A Memory For Wonders by Mother Veronica Namoyo Le Goulard

Author:Mother Veronica Namoyo Le Goulard [Le Goulard, Mother Veronica Namoyo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9780898704303
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2010-09-03T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter X

A Threshold

We often set apart a three-week holiday in Europe for “taking a water cure”, a fashionable and perhaps useful habit, especially for those who live in the tropics though born in colder climates. Some French towns are known for their mineral waters, which are supposed to work wonders on the liver, joints or heart of those who come to drink from their fonts and enjoy the restful activities, games, pictures and hotel parties that fill their idle days. I liked to play tennis, but being left-handed was a handicap, and many coaches wanted me to use my right hand. I have better recollections of long solitary swims in Lake Geneva amid moving reflections of snowy peaks and swans. But one year, when I was fourteen or fifteen, my father suffered from a sore throat. He had to give up smoking. The doctor suggested that he could replace cigarettes with sweets. Three months later, father showed signs of hyperglycemia and revealed that he was having a good pound of sweets as part of his new daily diet. The doctor preached moderation and sent him for a cure at Eaux Bonnes (Good Waters), to drink from a spring that restored health to tired throats. We chose a good hotel, and I found there a band of teenagers already well organized and living quite apart from the middle-aged or old people “in cure”, who were their parents and relatives.

The leader of the band, an attractive student about eighteen years old, kissed me the very day we arrived. It was not unpleasant, though I thought he should have asked for my permission. My friend Claudine had begun dating, but I had had no time for such concerns. I knew that my father would object to my flirting with boyfriends, but not my mother. However, our youthful band was more intent upon the exhausting sport of mountain-climbing than on playing around. We (about ten or twelve boys and girls from fifteen to twenty-two years old) went very early in the morning with sandwiches in our pockets, planning carefully our ascent to some sparkling summit. There we enjoyed the splendid view on the chain of peaks, mixed melted snow and chocolate for a drink and returned at sunset very speedily. There were beds of winter streams that were then dry and filled with small boulders and pebbles. We frequently chose a flat stone and threw it on the pebbles, then jumped on it and slid down the torrent bed, all absorbed in the difficult exercise of maintaining our balance on the bumpy path. Only two of us suffered broken bones, which is quite surprising. The beauty of the flowered meadows and of the strangely shaped rocks above them was a continual challenge, and back at the hotel we needed only food (a lot of it) and rest. But on rainy days we played games and chatted. Two of the elders in our group were engaged, and their behavior encouraged freedom among the younger ones. I was caught in some tender manifestations of affection.

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