After a lifetime and an hour of air travels and land transfers, my sleep-deprived family and I settled into our room for the night at one past midnight (we were moving to our actual hotel early the next morning) with a false sense of energy in dark, damp Europe. Rome, our first stop, usually warmer by any other city’s standards, was much too cold for my typical tropical taste, that one “fine” night.
NEVER ABOUT FAIRY TALES OR PRINCE CHARMING
This trip was a promise made to our firstborn, our only daughter, nine years ago, whose dream was to see Versailles on her 18th birthday—in lieu, mercifully, of a traditional coming out party called debut. I was reading a couple of historical novels on Marie Antoinette’s life when Sabina was nine years old and, based on her daily interrogation surrounding my pocketbook, noticed her strong fascination with the French queen’s life. To take advantage of this sudden and unexpected surge in interest, I frantically searched for a children’s edition of the story and triumphantly found one in diary form. My daughter hungrily devoured it in no time and happily burped her birthday wish soon after. I swallowed hard. She at least gave us time to prepare.
Chateau de Versailles (Images Tweetie de Leon-Gonzalez)
“Why choose to travel over having a nice get-together?” I asked. I knew what was in my child’s heart for she is a miniature mold of my mind and a spurt of my spirit.
“I want to see where she lived, mama, if it is as grand as I imagined it to be” came the eloquent reply. It was never about fairy tales and charming princes, nor tutus and tiaras for my little lady, for a Disney life was not where her interests lay. It was the tragedy in Marie Antoinette’s history that so captivated her in essence and ultimately transported her to a dream of what seemed to be her vision of a spellbinding wonderland, a true-to-life house of real royalty.
Tweetie De Leon-Gonzalez and children Sabina and Lorenzo
OVER A BRIDGE AND WITH A SIGH
So there we were, first in Rome, Sabina who was then still 17, and her brother Lorenzo, 16, with (youngish) Mommy and Dad (the two younger kids stayed behind for “there would be lots of walking and museum visits and hardly any burgers and WiFi”), inside unfamiliar walls, with bodies crashing, eyes failing, and yet eagerly awaiting for morning to break. Tomorrow would be the start of an adventure that would counter our weary state. With such hope in our minds, we finally succumbed to sleep.
The next day proved to be bright and beautiful just as we plotted in our dreams. We moved to our home for the week and set out to explore this historical, touristy city. As we stepped out the door and took a whiff of the crisp air, the kids had their first-ever fill of a sprinkling of spring.
Seeing Rome, and other Italian cities thereafter, as a precursory trip to our main destination, and their precious, preserved antiquities—art and architecture, culture and history—showed a side of the kids so mature and scholastic. Their early readings from books we brought home from previous trips, to my euphoria and delight, seemed to have been put to good use, not just left to gather grisly dirt and pesky mites. This experience, I knew, was definitely an out-of-school lesson where research and homework were not at all forgotten. After all the pizza and pasta, gelato and Chianti, we concluded our Italian fare at sunset, with broken hearts, over a bridge, and with a sigh.
THE GRANDEUR OF 18TH CENTURY FRANCE
Hall of Mirrors
Husband Mon Gonzalez with kids Lorenzo and Sabina.
By next sunrise, we were in Paris! And to arrange a drive to Versailles was, of course, the first order of business. Noel, whose number I got from my friend Gutzee, is a kind and enterprising French-living Filipino native who arranges trouble-free transport for helpless tourists. He was our go-to-guy and helpful guide who shared intimate tips—secrets—which only locals would keep. The precise hour to go, that discreet ticket vendor in a side street café, the obscure palace hind gate that’ll allow you to skip a meter or two of that frightfully winding queue, priceless information, unknown even to a Versailles repeat traveler, that I would certainly have spent for just to conserve precious time and energy.
We scurried into that side gate to join the melee and settled into a separate line for ticket holders headed straight for the main palace entrance. Behind us was the recently refurbished and dauntingly gilted gate enclosing the grounds of the palace, which, without question, is the jewel of the city. It didn’t matter that the children missed the drama of approaching this imposing iron portal, for standing tall in front of us was the face of grandeur of 18th century France.
This was home to Marie Antoinette, an Austrian-born nobility who figured in a proxy marriage, at age 12, to the 13-year-old French Dauphin Louis-Auguste, later known as King Louis XVI, to forge a stronger Franco-Austrian alliance, which by then had been incessantly strained. Against her ardent wishes, she officially took up residence by age 14 in this resplendent chateau. She had much rather remained with her childhood friends and family and wallowed in the normalcy of her own home. Her mother Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria, frequently received letters depicting her disconsolate state:“I have not received one of your dear letters without having the tears come to my eyes.” That this child bride and her equally young husband couldn’t be more disparate in character didn’t help ease her into her new life. He was said to be dowdy, solitary, and introverted while she was fashionable, social, and winsome. Perhaps to quash the sadness, she held countless, elaborate soirees, eventually perceived to be one of her many supposed gestures callous to the French commoners’ plight.
The intricate garden of Versailles
QUEENLY MOMENTS
Taking a break at the park, 800 hectares big
We all sauntered into each chamber in the palace, breathing in the history it housed. Lorenzo, as my husband did many years ago, methodically explored the spaces and covered as much as his senses could accommodate. My daughter was lost, drowned in her own imagination of what her nine-year-old self had once seen in her mind’s eye.
Then we walked into the Hall of Mirrors. This was where the grand balls had been! Thoughts ran to the opulent, glorious scenes of the festivities with the king, his court, and the queen. And as if like a sad novel when the plot hurtles down to a denouement, the walkthrough led us to the queen’s ironically sunshiny chamber, where she spent her last queenly moments—in this palace which she grew to love, her world confined in its walls, where she built a life with her distorted sense of normalcy, miles apart from her Austrian home. In a corner of this room, you would find a tiny, flushed hatch door, ostensibly used by Marie Antoinette to elude the invading French mob and which finally closed that chapter of her fairy tale lot.
Gilded bed of Marie Antoinette
With somber moods, carried over from the last room’s story, we spilled out to the beautiful gardens, which, quite expectedly were so breathtaking and green that time in spring. We walked our way down toward the spectacular lake for what long ago we conceived to be the site of Sabina’s shindig. We took our time as our energy was waning, taking numerous photographs of little corners and thick foliage alleys before continuing on to the flat grassy space for our much-anticipated party setting. And as the sun reached its peak, we reached our destination—a rustic little store that sold beverages and baguette sandwiches of salami, cold cheese, and prosciutto. Armed with our eats, on a bench by the lake we sat, filling our guts with bread, and our hearts with memories of recent past. And right there on that spot, we hosted a simple celebration of our daughter’s public coming out and toasted to the joy that her choice brought. No matter that her guests were but a select few, it was nothing short of a remarkable petite debut.
So, world, here is our dear Sabina. Welcome her as you did her elders, with your warm, loving arms—nothing too rough, perhaps a little tight, just right for her to learn your serious ways, to gain strength, to be kind, to be wise.