A French Mother

Jim's Musings from Paris

I have been haunted by a recurring dream since my younger brother, Bob, was born when I was 10, almost 11 years old. I imagine it’s a fairly common dream for parents and caretakers. In the dream, I am responsible for watching Bob—and I lose him. The dream has changed over the years, especially since Bob died after his first year of college in a motorcycle accident. The dream has become more complicated and continues longer as I frantically search for my missing brother, always forever a child. Sometimes, in the dream, Bob is replaced by other children—Viola or Miranda, the daughters of my NWPL colleagues, Debora and Terry. Or, more recently, our grandson, Léo. But the end is always the same—I wake up panicked and sobbing, calling out his name and cursing myself for being so careless and incompetent.

I have learned to interpret dreams as messages from one’s body, cries for attention from some part of the subconscious. Does my “inner child” need some exercise? Or, perhaps, my “creative self” is feeling lost or deprived? Whatever the meaning, the dream usually forces me to adjust some priorities and make sure things are more balanced in my daily life. However, the dream revisited me one night last week—and several days later, news of the schoolchildren massacred in Texas shattered my search for serenity. How can anyone find balance in the warped world we now call home? I grieve. I think of all the children lost because of our inattention and incompetence. And my thoughts turn to—the mothers.

Mother’s Day is not celebrated on the same day around the world. A great many countries join the USA and honor their mothers on the second Sunday in the month of May. However, the UK celebrates mothers in the month of March and France (along with a few other countries) chooses to set aside the last Sunday of May for mothers. But if Pentecost falls on that particular Sunday, mothers are moved to the first Sunday in June. Even mothers must kowtow to the Holy Spirit. In any case, this year, today, May 29, is Mother’s Day in France. At this time of intense chaos in the world, I want to take a moment to recognize the French mother that I know best, Kena Cuesta.

Our first meeting occurred when Kena was just 7 years old. I watched her grow up over these many years as a sort of step-father, I suppose. In fact, Kena was sometimes the subject of my recurring dream. She lived in Paris with her mother and spent some summers or holidays with Jairo (and sometimes me) in Ohio or Italy or Colombia. She made several cross-country drives with us from Akron to California and back again and would often fly across the Atlantic as an “unaccompanied minor.” She was fearless as an adolescent, demanding, and yet exceptionally understanding. These qualities matured in her to create an extremely sensitive, compassionate, and intelligent woman who throws herself fully into her many tasks, especially her role as mother to Léo.

Kena Cuesta and Jim on a bus in Paris (2016)

Raising a child in France comes with some benefits that US parents can’t even imagine. Inexpensive, government-funded day care centers, crèches, are found in every municipality and can be accessed once the child is three months old. Universal free pre-school begins at age three and families can receive tax breaks for employing in-home child care workers. These three policies alone offer the French parent an incredible amount of freedom and flexibility in terms of their own career and how to organize their time.

And, yet, the French culture makes other demands on parents that create obstacles in child-rearing. For example, the French school schedule and work schedule do not coincide. (I know this is true in the USA, too). Parents need to make arrangements for when and how their child will be picked up from school each day. And then extra scheduling needs to happen for Wednesday afternoons and the four two-week vacations that occur in the fall, Christmas, winter, and spring for all school children. The French eating culture, which is still based on the post-war model of a stay at home mother, is organized around almost daily trips to the market, the boulangerie, the butcher, etc. Little wonder that the French, especially Parisians, have embraced the frozen food smorgasbord offered at the ubiquitous store, Picard. My favorite humorist, David Sedaris, talks about taking visitors to Picard when he lived in Paris and marvels at its frosty innovations in his book Me Talk Pretty One Day and on several of his NPR talks. Kena’s tiny freezer is often packed with Picard staples.

In the post-Covid world, I find that the French are working much harder than I previously observed. The move to working at home and on-line means that work hours are less fixed and often end up being longer than usual. Parisian apartments are barely big enough to eat and sleep let alone conduct one’s business. I feel that stress on a daily basis has grown for the typical French worker with the new demands made on one’s time, space, and personal resources. My observations are borne out in a study I read that shows that smoking among the French, which had been on a steady decline, has increased significantly since the onset of Covid. More stress, more smoking. However, the increase in smoking may also be due to a French study that suggests nicotine actually helps combat Covid and prevents one from contracting the disease. French authorities limited sales of nicotine products when that particular study was released so that stockpiling would not occur.

As I watch Kena navigate this new world full of paradoxes and pitfalls, I see a deep fatigue creep into her body. There are so many things to knock you out of balance these days: health, ecology, economics, the fear of terrorism, the horrors of racism and discrimination, the pain of poverty that confronts you at every Metro station and under every bridge, the brutality of war, and the very real dread that your child is in danger. On a recent trip to Rome, we encountered Caravaggio’s paintings that hang in the church dedicated to France, San Luigi dei Francesi (Saint-Louis-des-Français). Watching Léo interact with his mother (and grandfather) in the presence of these majestic artworks and elsewhere in the monumental environment of Rome reminded me of another Caravaggio painting that I had seen in the Borghese Gallery: The Madonna and Child with St. Anne (dei Palafrenieri).

The Madonna and Child with St. Anne (dei Palafrenieri) by Caravaggio.

I’ve always been fascinated by the images of the Virgin Mary stepping on the serpent’s head. In most depictions, she is oblivious to her deed. However, Caravaggio makes her clearly the instigator, purposely placing her son in danger while still protecting him. She is teaching him to face his fears while the grandparent looks on, not intruding. I see Kena acknowledge the many threats looming around her family and I admire how she provides Léo with both comfort and fortitude, much like Caravaggio’s Madonna. And Léo is lucky enough that he has several versions of St. Anne watching, not judging, offering protection and refuge. Caravaggio’s painting is unconventional. And we are an unconventional family—with Kena, our Madonna, at the center.

Kena Cuesta (2022)

On this French Mother’s Day, I grieve with the mothers of the Texas school children. I grieve with the fathers and grandparents, families and friends. I grieve with the mothers of children with mental illness and the mothers themselves who suffer any kind of mental anguish. I grieve with the mothers of NWPL: Debora, Sneja, and Jamie. Kix and Kyra. Let’s build a better world to take care of these mothers and their children. As the Shakers say: “Why wait for Paradise, build it here on earth!” I offer youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman’s response to the Texas massacre:

Hymn For The Hurting by Amanda Gorman

Everything hurts,
Our hearts shadowed and strange,
Minds made muddied and mute.
We carry tragedy, terrifying and true.
And yet none of it is new;
We knew it as home,
As horror,
As heritage.
Even our children
Cannot be children,
Cannot be.

Everything hurts.
It’s a hard time to be alive,
And even harder to stay that way.
We’re burdened to live out these days,
While at the same time, blessed to outlive them.

This alarm is how we know
We must be altered —
That we must differ or die,
That we must triumph or try.
Thus while hate cannot be terminated,
It can be transformed
Into a love that lets us live.

May we not just grieve, but give:
May we not just ache, but act;
May our signed right to bear arms
Never blind our sight from shared harm;
May we choose our children over chaos.
May another innocent never be lost.

Maybe everything hurts,
Our hearts shadowed & strange.
But only when everything hurts
May everything change.