since it's mother's day, i dug up some pix of my mom & my grand-maman, who unfortunately died of cancer when i was only two, but who was so good to Magda (my mother) & Myriam (my aunt) who in turn passed on the love (and maybe even a little wisdom!) to my cousins, brothers & i...
here's a pic of my maternal family. my great grand-father & great grand-mother are holding hands sitting on the front row in the middle; my grand-parents are to their immediate right. to their left sits my great great grand-mother, and to her left my mother's aunt "tante soeur" which in French is auntie sister (she was a nun & the head of a catholic convent). my grand-father Rufyn was the eldest of 4 brothers & 3 sisters... my mother is the one in white sitting on the lawn between 2 boy cousins; she was my great grand-father's first grand-daughter... my entire maternal family would often get together then at the family's country home in Flanders, north of Brussels:
grand-papa & grand-maman in front of a phone booth in Cape Town, where they lived during World War II & where my mother was born:
grand-maman in the Congo:
grand-maman with my mother in Bukavu:
a holiday picture of my mother:
my mother with her baby sister, my aunt & god-mother Myriam:
back in Belgium with grand-maman & grand-papa:
my mom with my aunt again:
she was my great grand-father's favorite, biensûr:
Marcy & my mom grew up together in Africa. they've remained best friends to this day. here she is at Marcy's first wedding in Brussels:
my mom & i in Portland, Oregon, where i was born:
watching grand-maman's plane leave after one of her visits:
in Lyon with my brother Eric in her arms:
with Eric again:
Eric & i with our mother, right after giving birth to Jonathan in Lyon:
at Disneyland in 1981 i think; i'm the one on the left; representing in LA our primary school Le Verseau haha:
back at our Genval home with my brother Jonathan:
Genval is where cousins & friends would drop by constantly to play soccer on our vast backyard lawn, for BBQs when the weather allowed & we even had the pool filled with water on a few summers. we'd also take long walks around the lake, took a few sailing classes on windy days but i remember capsizing more than anything else. paddle boats were more fun. and this is where we grew up horse riding 2 short train stops away in the middle of the beautiful Forêt de Soignes. the riding club was my temple... picture Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm" but set in Genval in the 80s. that was us in a nutshell! anyhew...
belgian summers are fickle, so we spent many holidays at Marcy's villa on the French riviera... here's my mom and Jonathan by the pool (i actually knew how to swim before i started to walk):
belgian summers are fickle, so we spent many holidays at Marcy's villa on the French riviera... here's my mom and Jonathan by the pool (i actually knew how to swim before i started to walk):
and here we are soooo not posing back in Genval:
this is just outside of Würzburg at my step-dad's family home:
in 1990 just outside of Quito, at the foot of the Cotopaxi, the highest active volcano in the world. Magda, André (my 1st friend from the french int'l school, my brothers & i attended, whose parents kindly showed us around), me, Jonathan, Eric & Gunter:
later in Caracas i took this portrait of my mother; here are more pix of us on the beach in Venezuela... and here's my mom being a good catholic when Gunter & her met Pope Jean-Paul the Second:
2007 in Bruges also known as the Little Venice of the North:
and here are a few more pix taken the last time my 2 brothers & i were reunited in DC with Gunter & Magda...
