My birthday fell on the same day as my mother’s and my maternal grandmother’s, which someone once told me the odds of were quite long and even longer as both my mother and I were born a few minutes before midnight. My mother, Madeleine, was a delicate, refined, and gorgeous lady with jet-black hair and bewitching eyes. She had a passion for the movies and could name every actor in any of them. She was born in Montreal, and her maiden name was Painchaud, which translates to “h

When I was nine years old, and my folks had been divorced for a few years, my mother and I lived in an old apartment building on Gatineau Street in the Côte-des-Neiges district of Montreal. The landlady at the time was a Miss Pompadour, a stout French woman from Marseilles, who occupied a huge apartment with a large stone terrace. Miss Pompadour had taken a shine to my mother and me, and we occasionally would go down to her place for pâtisseries and the like, which I enjoyed

Back when I was eight years old, I lived with my mother on Gatineau street , where I was allowed to go out and play within a one-block area. Of course, I wasn’t allowed to cross the street, so I stuck to my side along with the other kids my age, who were pretty much under the same rules. We’d play in the alley behind my apartment building, where we could hear our mothers call us in for meals and the like. On this occasion, one of my little comrades and I were trying to see ea