The years after World War Two

Jacques and Jacqueline

It was in 1971 that I met Jacques, a Frenchman of Greek origin, in 1972 we married and we went to Greece, Athens, for our honeymoon.
And again I had two more miscarriages, the last one was at the beginning of 1973, it was then that my Swiss gynaecologist  advised me to adopt a child. I told him that I wasn’t certain if my husband would like that idea. Of course to me an adopted child would always be a child coming from heaven. I shall never forget his answer; “Just tell your husband that Adolf Hitler was not adopted and that shows that also your own children can go the wrong way, one never knows in life”.

Jacques agreed, so I started writing to forty different addresses in many different countries and asked them if there was a way to adopt a girl or a boy from their country.  Only India gave me a very positive answer, so then at last we started with all the papers it took a very long time before we had everything in order in Switzerland and the papers for India. as well.  One of my colleagues told me that her sister and a friend were planning to visit India, so her sister would like to pass by the Mother Teresa Home in New Delhi for us and see if she could choose a child for Jacques and me who could come to Switzerland as soon as possible. We told her that we would like a child not older than five years since the kid had to go to school in Switzerland, so she/he had to speak French before going to school.
Boy or girl didn’t matter, just as by a birth, it would be a surprise.

When my colleague’s sister was in India, she send us a telegram that they found a wonderful girl of seven years old. We were far too happy to say that the girl would get  difficulties at school.

It was in February 1975 when our daughter Jacqueline arrived at the airport of Geneva, where she gave us a big smile. She spoke just a little bit of English, so I thought that it would be fine to teach her French as soon as possible. When the Indian air hostess gave Jacques the passport of our daughter, we saw that she was not seven but nine years old. Pity I thought, that will give the girl troubles at school. When I took Jacqueline to our doctor one week later, he told me: “This girl is not nine years old but almost eleven, he had taken an x-ray of Jacqueline’s hand. That of course didn’t give much trouble, but I was really shocked when my colleague’s sister told me that there had been many younger boys and girls for adoption, but her friend had chosen Jacqueline and she had agreed with his choice.  

All this didn’t mean that we were not happy with our daughter, although I could see that Jacques was disappointed that Jacqueline was not really a little girl, I had much less problems with her age, to me she was a wonderful gift from heaven.
And in the mean time we were already promised a little boy from the Mother Teresa Home in new Delhi, he was only 2 years old. Jacqueline was more than pleased to get a younger brother, also coming from India.

My mother visited us in Lausanne and was very happy with her new granddaughter, my sister Henny, her husband and two children came to visit us too and we went to Holland on vacation to see the whole family, also my youngest sister, her husband and her three children. Jacqueline was very welcome in the family.
 We had so many wonderful times, in beautiful Switzerland. But alas, Jacques didn’t like Switzerland as much as I did, he wanted to live in the Netherlands.  I tried to get him over to live in France instead but no he preferred Holland.

My family in Holland was more than happy that I was coming back, with husband and daughter, but I felt very sad to leave “my” Switzerland, where I had lived almost nine years long.