Confusing famous men from France

A gift for the season; sharing personal mythologies

Marc Chagall, left, with my dad (pipe in hand per usual), 1960

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In elementary school we would have show-and-tell and even though I had a bad stutter I often volunteered to talk.

“The P-p-president of France came to my house for d-dinner last night,” I informed the class.

“Charles de Gaulle did not have dinner at your house last night,” my teacher responded.

“Yes he d-did,” I insisted. “He came from France and he’s very f-f-famous and his wife c-came too.”

She told me to go sit in the corner until I stopped lying. I went to the corner and just sat there. I wasn’t going to say I was lying if I wasn’t.

Finally the teacher, perplexed, called my mother -- teachers in suburban public schools did that in 1960. Mom laughed.

“It wasn’t Charles de Gaulle, it was Marc Chagall,” she said. “An understandable mistake for a seven-year-old, not a lie.”

To have one of the most famous artists in the Western world stop by for a bite to eat rivaled the French President doing same, in some circles anyway. Plus understand that our suburban home was by no means grand; the lot was 5000 square feet as were the others around us. We lived close to a wide ribbon of land taken to become the Massachusetts Turnpike, razing part of our neighborhood, a short walk down rusted railroad tracks to a sand quarry that morphed into the Riverside MBTA station.

Chagall had been commissioned by Brandeis University in Waltham to create stained glass murals to grace three chapels clustered on the young campus. Brandeis had formed after World War Two, led by Jewish capitalists and intelligentsia who wanted to create a statement that the Holocaust failed.

My father had been involved in the earliest days of the United Nations, and before that worked in a European network retrieving Nazi loot seized from Jews bound for concentration camps. The recovered property became a dowry to help fund and found the state of Israel. So he was a natural to be among the earliest Brandeis administrators.

He was assigned to work with the famous artist, whose stained glass gleams in edifices around the world. Again, Brandeis wanted to make a statement.

Chagall and his wife had tired of formal dinners, incessant courtesies, and wanted to relax and get a sense of how “normal” American families sup, as my mother wryly put it. The prospect of the Chagalls at the dinner table threw her into a tizzy; in later years she became a great cook but back then fare was gray meat and frozen vegetables, chicken and potatoes; TV dinners were considered treats.

The visit wasn’t my parents’ idea. Chagall’s wife made the suggestion, a thinly veiled order. Mom said Madame Chagall took care of everything so the great artist could be free to muse. Another time when the grownups went out to dinner, Chagall got to doodling on a tablecloth. Everyone was eyeing that, but at the end of the night Madame Chagall folded it up and took it away in her large purse.

I have no memory of what my mother cooked, but things must have gone well because to this day I look at a beautiful print Chagall signed and left.

There are photos and books too, with fond inscriptions to my dad. But the relationship didn’t maintain; they didn’t see each other after a Brandeis commencement celebrated the artist. This isn’t surprising. My father, a gentle, genial man, was a loner though most people would not have suspected that.

Why am I sharing this with you, the holiday season upon us?

Because each of us has stories like these, personal mythologies.

Because acknowledging and celebrating them can unlock doors that open onto corridors that lead to a place called compassion.

All that’s necessary is to remember, and know that each of us has these memories, sweet and bitter.

I chose a sweet one.

That means you could too, to share with those you love.

Another way of saying that:

Happy, happy holidays.

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