There are gestures belonging to another time that we don’t use anymore. There were ways of functioning on a daily basis that would seem foreign today. We relied on objects now obsolete. We all have our lists of nostalgia. I remember those wire baskets for the washed lettuce. We stood on back porches and swung them in large arm circles to get the water out centrifugally. To flush a toilet we had to pull on a chain, and I remember the day I grew tall enough to reach it by myself. All men wore hats and tipped them to salute a woman in the street or kissed an extended hand. Ladies wore gloves and girls curtsied. There were no readymade clothes in Paris in the ‘20s, or anyway, none that my mother would buy. So there was always a seamstress living in a garret who would sew clothes we would pick from photos of runways, and I had to endure what seemed like endless fittings. Hats too, were made to order. And as for shoes, I remember the minutes we stood under the X-ray machines in every shoe store and watched our toes wiggle, no one suspecting that we were getting an unhealthy dose of radiation. Homework was mostly hours practicing good penmanship and every night our shoes were placed outside our bedroom doors to be found shined by morning. We got a bath once a week, but bidets were used daily. Hair was washed once a month, rinsed with carefully-accumulated rainwater and chamomile tea — to give hair a shine — with endless minutes of brushing, a ritual followed by sitting with wet hair on the balcony to dry in the sun. Our sewing machine had a treadle worked by foot, and I liked to sit under it as a child and move the treadle up and down while my mother sewed. Our maid did the laundry using a corrugated washboard, then put the wet clothes through a ringer and ended up drying them on a line strung from wall to wall in the kitchen or outdoors when we were in our summer home. She also used to hang the rugs on the balcony and beat the dust out of them. Apparently, the carpet sweeper did not do a proper job. We also used to air our clothes after they came out of mothballs. Springtime meant bright cotton slipcovers to go over the satin and brocade chairs and sofas. And whenever we went away for the summer months, mother draped the furniture in sheets. We went either to the beach in Brittany or to the mountains in Switzerland. Husbands came on weekends and also took the month of August off when the whole of Paris shut down. We always went away with family and friends, so there were babysitters available when the rest of the family went on excursions too arduous for the children. Cars and taxis had running boards for easier entry. I could use one now, especially when getting into SUVs. Buses had a cord near the ceiling that we pulled whenever we wanted to get off. The cord activated a bell that rang by the driver. This was very efficient; the bus kept going until someone was ready to leave. Cobblestone streets were everywhere and I remember when the first asphalt road was built to circle the city. How amazed we all were at the smooth ride. We had an ice man who brought a large block of ice (to place in the correctly named “ice box”) that lasted all week, dripping slowly into a pan that was changed daily. We also had a coal man who threw coal down a chute under the building. His face was black with coal dust. We left empty glass milk bottles outside the kitchen door, and every morning there were eggs, butter and milk with its heavy layer of yellow cream at the top. Sundays, we took our dominical walk, Mother and Father ahead (the governess had her day off) and the children running behind with hoops, roller skates and scooters. We always stopped for tea, a croissant with a bit of chocolate inside for my brother and me. We were also treated to one-penny black licorice rolled in a pinwheel with a little red sugar candy in the middle. I don’t miss any particular thing, but I miss some of the forgotten gestures — the genteelness of the time. I miss the little girl with the long red braids tied with a large bow, the innocent age, the time between the two world wars. I was six years old when Mother gave birth to my brother in 1933. I remember her saying that it was not a good idea to bring a child into the world at that time, as there were already ominous rumblings in Germany. Six years later, we were refugees in America, trying out new gestures, new behaviors, getting into new routines that our grandchildren will also remember with nostalgia.