----------------- [excerpt from Camera Girl, by Carl Sferrazza Anthony] ------------------------------ In a new world, on her own, Jacqueline Bouvier finally had the distance to think.
Even when she'd sat silently or looked away, Mummy had demanded to know "what are you thinking."
If she got no satisfactory answer, she snapped about her daughter "escaping into that wild imagination."
During her time in France, both parents still sought to dictate her life, even remotely by airmail letters.
In none of her responses did she express a longing for home--or them.
With peace to think, she began composing vivid travelogues in her letters home, like one she wrote after exploring a nearby mountain range:
"I just can't tell you what it is like to come down from the mountains of Grenoble to this flat, blazing plain where seven-eighths of all you see is hot blue sky--and there are rows of poplars at the edge of every field to protect the crops from the mistral and spiky short palm trees with blazing red flowers growing at their feet.
The people here speak with the lovely twang of the 'accent du Midi.'
They are always happy as they live in the sun and love to laugh. It was heartbreaking to only get such a short glimpse of it all--I want to go back and soak it all up."
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