Who is posing in the photo, proudly holding a tiny one-month-old baby, a loving older sister, a niece?
No, it is the mother! She is 14 years old. When I went to Panama via the San Blas Islands (coming from Colombia), I spent more than 17 hours on a boat.
And in this boat was a beautiful family: dad, mum, two teenagers, a girl and a boy and a tiny baby.
They all seemed to get along very well, the baby was very calm and passed from arm to arm.
But there was something undefinable, something not very clear… I couldn’t be sure who was the work of this little guy
When, during a stopover on an island, I get a little closer to the (grand) mother, she explains to me that this is indeed her daughter’s baby, which she herself had very young (the mother looks to be around 30 years old). The young boy is not her son but the baby’s father, he is 15 years old.
They have known each other since they were very young and have been together for almost 4 years.
Why am I telling you all this? Because I found this family beautiful.
I saw a loving, patient grandmother accompanying her daughter in these delicate gestures that surround a newborn baby. And so many smiles!
The grandfather is without complex, open, smiling at the arrival of this little baby.
Yes, the young mummy sometimes seemed a bit clumsy, but no matter, she was well surrounded and this beautiful toddler seemed to be really well taken care of. She was smiling, laughing, proud.
It seemed to me that she hadn’t heard any malediction around her round belly, that things had been simple and that nobody had come to curse her.
Why am I telling you all this?
Well, I think of all these tragedies around these repudiated pregnant women, I think of the shame of girl-mothers, I think of all these novels, these dramas
Sometimes, conceiving a child, even in a poor country, is much easier elsewhere than here.
And I tell myself that life is really beautiful and so much simpler than we imagine.
Welcoming unborn children, surrounding the mother, helping the parents, accompanying them with kindness and remaining deaf to religion, to society and its opprobrium, remaining sincere and smiling back to the little ones who wake up…
To see a child come and see him as a blessing and not a disaster, that’s what this story could teach us, and that’s it!
