Dear Lola

By Karla Quimsing

(Our Op-Ed section welcomes “Letters to the Island,” a new column by Karla Quimsing. An Ilongga currently living in France with her family, Quimsing will use the format of letters to deliver social commentary and reflections on current events. Guided by the principle that “the personal is also the political,” her column promises to blend tenderness with timely insights. Her first piece explores migration in a letter addressed to her grandmother.)

October 2025

Dear Lola Salud,

We moved to Paris in 2019. The same year when the roof of the Notre Dame Cathedral went up in flames. It was unimaginable until it happened. As unimaginable as your granddaughter living in Paris with her family.

This is a place we encounter in books and movies, but what do we really know about it? We share no history with France. We have relatives everywhere in the world except here. It is easier to expect us to make a life in The US, in Australia, or even Canada where we have so many relatives and where people speak English. Our closest traceable connection to France being situated in Europe is Spain: the 333 years of colonization, the name of our country, our first and last names, and Catholicism.

You never told me if your Chinese father believed in religion but I know that you are a spiritual Catholic. I wonder how you would have felt if you had lived to see the Notre Dame burning and your great-grandchildren singing in French.

It has been six years since we left The Philippines. In December 2024, five years after the fire, The Notre Dame de Paris was re-opened to the public. I paid it my first visit not to pray but to buy the special rosaries that commemorate its “Rèouverture.” We gifted these to all the matriarchs in our family. Sorry, I do not mean to sound arrogant or dismissive of our faith. I was in deep awe that I could not bring myself to kneel and pray. This church was constructed centuries before our archipelago became a nation. Long before we called our motherland a country, the French built this shrine in honor of a simple mother who is cradling a holy son.

How could this fortress catch fire? It is easier to make sense of natural calamities than a cathedral burning. We can even make more sense of death. Maybe because death is expected and certain. As certain as Filipinos leaving The Philippines when they get the chance. Quitting one’s homeland is a kind of death. When we leave, we end life as we know it.

In our first year here we had to prove our existence. We did not know a soul nor could we speak a word in French. It felt like being reborn in the wrong place. A place where we are lost and unwanted. Our existence required approval. We had to show proof that we are worthy to be part of the French system because being here— alive, healthy, and educated— is not our birth right.

We were granted a residency permit because a company needed my husband’s skills in software development. The bienveillance or welcome to a rich powerful nation is always based on economics. Sometimes it could appear to be justice. But for those who have the privilege to give approval, it is a matter of supply and demand. The process questions what we can bring to the table.  Migration seeks for acceptance and on the other hand, colonization imposes dominance. In both life transactions or destinies, we Filipinos are powerless.

Still, declining the opportunity to migrate is difficult. Having grown up in The Philippines, we dove into the idea of this diaspora with so much optimism that probably someone with a first world passport would have declined. We were lured by the thought of raising our children in the world’s most beautiful city and in a great country with an exemplary social security system that upholds Libertè-Fraternitè-Egalitè.

We arrived here on the 8th of July 2019. The trip was challenging but smooth nonetheless. It was the packing that exhausted me. The ritual of choosing what to keep and what to forget is where the sadness of leaving boils. The children had to choose 10 toys and 10 books to bring with them. They were only 8 and 5 years old, and it pained me to explain why they had to choose. My husband, who left 8 months ahead of us,  asked me to bring his 2 electric guitars. The only luggage space left for me was for some pieces of clothing and 2 pairs of shoes. All other things that I hold valuable, I gave them away while the unimportant rest, I have learned to forget.

Paris is more than beautiful, it is enchanting. Anyone who has visited this city will understand that it is not a place. Paris is a mysterious feeling. I wish you could have visited us here. It was summer when we arrived and there was a nasty heatwave. The temperature was hotter than in The Philippines. It was 42 degrees celsius. People will say that we should not complain about it because we grew up in the tropics. But the heat here is different. It burns inside and the air is so dry that our bodies don’t even perspire. Despite the discomfort, the children were very eager to see the city. Mothers like us have mastered to downplay the exhaustion to bring joy to our children. The thing that brings me so much joy are the gardens here. You are always in my thoughts every time I visit a jardin. I carry in my heart your childhood stories and lessons about flowers and fruit trees.

The French government takes gardening very seriously. They have a distinct approach and aesthetic. Caring for trees is a professional occupation here. The street where we live, like most streets in Paris, is lined with trees. Their roots are invisible as they are strained by iron so they don’t encroach the sidewalk. They get trimmed too, like human hair, when summer is over. During autumn, their leaves fall and this is the time when I begin to feel melancholic. My daughter, in our first autumn season, reminded me of the story of Persephone whom Hades abducted to the underworld. “The mother of Persephone is sad because she was taken away.” She said, “When the goddess is sad, the earth is dying.” We were both staring out the window watching the yellow leaves drop to the ground.

It is autumn here now. I am bracing myself for the cold. Until next time, or in French we say à la prochaine. 

Love,

Karla