Souvenir from France

A souvenir taken during my mother's trip to Paris.  This photograph was taken in France.

My mother Mari Sages' last name before she was married was Abravanel.  Mari Sages was an educated woman.  She was a teacher.  When she came to Bursa as a bride, the siblings of her husband were not married yet.  They started living all together.  My mother's French was advanced.  Her religious beliefs were very strong.  She used to light the Sabbath candles (On Fridays, before it becomes the Sabbath, the two lights that the woman of the house light along with a prayer.  This procedure was done by rolling cotton inside oil in the old times, now candles are lit), she tried to observe the rules of kashrut.  The hardest days of our home were the days close to Passover.  My mother would clean the whole house from top to bottom and did not want us to enter the place she cleaned until Passover.  This was called "Ya entro pesah en esta kamareta" (Passover entered this room).  When it was the turn for the diningroom, my father would start getting upset.  Because he did not like eating in the entrance hall that we called kortijo at all, he used to topple the table over.  My mother, on the other hand, continued Passover preparations with a lot of calm.  My mother who liked to get dolled up never refrained from putting on her lipstick before my father came home from work, and would put on her necklace and earrings a lot of the times too.