Nick
and Tom in Paris: the rest of us in Santa Cruz
It's Christmas 1997, and Nick and Tom are paying their first visit to the
rest of us in Santa Cruz, where
we had moved in June 1997. Nick on
the beach on a sunny afternoon in late December in the aftermath of a storm the
night before. (Here is Tom rock
scrambling on another beach during the same vacation). After romping around with the others in the sand, he sat
down for ten minutes and watched the waves.
We don't know what he was thinking that day on the beach, but remember, it was
winter, yet the sun was shining and it was warm enough to play in the sand with
no shoes on.
Six months apart had been a cruelly long time for the kids, not to speak of
their papa. Just before we left France, a
judge there who permitted herself to be swayed by her prejudices had taken Nick and
Tom away from us and
sent them to their mother in Paris. The same judge and her colleagues reversed this error, but it took two years
and several court hearings. We speak of "prejudices"
because the judge concerned decided to separate us after a very brief review of
the facts and against the advice of the four lower court judges who, during
years of review and following a court-appointed psychologist's report, had
always kept the boys with us.
Ian had seen Nick and Tom once before Christmas (remember, we left France in
June), because their mother did not honor the court's order that they spend half
of that summer with us. Unannounced, in October he collected them outside their school in
Paris on the day that their October vacation began. When Nick saw his dad on the
sidewalk in front of the school, he
cried out: "Dad, it is you, I've imagined so many times that I saw you just
like that on the street! Now it is you, it is really you." Not the best of times.
Every cloud has a silver lining. In this case, more than one. The court
in France returned the boys to us in large part because the judges were
distressed by the kind of cruelty to the boys that was manifest during that
difficult six months. Not only were they abruptly and unexpectedly taken away
from the father whom they had lived with for their entire lives, but also they
were not allowed to visit as the court intended, making the rupture that much
more keen. While there is much talk about deadbeat dads and other paternal sins
after divorce, there is not enough attention paid to mothers who use their
children to get even for their fathers' wrongs. These mothers merit as much
disdain and social sanction as do deadbeat dads.
The other silver lining was that during this first visit, everyone went out
of their way to ensure that Nick
and Tom had a great Christmas. On the left, Antony (here's
his wedding) and Laura Nash, their
cousins, with
all our older children
on Christmas day 1997. There was the regulation stack of presents at home
(see Christmas), and at the Nashes and Hanlons, they all got thoughtful presents
too. In short, everyone spoilt them rotten, which did them no harm at all.
Annie Hanlon took the one to the right of the Santa Cruz contingent of this
temporarily un-blended family, at Russ and Annie's house in August 1997. There
is a portrait of the four children before Nick and Tom's return to live with us
here.
Finally, we would like to applaud the work of Michel Thizon and the
Association he founded in France, SOS Papa.
He and they work tirelessly to overcome the prejudices (principally a sexist
bias that permits children to be separated from their fathers simply because
they are not mothers) that make the legal system in France and elsewhere in the
West a tool for depriving children
of their fathers.
Michel Thizon with his charming daughter Marine, during an all too brief
visit with us in late 1995. You can see his compassion in this photo.
Most of the cases that SOS Papa deals with are much worse than ours: he can
tell hundreds, if not thousands, of stories of children who never see their
fathers with the complicity, if not outright approval, of the courts. When
all is said and done, our separation was only temporary. It could well have been
provoked by what might have appeared to be the unseemly haste with which we left
France. (The reasons were professional, but it did look bad.)
Michel
Thizon has pounded away for years on end at the powers that be, and the results
of these efforts can already been seen in the French divorce courts and even in
the French legislature. It is indeed possible that without Michel and his
ilk, this family would never have seen the light of day together. As it
is, Evelyne Sullerot, a prominent French sociologist, estimates that the number of
children being raised in France without significant paternal contact is one or
two million. Very few are trying to remedy this tragic and dangerous
social ill.
Bravo Michel! Bravo SOS Papa! Keep up the good
work. Here they are: http://www.sos-papa.net/.
