The calm after the storm: Charlie, aged about two hours, in his maman’s arms!
This is one of my favorite photographs ever. It is August 28, 1995, in the Clinique des Augustines in Malestroit, Brittany. No longer busy being born, we find Charles Allistair Tristan Stock, cleaned up and conked out after all that effort, in the arms of his mother, whose remarkably serene expression belies the labor that she had just been going through not two hours before.
Papa with Charles, then known as “sac à patates”, at about two months in Le Tahu, the household’s first home in Hermeray.
Charlie’s grand-père, a retired fashion photographer, took advantage of the opportunity presented by this auspicious event to bring out his equipment and take a series of photos of the family in the maternity clinic. Others can be seen here.
We were all in Brittany staying at La Grée, grand-père’s cottage in the Breton countryside. The end of our summer vacation was approaching, and maman wanted to give berth in the country rather than in the hustle and bustle of the Paris area where we lived most of the time.
Below are a few more photos of the new kid on the block, all with assorted admirers! There are also a host of pictures of big kids with little kids.
We did our own little share of presenting our son and heir to the world, à la Mufasa in Disney’s “Jungle Book”, in particular to the senior members of our respective families.
Interestingly enough, this was an instinct that each of Marie-Hélène and I had independently and more or less unconsciously. Well, we never discussed it, and so maybe it was conscious on her part, but not mine. I only discovered it by going through the photos of the time, and noticing that never-before made visits to aging relatives occurred during the year or so after Charlie arrived.
Two pictures from those visits are also in the below gallery.
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- Marie-Hélène took several photos of Charlie with his “Kine,” Didier Génin, early in 1996.
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- On grand-père’s lap outside La Grée, March 1996.
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- With Madame Gonzalvez, who lived with ther husband in the gatehouse to La Bellanderie and helped out with Charlie.
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- The whole gang in a not entirely great mood in front of Grand-père’s cottage, La Grée, in July 1996. This is one of those rare photos that shows that all was not always hunky dory. The camera rarely comes out at such occasions, but yes, they do happen!
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- Charlie, aged less than one year, being introduced to Madeleine at her 100th birthday celebration in La Gacilly. Marie-Hélène is distantly related, and her father and uncles also attended this family gathering, but I don’t remember exactly what the relationship is.
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- Just after he turned one year old, Charlie was introduced to Ian’s great-aunt Nellie, his paternal grandmother’s last surviving sister. Beatrice had 10 or 11 siblings in all, cockney through and through, of whom Nellie was the youngest.
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- On the living room floor in Le Tahu, during a change! Note the acrobatic way that Alban is holding his foot: he was always contorting himself in some discrete way.
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- Nick and Tom hold Charlie in front of the Christmas tree in 1996. It’s Christmas!!
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- Daphné and Alban flank “notre chouchou” in Alban’s bedroom at La Bellanderie in May 1996.
By the time he was a year old, Charlie was one of the most important people in the lives of all four of his siblings. The extent to which the natural jealousy of older siblings was absent during his early years was particularly striking. The same applied to Alex. It was the two little guys who transformed us from a household into a family.
The last word here has to go to maman, feeding her new boy at a cafe in Brittany, March 1996.
Charlie’s arrival was but one step in our blending. Here are others: the wedding, support from my mum and Marie-Helene’s papa the older children learning to live together and blending.
Here is the main History page. And here’s Charlie’s main page with photos of him through 2007.