Memoir Nightmares

memoirsI’ve often wondered how the main characters in my memoir, the Dubois family, would feel if any of them picked up a copy of French Illusions: My Story as an American Au Pair in the Loire Valley. For those of you unfamiliar with my story, I worked as an au pair for Madame and Monsieur Dubois in France in 1979. In 2007, when I decided to write my memoir, I searched the internet using their real names and found nothing. No mention of them at all. Another search using the name of their chateau produced zero results, so with trepidation I progressed with my project. Five years later, when I published my memoir, I revisited the subject of how the Dubois family might react to my story. I had changed the names of everyone I met in France and followed my diary religiously, but I still worried about the reaction of the Dubois Family. My name was on the cover, after all, and I was sure that Madame Dubois still cursed the day she took me in. Read my book and you’ll understand.

Nanny Chit Chat

My husband and I spend summers on our boat in the Pacific Northwest Waters of Washington and British Columbia. Occasionally, we pull into towns and purchase moorage so we can gather provisions or do our laundry. Last summer, while I was at the Friday Harbor Marina Laundromat, I met a young woman named Rebecca (not her real name), and after basic introductions, we moved on to a surprising subject.