Age Doesn't Always Matter

by Calla Jones Corner

Unless you’re a cheese. Just ask my 11-year-old French-born, American grandson. He won’t eat his favorite cheese. Comté, unless it’s at least 18 months old. “C’est plus savoureux,” he once told me.

When my late husband, Richard, turned 70, his daughters gave him an apron that said, “Age Doesn’t Matter Unless You’re A Cheese.” We had recently retired to our summer house on Cape Cod and, after living in Switzerland and Belgium for 21 years, our children begged their father to learn how to make baguettes; they couldn’t stand American white bread, which was all our local A & P offered. Richard did try to make a proper French baguette but found it too difficult. He did, however, learn to make my Swedish grandmother’s coffee bread (fläta) and rye bread (limpa).

Since moving to Burgundy last year, following Richard’s death, I’ve become a granny taxi service, picking up my two grandchildren from school, and during vacations driving them to pony lessons and golf. Usually, I play country music or Elvis on Spotify because we all like it.

We are, after all, Americans!

This past Monday, two days after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, I used a captive audience of one – my grandson – to explain to him why I would not let him watch golf on my phone instead of listening to music (which I have occasionally let him do, even though I know his parents wouldn’t approve of giving him access to social media). Social media is as a much a problem here in France as it is elsewhere in the world.

Before he had a chance to beg me, I told him that social media might have played a part in influencing the 20-year-old who shot Trump’s upper ear off. He was dumbfounded; his parents hadn’t told him and his 8-year-old sister about the attempt on Trump’s life.

 Was it my duty at this moment to educate my grandson? I’ve been very careful not to interfere in my daughter’s and son-in-law’s education of their children, even though they are committed socialists. When we eat at their favorite bistro, La Dilletante, in Beaune, we often sit at the table overlooked by a photograph of Che Guevara.

 Once, when my grandson asked who the portrait was of, my daughter answered, “A Cuban who fought for the poor”. I didn’t want to correct my daughter and tell her that he was an Argentinian, who hoped to be a doctor but, instead joined the Marxist revolution in Cuba to overthrow a dictator and that Cuba, eight decades later, is run by a communist dictator and is still one of the poorest countries in the world.

I could have gone on for the next 10 minutes, before we’d arrive at the golf club, to explain that the reasons leftists – including his parents – told him they are relieved that extremist, Marine Le Pen didn’t get elected and that, had the far right succeeded, our family would not have to leave France.  

Instead, I told him that most French, and Americans, have a lot of common sense and are in the political middle; they just want to be able to buy a house, gas for their cars and tractors, feed and educate their children.

 I also asked him what he knew about French politics. His class had recently taken a three-day trip to Paris, where they visited many prominent sites and attractions, including having a guided tour of the National Assembly. French President Emmanuel Macron hadn’t yet dissolved the National Assembly. My grandson son told me their guide was young and left of center and that he would vote for him if he ran for office because, “He was nice.”

That gave me the opening to tell him that President Joe Biden was old (one year older than I) and didn’t know what he was doing. That even though Trump was 78, he was one smart, tough guy and although those on the left of center like to make fun of his tan skin, because they can’t logically criticize his four years of accomplishments, he will probably be our next president again. Unless, another misguided kid or misinformed adult, tries again to kill Trump. I added, it's not guns, but people who pull triggers that kill.

I’ll leave it to my children to, hopefully, teach their children that, once upon a time, one could disagree with others' opinions and that history espoused by discredited entities such as “Black Lives Matter” or others, should be taught as discredited history.

To leave my grandson with a healthy view of civilization, I mentioned that the apron his grandfather wore until the day he died and that some people – like some cheeses, such as those made from goats’ milk – unlike Comté, don’t get better with age.

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