Have Mother, Will Travel: A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves, Each Other, and the World

by Claire Fontaine

  He leaps off the sofa to get into position to show us his dance number in his school’s upcoming end-of-year performance (or spectacle, as it’s called here). He was practicing with the precision and focus of a soldier when we arrived. Chrystelle’s upset that neither she nor JC can get off work early enough that day to see him perform, so they’ve asked us to attend and film it for them.

  Chrystelle’s always had something of the wide, calm sea to her—the quality of movement and stillness at once. Now that she’s a mother I notice a deeper, more observant quality to her. I also notice that she gets harried at times, something I never saw before. Motherhood, a full-time job, being a wife, and running a home is harrying, no matter how well you manage it. Especially so if you’re a bit of a perfectionist, something else she and I have in common (and husbands who are frustratingly not so inclined). We also share a love of history, literature, and walking in cemeteries. But our lives as mothers differ in significant ways.

  Partly because women fought for it, but mostly in response to the declining birth rate after World War II, the French government supports mothers in a way we can only dream of. Four months’ paid leave and job protection, and the state pays for someone to come in to do laundry and assist you after childbirth. Child care is subsidized and you get a few hundred dollars a month for each kid, till they’re in their teens. If you choose to stay home the amount can be higher.

  The program paid off. France is one of the only first-world countries that doesn’t have a declining birth rate, especially among educated women. It’s quite common for a high-powered career woman to have four kids, which is rare in the States.

  How is it we don’t demand some version of what every other wealthy nation gives its mothers? Why don’t we withhold votes from candidates who won’t legislate to make it easier for women to manufacture and develop the single most important product of any nation—the citizens? There is no corporation, company, or entity on earth more important than we are: we make the people. And business and government make it hard for us?

  We don’t need any more articles or studies or reports on our dissatisfaction. We hold the purse strings and we have the Internet—all we have to do is decide to do it, in unison. When Mia was a child, moms got every apple grown with the pesticide Alar off of every grocery store shelf in the country in very short order. With no Internet, we got giant agribusiness and food conglomerates to do what we wanted. Just by saying We won’t buy. Just as we can with the media, mothers could improve our mental and physical health, our families’ lives, and our careers right now.

  “It’s so frustrating,” I told her. “You guys go on strike for an extra workday a year and get it. We haven’t even succeeded in getting paid leave for a baby.”

  “Yes, eet’s true, but we ’ave a long history of la grève (strike). We ’ave the weel to fight for as long as eet must take, and we are very united, including mothers. We don’t ’ave this mommy war like you. We don’t say what ees right for another woman, and nobody waste time doing things that are the teacher’s job or making cakes. Why, when the patisserie ees down the street? We don’t make such beeg pressure on ourselves for such things. The thing of eet ees this: for us what ees important ees that a woman should enjoy ’er life and ’er fameely. Eet’s one reason I never go to leeve in Paris, where eet ees all about business and ’hoo ’ave what.”

  The French don’t expect mothers to sacrifice as much for their children as we do. Women don’t neglect social life, career, and physical and emotional self-care over kids. There’s simply not the guilt that’s become one of the hallmarks of motherhood in the United States. Women here generally assume they’ll be fine mothers, without reading a slew of books and listening to experts’ every word. They also don’t usually put kids before their marriage or sex life. Chrystelle sometimes refers to JC as her lover in conversation.

  There is a trade-off for such balance, however. When you’re expected, and expect yourself, to excel in all things—looking chic, being a good mother, a sexy wife, having a beautiful home, a successful career, being informed on the culture and trends—it’s got to be exhausting at times. A Frenchwoman earns all the vacation time she gets (and they get a lot).

  “Yes, we’re more balanced, but then the expectations are very high,” explained my friend Nathalie, a photographer whose popular blog is devoted solely to Avignon. “The pressure is always on, in all areas of a woman’s life. It can get very stressful.”

  However, as goes American culture, so goes the world. Mommy blogs are becoming popular here and women who speak English read ours. Elisabeth Badinter, one of the foremost feminist writers here, writes about the coming of our style of guilt-driven, perfectionist “eco-mothering” as she calls it, and the division between these moms and working moms. These women, in both countries, bring to motherhood the same skill set and drive to excel that served them in the professional world, with the resulting toll on mind, body, and psyche. Yes, there’s a call for sanity in the United States; there’s recognition (or resignation) that you can have it all, just not at the same time. But that doesn’t stop us from missing whatever it is we’re not doing at the moment, whether we’re in the boardroom or nursery, or from feeling guilty.

  There are longer-term consequences awaiting these moms, something many women my age are already experiencing: being able to choose both worlds—the professional and the domestic—means a lot of women will strive, struggle, and judge themselves in two worlds. Moms of the past used to take stock at midlife by looking at how well they raised their kids and managed a marriage and home; now we get to add to that the midlife crisis men have always had—did I choose the right field, make enough money? Did my job mean anything, did I measure up?

  France may not have our mommy war yet, but the divisions are forming. During the week, we’d attended a spectacle at a more working-class elementary school in town. It was like a trip back in time, with the kind of barely organized madness these things had at my own elementary school, back when parents and kids moved in separate orbits and perfection wasn’t a goal for either group: kids running loose on their own, music blaring, slapdash costumes, half the kids forgetting their lines or steps, a rickety stage, parents laughing and socializing among themselves.

  A week later we stand amid well-dressed, hushed parents at Antoine’s more upscale suburban school, outside a barricade surrounding a huge blacktop that serves as the spectacle stage. Antoine’s lining up with a big group of boys for his number. There’s tape on the ground to spot the dancers.

  It’s a grand, elaborate reenactment of The Lion King, and the kids must have all been practicing as long and diligently as Antoine; almost all are focused and serious, sporting matching, beautifully hand-painted loincloths, spears, necklaces of feather and stone, and face paint.

  Several teachers stand right among the kids to guide and remind, mouthing the lyrics, racing to put someone in the proper place, even sticking out their bottoms and wiggling them as a prompt. It’s like watching dog obedience training—the dogs are rarely obedient but the owners, damn, you never saw such synchronized precision.

  The parents are intensely focused on their kids. These are the parents who will sweat bullets and pay tutors to assure their teens pass their bac (short for baccalaureate, the big exam that determines if you go to university) and go on to run industry and nation; parents like myself and most parents in America today—very invested, involved, intense.

  When the show is over, Mia and I head to the refreshment area to wait for Chrystelle. Antoine rushes up to us, says something I can’t understand, and hurries off to roughhouse with his friends.

  I say to Mia nostalgically, “I remember how much fun these things were at your school.”

  “Not as much fun as it is here,” Mia says, eyeing the tables.

  There are gourmet cheeses, gorgeous desserts—and wine and beer. Antoine calls out for us to watch a crazy flip he’s attempting to do, then hollers to watch a karate kick he executes on his playmate, t
hen insists we watch another feat. How different a boy’s energy is! So much more physical and independent, yet still looking over to see that Mom (or Mom’s substitute, in this case) is watching.

  I’m caught off guard by an ache that’s become familiar in the last several years—what it would have been like to have a son. When Mia was five, Paul and I went through a difficult time, and I chose to abort a pregnancy, something I’ve always regretted terribly. Looking back, I see how little thought I gave it. I made a choice based on emotions and current circumstances, which included Paul’s resistance, rather than a firm vision of how many kids I wanted.

  I wanted a son, and I wanted Mia to have a sibling. I just assumed I would have one “someday.” And I just knew in my soul that the child I would have had was a boy. For a long time after that, I had recurring dreams with a little boy with curly black hair and big brown eyes.

  The way Paul and I handled it marked the beginning of a pattern our relationship took on; he would be upset by something and rather than talk about it, he would withhold, be passive-aggressive, the emotional bastion of the polite and saintly. Which left me feeling bewildered and abandoned, but I had nothing to pin it on—that’s the beauty of passive-aggressiveness. And the frustration would make me angry, sharp, often at the wrong things and the wrong times. Which bewildered and upset him, and the cycle went on, waxing and waning as the years went by, unraveling threads in the tapestry of our marriage, leaving thin spots. It’s a testament to our mutual love for Mia that she was the one thing we’ve never argued about; even during the terrible years, we were a solid team as parents.

  I don’t like that the ache I still feel for that lost child is tinged with anger at Paul. He had the right not to want another child, I’ve no cause to be angry at him. The only purpose it has served is to avoid being angry at myself, because, ultimately, it was my choice; almost everything in life is.

  This reminds me of when you were little,” my mom says, looking around the yard of Antoine’s school at kids running around, playing noisily, and small clumps of parents warmly greeting each other and conversing animatedly.

  “You mean minus the ashtrays and beer?” I ask, dodging a group of squabbling boys. “My God, if I ever have kids I don’t think I could handle boys. Just chasing after them is a full-time job! Maybe it’s selfish, but I don’t want my whole life to be my kids.”

  “All kids are a full-time job, Mia—it’s called parenthood. Your whole life shouldn’t just be your kids. You were there when Chrystelle and I were talking about that at dinner the other night—”

  “I know,” I tell her. “I heard you guys. I kept thinking how much it was like what that woman Martine said, too, about motherhood being easier in France.”

  Last week, I found myself in deep conversation with a woman at the table next to me in Bar les Célestins. She was in her early forties, dressed in a chic black outfit and chain-smoking while bantering with friends. Her straight, dark hair, deep-set olive eyes, and sharp, angular features reminded me of a slightly more masculine Anjelica Huston, a look the French call jolie-laide (pretty-ugly) to describe women who are striking yet not conventionally pretty. She intrigued me. She had a confident, perhaps even cocky air to her, but there was also something sad and mysterious about her.

  We struck up a conversation, and I learned that she’d spent ten years in San Francisco after falling in love with an American, whom she married and had three children with. At first because there was no maternity leave at her job, and then because she loved it, she stayed at home with her kids. Her husband’s income allowed it, particularly as he moved up the corporate ladder.

  Several years into the marriage, he developed a taste for cocaine, their marriage fell apart, and she ended up moving back to France to be closer to her parents. She received some alimony but not enough to continue staying home with her children.

  “I love my children, I gave myself to them completely,” she’d said, taking a deep drag from her cigarette. “They’re great kids, happy and healthy. As a mother, I feel good. I know I did well. As a woman . . . well, I teach high school math. It’s not a bad job but I have a Ph.D. My friends from before I left France are where I should be, university professors, getting published, giving lectures, better salaries. It’s awkward between us sometimes, you know? They pity me now. I pity myself. I’m a successful mother and a failed woman.”

  She stamped out her cigarette, exhaled deeply, and shrugged her shoulders. I could tell she’d delved as deeply as she wanted.

  “It scared me,” I relay to my mom now. “It seems like you totally lose yourself when you have kids.”

  My mom shakes her head.

  “There are lots of ways to lose yourself—motherhood’s just one of them. That’s why it’s so important to be conscious and intentional about your choices. And it’s not like you have to go to every single Mommy and Me class, or bake cookies for class parties. You see what works and doesn’t work and modify it for yourself. Oh, hey, there’s Chrystelle.”

  Chrystelle’s pulled her car up across the playground and is waving at us. She drops us off at Place Crillon, a plaza not far from the Palais des Papes, but not before Antoine takes my face in his hands, firmly kisses each cheek, does the same to my mom, and then hollers, “Au revoir les Américaines!”

  “Let’s go to the bluff, Mia, I don’t feel like going home just yet,” my mom says, and we turn onto the quiet, cobbled road leading to the bluff and the palais.

  “You know what the most important thing about having kids is, Mia? If you listen to nothing else I say, get this—you have your kids on your terms.”

  I’m taken aback by the sudden intensity she says this with, her voice and expression almost terse.

  “Don’t put your career on hold when you have children. I didn’t and it’s one of my biggest regrets. I worked, I’m a Writers Guild member, but I didn’t pursue screenwriting full-time and I never accumulated the body of work I should have. While your husband’s career keeps climbing, yours stalls and it’s almost impossible to catch up and compete. I stayed too focused on motherhood to see any life for myself outside of it once you were gone.

  “Start getting clear on your vision of your life now, and when you’re ready, you choose how many kids you want. It’s your body and your life. Marriages don’t always make it and kids leave home, so you have how many you want, when you want. Your terms.”

  “You always told me I was planned, so that would have been on your terms,” I point out, wondering why I’m suddenly getting lectured.

  “Oh, you were planned, you were just ahead of schedule. I wanted to finish my degree before having kids, but after the ectopic the doctor told me that the longer I waited, the harder it would be to get pregnant. Boy was he wrong—I got pregnant five different times after that, four on birth control, mind you!”

  I think for a minute, because something’s off.

  “Um, not to point out the obvious, Mom, but me, plus the miscarriage, plus two ectopics equals four pregnancies. And I’m pretty sure the answer was no when we were talking about abortion rights that one day and I asked if you’d ever had one.”

  “Well, darling, I lied. Sorry. I wasn’t ready to share that. It’s something I still regret, I always wanted to have another child and we never did.”

  “Why did you decide not to keep it?” I ask gingerly.

  “It was a rough time in a lot of ways, mostly between me and Paul.”

  The bitterness in her voice unnerves me. I don’t know what to say. That sucks? I’m sorry? You can always adopt? I always thought I was good with thorny topics, but I have no idea how to even begin to relate to something like this.

  “I will, Mom,” I say, turning to look at her. “I’ll try to get really clear about what I want in life.”

  “Good. Because it’ll feel really shitty later if you don’t.”

  We’d been headed toward the bluff but my mom suddenly turns and heads quickly for an alley we rarely use.

  “H
ey, where are you going?” I call after her, then realize by the suddenness, by the way she’s holding her body, not to mention the word “shitty,” that something’s wrong. I hurry beside her and take her arm.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She’s crying.

  “Mommy, it’s okay.”

  She suddenly stops and looks at me, puzzled, hard in a way I’ve never seen.

  “Okay? Of course it’s not okay.”

  She finds a tiny stairway to a street below and sits on the top step.

  “It was never okay. And it was never okay to pretend it was. Or to pretend it didn’t hurt. It did. It does. A lot of things do.”

  She puts her head on her knees and cries. After a while, she takes a deep breath.

  “Some things will simply never be possible for me again, ever. With life, work, kids. I know it in my head, I’ve talked about it but I’ve never let myself feel any of it. I’m sorry.”

  “Mommy, don’t apologize. Just cry.”

  Most of our dreams never really vanish. Our deep, unrealized wants just languish until we’re old enough or slowed down enough by some crisis for our skin to have thinned a bit. Then they appear like pentimento, the artist’s regret. The cost of their burial just aches right through.

  And you can’t therapize it or deny it or New-Age it away on some retreat with platitudes like it was all meant to be. With rare exception, I think we make meant to be. I made certain choices, paid certain consequences, and then chose the mask. And now it’s time to pay the piper. I can choose the cost of glossing over, of continuing to deny what hurt, which already has a long running tab. Or the cost of admitting it.

  Which feels so horrible it’s almost too much to bear—admitting I wanted to be a doctor, that I wanted a big, happy family, a son. That I wanted a lot of things I was too polite or too afraid to ask for. Jobs I didn’t take, things I didn’t do because Paul didn’t want to, or because I sometimes lacked confidence, though usually it was clarity I lacked rather than confidence.