hand, the girls learnt things like how to set the table correctly or how to sew.
Another two hours a week, physical education was also separate. The boys played soccer and basketball. The girls played volleyball and had dance lessons. It was not allowed for the girls to learn how to play soccer, nor for the boys to learn how to play volleyball.
At that time, I didn’t really care about the fact that boys and girls had separate lessons. But now I do. I hope things have changed now!
Hello!
It’s a very good and interesting article, Gina. It notes you write very well. You describe the situation very clearly for us, It has been like a “short piece of novel”.
Perhaps nowadays our parents don’t use a hard “sexist education”, however men and woman don’t have the same posibilities in all fields.
Congratulations for your “ilussion”.
Best regards,
Conchi.
There’s the nursery rhyme that goes something like this:
What are little girls made of? What are little girls made of?
Sugar n’ spice and all things nice, that’s what little girls are made of.
What are little boys made of? What are little boys made of?
Frogs n’ snails and puppy dogs’ tails, that’s what little boys are made of.
Hello,
Gina, I can see that you have enjoyed your trip to Normandie. This trip has a very strong sentimental meaning for you. It is always convenient to have conection with our origins, because we are connected with our parents and with their hobbies. We cannot regret them.
To travel to our origins can be always a way to go to the future. If you know where you are from, you can have more clair where you want to go in your live. In general, to travel, to know another landscapes, another peoples is a way to grow ourselves. To have present the wars in the past, the mistakes in the past, can help us to avoid the mistakes in the future.
I don’t remember to have had a sexist education. My school and my high school was for boys and girls, and we did the same. I remember that one time, in manual works class, we had to sew a pilow, both boys a girls. In my school it had always more boys that girls; I don´t know why, maybe because there is more boys’ births.
Grettings.
Conchi Calvo Pro
I enjoyed that trip to Normandy.
Some of best English poetry was written about the wars that were fought there. Wilfred Owen wrote perhaps the best war poem ever – Dulce Et Decorum Est – while serving as a soldier there.
I studied with the Irish Christian Brothers from 8 to 18 in an all boys school where corporal punishment was commonplace. It was only when I left and went out into the wide world that I realised the sexist nature of my education. I was very lucky to encounter some intelligent and sympathetic men and women who opened my eyes. Like all dominant cultures sexism is difficult to spot. It is so ubiquitous many people see it as ‘the norm’.
Congratulation Gina!, Before reading your article I just knew few and general things about Normady as I am not a WW II buff. Thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge with us!
On the other hand, I have had really good time while listening to you (your recorded voice), you have made your article much more enjoyable. I wonder if one day my English course will let me to talk to you by telephone. That would be wonderfull.
I do agree with the idea of travelling has to be a way of touching base with something that is part of oneself. The thing is that sometimes people really don’t know in which way is part of theirself but they realize special feelings and emotions.
Bye,
Gracia
Hello. I am 9 going on 10 and I will be in 5th grade in September. In my school, boys and girls have to do the same things. This year I made a wooden coat rack, but also a woolen tapestry. For the coat rack, I worked with a saw, a hammer, pliers, and screws. For the tapestry I used a sewing frame, a needle, and colorful yarn. I like sports and do football, basketball, Basque “pelotamano,� tennis, judo, rock climbing, and fencing, but I have also tried rhythmic gymnastics, “Euskaldantza,� and ballet. I know the five positions, although I will never dance as well as Billy Elliot.
OSCAR (Gina’s son)
Happy St. Ignatius’ Day! It’s a holiday in San Sebastian and the rest of Guipúzcoa because the saint was from hereabouts. A week ago, in Rome, my husband took me and Oscar to the HQ of the SJ, a beautiful, early prototype of a Renaissance church that he got to sing in years ago, when he was in the boys’ choir of Donostia’s “Jesuitas� school. A homecoming of sorts. A trip really has to be a homecoming in some way or another, I think. A search for oneself. Otherwise it’s just yet another consumer product, isn’t it? Just another album to shelf. For me, a trip must unleash a long chain of associations and open up a memory box, and yes, with insights for the present and future. The HOW of this is not always as obvious or direct, but it comes, then grows. Literature and film can help.
While in Normandy, I finished a David Sedaris book lent to me by Wesley, and I kept imagining meeting him in a gasoline station…because he lives in Normandy now, as you know, Wesley, and so there’s one reason for you to go. He says in one of the stories that he lives in a house that was used by the Germans during the Occupation. The Nazis must have lived a good life in bucolic Normandy. They didn’t think that the Allied Invasion would happen there. They tended to think that the Allies would invade somewhere nearer Calais, where the English Channel is narrowest.
I have to admit that the voice in the recording is not mine, but Paola’s. A beautiful voice and way of speaking was denied me, just like the chance to see Normandy with my dad. My sister and I got the ballet lessons. And my brother got ballet lessons from me. Today, he likes to go the ballet and he enjoys it no less than his wife does.
Greetings from Gina’s sister, Mia. Am chiming in late, but better late than.. well, you know how it goes.
Great postcard, Gina! Yes, in our family, pilgrimages to the killing fields of World War II were strictly father-son. So, too, were road trips to ballparks in the American heartland. But save for these few travels planned along gender lines, what was sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander. And so, art museums, science centers, theater and dance productions, historic houses, architectural landmarks, cathedrals and other sacred spaces, restaurants, and yes, even a Yankee baseball game or two-these were for all of us to soak up. Coeducationally. Thank goodness.
I’ll have my own homecoming come end of August, when I visit New York, our family’s old stomping grounds, for a couple of days-one to be spent exclusively at the new and improved Museum of Modern Art. Twenty bucks a pop and worth every penny, we hope. Will send you a postcard.
Mia
Los Angeles
Hello Gina!!!
I did play futbol when I was in highschool. In Spain it was seen as an uncommon sport to be practiced by a girl, but on the US it was very common.
Is the sexist education imposed by “our society” or by our relatives, parents, teachers and neightbours?
In that sense, even if the society where I was raised was sexist (it probably still is), I didn’t perceive any strong sexism in any of the main referencies I took as I was growing up (parents, relatives, teachers).
Regards,
Cristina
Hello again!
Let me complete my previous post with some comments about the present time:
We hold in our minds the stereotype of what a woman and a men are for each one of us. We always try to comply with that stereotype, even though the stereotype is not exactly the same for each one of us.
Big corporations and society rules try to modify these inner stereotypes to fit into the official models of “MAN” and “WOMAN”. So then, we think that because we are women (or men) we should be like the models that are being presented to us.
Fit into the role is usually a big deal for all of us, and I think that all the sexist rules come from here.
For example, why is a woman more beautiful if she wears high heels?
Regards,
Cristina
Very nice article, Gina!!
I don’t know anything about Normandy, but about the subject of sexist education I can say that in these days a father punish his son if the child ask him for a doll, a kitchen,....
I think that sexist education will always exist.
Bye,
Leticia.
Alleluia! I’ve managed to get my two female athlete students to say their piece. First Cristina, who, as we already know, was in the U.S. for two years on a study-and-soccer scholarship. Then Leticia, who played basketball with the Sandra(?) team of Gran Canarias. Leticia also played football and did motor sports, and she’s danced classical ballet, modern ballet, hiphop, still does… Yes, maybe a bit of sexism is inevitable and even desirable? And yes, Cristina, my sister chimed in precisely to remind me that it wasn’t all that bad. Not at all. Still, how I’d have loved to go to Normandy with Dad!
Hello, Gina:
I liked very much your article. If I ever go to Normandy I will remember it! I have begun to read a book about the Second World War but I have not “arrived” yet in Normandy.
Regards,
Claudia
Thank you, Claudia! Happy Landing in Normandy! Right now my son and I are reading about it in comics form. It’s great!
POSTSCRIPT: Why is there now a tie between camembert and the Mont St. Michel miniature? What on earth does one do with a miniature of Mont St. Michel?
Hi Gina,
Congratulations for the Weekly letter. It is very interesting.
I’m afraid I don’t know much about the Normandy Landing and War World II. But I thing it is very necessary to learn about it and don’t repeat it.
Regarding sexist education, I admit I was lucky to go to a school where boy and girls did the same things so I didn’t bear it too much. Anyway I think sexist education will change with time like all things around the world.
See you,
Ramón
The comic book about the Battle of Normandy is really good! You can buy it in English or in French. They didn’t have it in Spanish, so I have to read it in English with the help of my mom. I think comic books are an enjoyable way to learn English.
I just read your ‘Postcard from Normandy’ and I think like you and your father that this part of our history is very interesting and, even, very important in our current life.
I think the “D-day” was one of the two truthful inflexions point at the II World War that changed the war course (the other one I think was the Stalingrado battle). I also think that a important bit of our present freedom at western world is due to this young heroes that this June 6th, of 1944, steped the Normandy beaches and faced up to the Nazi troops.
I enjoyed that postcard. Thanks for writing beautifully. Makes me want to go back to Normandy with your eyes. I will never be able to write like you do. —Joy Sta. Ana