The Other Story

CONNECTIONS | by  VALERIE GRIFFITH

©  VALERIE GRIFFITH/Rick Steves’ European Christmas/Back Door Productions

THE FRENCH FAMILY (at right) prepares for le réveillon de Noël, the Christmas Eve feast. This segment, for a PBS Christmas program in Europe featuring a well-known travel writer, was filmed in Burgundy, where Christmas turns on simple rituals. You’ll meet Delphine and Emanuel, a postcard-perfect French couple, shopping at the winter market and decorating at home with their boys.

What you won’t see is this story.

It’s been a long day. We’re in Delphine’s kitchen. Emma, my eight-year-old daughter who is traveling with me, is tired and needs attention. The crew is tired and needs direction. At that moment I feel like neither a great mom nor a great producer.

Hiding with Delphine, so as not to be in the shot, I’m distracted by photos of a child that hang on her kitchen wall. A beautiful little girl, no more than five, swinging in one picture and puddle stomping in her big gum boots in another. I make the clumsy mistake of asking Delphine about the girl in my broken French. It takes a beat before she can respond.

Her daughter, she quietly explains, died a few months earlier from an aneurysm. But it’s okay, she tells me, gently smoothing over my faux pas.

In my story we both look at Emma. Delphine’s eyes are sad, but immensely kind. Mine are flooded with gratitude for the daughter I can reach out and hold.

In a split second, two mothers are brought together for a few moments in a kitchen in Burgundy.