I Think His Name Was de Gaulle

I was very fortunate to go to the same school that my mother had attended.  It was, and still is, the best private Catholic girls' school in New York.  In second grade, we had a new girl in our class who had sadly, and very publicly, lost her father the year before.  On a November evening, Mummy came to pick me up from Caroline's 7th birthday party.  She and Daddy actually had a black-tie affair to which they were going as soon as we got back but she didn't want to come and collect me from the party decked out in her party gear - she didn't want Mrs. Kennedy to think that she had considered that to be what one wore to pick-up one's child from the former First Lady's house.  In the end she went with a trench coat over her slip and her penny loafers.  On the block and a half walk home, I was grilled for details (keep in mind that all of our mothers were still really young women - just in their early 30's or so) - "Who was there?" "Oh, ya know, Uncle Bobby & Uncle Teddy." "What kind of presents did Caroline get?" "Oh, Mummy! You know that big Steiff giraffe that is in the window of FAO Schwarz?  Well, she got that."  "How lovely", said Mummy, "Who gave her that?"  I stopped and thought for a moment and said, "Um... a man, I think his name was de Gaulle."