If you walk near St. Eustache Cathedral in Paris, you will see an enormous stone sculpture of a large head leaning sideways with a massive stone hand cupping its ear. When I went to school in Paris in 1990, I liked to climb on it and pretend the giant hand was carrying me to the Land of Giants. It became a meeting place for all of us students, in between hanging out at the nearby James Joyce Bar and classes: “Meet me at the giant head.”
Nearly a decade later, I returned to “the head” with my best friend, Kim. Again, we climbed all over the hand, draping ourselves across it, pretending it was grabbing us and carrying us away somewhere magical. For our final photo, we straddled the hand and held each other, her cheek warm on mine, a treasured moment. Then we jumped down and continued walking through Les Halles where I found a white fringe flapper dress for $20, which I took as a sign of good luck. I wore that dress for years. It was my sassy fringe flapper dress, and when I twisted and shimmied, the fringe flew out in all directions. When people would say, “I love your dress, where did you get it?” I could sound epically glamorous, “Oh I picked it up in a little shop in Paris.”
Twenty years after my visit with Kim, I returned to “the head” with my teenage children. While they climbed all over the hand, I sat down in its palm and let it hold me in all my brokenhearted sadness.
Kim was gone now, the demons of her mental illness finally captured her and took her away forever. I had married my true love, but eventually learned he was not true and my marriage had exploded into a raging inferno that quickly burnt my life to the ground. I now had children of my own, gorgeous and shining, my heart intertwined with theirs. I turned my head and watched my daughter scream that she was falling, and my son ran and caught her foot in his hands and pushed her back up on top of the head. They were growing up and would soon be on their own adventures.
I sat quietly in the giant hand, the stone warmed by the sun, and listened to my heartbeat among the children shouting and laughing in different languages around me. I thought about the 20-year-old me who had been full of childlike wonder and adventure and enchanted by everything about Paris and living out my dream of visiting such a magnificent city. I thought about 28-year-old me climbing the hand with my soulmate and best friend, wrapping our arms around each other, feeling like we would be intertwined forever… one glorious treasured moment caught on camera. I didn’t know then that it wouldn’t last forever. And here I was, 50-year-old me, letting the hand gently hold me.
I wonder if the artist who created the sculpture, Henry de Miller, knew how many broken hearts and singing hearts his sculpture would hold?
All these years climbing on it, and I had never known its actual name was “Ecoute.” It means, “listen” in French. And I guess if you have one word to share with the world, “listen” is a good one.
