MADY HOME BY LALA WANG
Volume 1
On a beautiful late summer’s day on the last Sunday of August, 1994, its whitish light hinting at the coming autumn, we celebrated the camp’s last season.
For thirty-five years Saint Martian had been synonymous with children and the sound of their play had rung out over the hillside. Smooth legs had bushwhacked through the broom and thistles, abandoning blazed trails for less travelled ones. For thirty-five years, from May to October, hundreds of campers romped through the fifty acres of land, climbed the Rocher de la Croix, and jumped into my father Francis’ jeep, without there ever being a tragedy or a serious accident.
Thirty-five years of my mother Mady’s flawless rein. She was firm and maternal with the campers, courteous and vigilant with the staff. She oversaw every corner of the house from the laundry to the contents of suitcases, to the slightest booboo or cold, attending all the meals and often filling the plates herself. Meanwhile Francis, with his poetic zeal, ran anywhere he could make himself useful, escaping with the group of older kids in his car-turned-funhouse ride, telling the legend of the Three Bearded Men which would become real when a message from the bearded men was found along the way.
The party began at 3 o’clock in the afternoon and went on late into the night. There were between 300 and 400 guests, including that year’s campers and crew. That’s how we wanted it: not too many people nor too few. There were a few from the early days and even a few young grandfathers. That made three generations at the same celebration, and this gave the impression of a big summer camp stretching out over a half century.
I brought my best tricks: walls of images, hot air balloons, flying saucers, treasure hunts, audio surprises and food stands on the hillside… There were also pizza trucks, ice cream and raspberry pies curtesy of Pierrot Blanc, giant sheets of Mady’s quince leather, rare fruits and vegetables from the garden of the poet from Saigon.
The light was enchanting, close to my mother’s dream of a Provençal Grand Meaulnes. With her usual elegance, she walked among all these people, not showing the slightest hint of fatigue, even though she had supervised everything and continued to oversee the camp’s daily operations. The temperature was exquisite, an unhoped-for state of grace after the stormy days of late August.
The day ended with two big classics, particularly successful that day: the explosion of a big column of sodium chlorate and powdered sugar and the release of a “star.” A hundred glow sticks tied to huge helium balloons. The constellation circled Saigon, then came back over us, continuing its ascent before disappearing into the darkness. All this over the sound of organ music. Because we had nothing better to do than divert an itinerant church organist with a portable organ to Saint Martian!
When, years later, I realized I had no photo worthy of this party, or the history of the camp at all, I gathered what remained—blurry, yellowing, badly framed, dog-eared prints—and sent them all to Lala Wang, suggesting she recreate Mady Home. It can’t be said that Lala’s astonishing collages really capture the atmosphere of Saint Martian and late twentieth-century Provence, but they do open a window on another dimension, on a little Chinese boy’s dream, in the tradition of numerous other campers who dreamed and reinvented Francis’ and Mady’s camp.
Even now, not a week or a month goes by without a nostalgic ex-camper coming to the gates of the estate, to revive their memories, to continue their dreaming.
