
Illustration by Elizabeth Cannon
An ongoing series about uprooting our lives in America and moving to France. For what's happened before, see previous Jours of Our Lives entries here.
THERE WAS CHASING and hiding. Children and their mothers were being put in…something…and being told they were being sent…somewhere. I felt the fear of the mothers and their children, fear of my own.
Whoever it was shut the door and threw, pushed, dumped what turned out to be a submarine into the water with the women and children—and me—in it. It sank. It was meant to be a coffin. Someone (maybe me) cracked one of the windows with a high-heeled shoe. Water came rushing in, and we all knew we would die. The mothers wanted to protect their children, and they couldn’t.
Photo and Kites by George Peters of Airworks Studio Inc.
The dream stopped, and my eyes were open like I was looking out into the bedroom. There was a wispy ghost—not fashioned as a person, but whimsically created as a Japanese kite—sailing through the room. Then there were others floating by me. Many, many, many came and went, but I was not afraid. Suddenly, somehow I had the feeling these ghosts were Jewish children from the Marais whom the Nazis took and killed, and they wanted my attention. They wanted me to write about them. This dream that came from thin air, or somewhere in my head, was about the Nazis murdering these children.