The summer of 1962 was not pleasant at all. Having failed to pass the baccalauréat was humiliating, since everybody asks for the result. I was very worried about going to England. My first flight ever took me from Bordeaux to London. An associate of my father picked me up at the airport to take me to my host family. Though I had studied English at boarding school, I had little conversational English, so I kept to myself a lot, worrying my host family.
I wisely enrolled in a course to learn conversational English, where I met young people from all over the world, including Florence, a young woman from Paris, who quickly became my first girlfriend. It was wonderful. We went everywhere in London, visiting all the sights, having afternoon tea in museums.
I went home for Christmas, taking the ferry across the Channel and the train down to Bordeaux. My brother Bernard was getting married in the Basque Country. It was a very small, intimate wedding. I was very happy for Bernard and I liked his new wife Annick very much.
Back in London, I enrolled in the French Lycée to prepare for the Baccalauréat exam in June. Unfortunately, Florence went back to Paris in February, and I was alone again. My parents came to England for Easter. We flew to Edinburgh and spent three days there, my first and last vacation with my parents. It went well. We went to Mass early Easter Sunday in a small church. Very few people attended that service, and to the delight of my mother, I helped the priest with the mass.
I took the exam and passed easily. On my way home, I stopped in Paris to see Florence, but she had reunited with her boyfriend, who just returned from the Algerian war, and my first love vanished.
The summer of 1963 was a time to get ready to leave for California. I went to the American Consulate in Bordeaux several times to secure the necessary student visa. It felt strange to me that nobody seemed to care that I was going away. I know now my family felt relieved, and it was definitely a one-way ticket with no talk of when I was coming back. As much as I would miss home, I was certainly ready to leave behind all the struggles of my teenage years. Over the years I tried to understand the family dynamics at the time. I questioned Rosy through letters, but her answers were vague, pretending that everything was normal, even though I suffered severe and scandalous abuses from her husband. I now believe I was sent away to preserve the family honor. When the time came in early September, my sister’s husband accompanied me to Paris airport to take a nonstop flight to San Francisco. I was gone.
From SFO, I took a bus to downtown San Francisco, and spent the night in a small hotel off of Union Square. The next Sunday, I had to find out where the city of Davis was and how to get there. Someone advised me to take a Greyhound bus. I finally arrived in Davis that evening, lugging my large suitcase. Next to the bus depot was the police department and a nice policeman offered me a ride to the college campus. He dropped me off in front of one of the dorms; I found a non-occupied room and went to sleep, totally exhausted.
That Monday, the start of orientation week, I was formally admitted into the University and assigned a room in the foreign students’ hall. I met Dr. Crane, my advisor in the Pomology department. Orientation week went really fast, and there I was the next Monday, taking Chem 1A with 200 other students. I quickly realized how challenging it was to be a student in his non-native language.
Within a few weeks, I met Mary, a freshman student majoring in French. I fell in love with her immediately. In November, I received two Thanksgiving invitations, one at noon at the home of Dr. Crane, my professor and advisor, and the other at six at my professor Dr. Amerine’s home. I went to both of them. Not knowing anything about the tradition, I was surprised the menu was the same in both homes. That Christmas, Mary invited me to her parents’ beautiful home overlooking the ocean in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles. I felt very welcome. It was a wonderful Christmas, very warm and friendly, lots of laughter. I could have never imagined being in such a beautiful state, in love. What a dream!
In the spring of 1964, my father, on a tour of the U.S., arrived at UC Davis on a Friday night. I was surprised he made the effort to visit, and I don’t remember that he was interested in my studies. I don’t remember any substantial talks. I never connected with him, man to man. He left the following Sunday from the Sacramento airport.
When summer came, Mary went back to her parents’ home and I went to work on a ranch in Yuba City. I had room and board, and worked in the orchards or hayfields without a day off all summer. I made enough money to buy a small car when I returned to Davis, but Mary stayed in Los Angeles and attended a local college.
Depressed and homesick, and struggling in my course work, I decided to go back to France. I drove down to LA to say goodbye to Mary, sold my car, and flew back home. A few weeks later I found myself in a barrack doing my military service, very disappointed and feeling I had failed miserably.
