Bedtime stories capture the longing of deported parents and their children
Cindy Carcamo for the Los Angeles Times offers insights into a new kind of bedtime story. While one mother once told her children bedtime stories about her native country of Mexico, she found after her deportation from the United States she could only tell her sons bedtime stories when they visited her in Tijuana. Instead of telling stories about Mexico, she found herself fielding questions from her children who did not understand why a border stood between their mother and father. Her sons made up bedtime stories. “They devised a series of childish schemes to get their mother back to the U.S. One involved a trampoline to bounce over the border wall. Or maybe they could attach a bunch of balloons to her limbs. Or put her in a box. One time, one young son asked if it would be okay to turn her into little pieces of paper. “This way I can take you with me across the line,” he said. “And then I can put you together with glue when we get back home.”
The mother wrote what she describes as the most important bedtime story she’ll ever tell: a fantastical tale about a young elf who joins with his brothers to battle dragons as they visit their mother in the land of the fairies. That narrative, “The Little Elf,” is now part of a collection of bedtime stories written by mothers and fathers living in Tijuana who have been separated from their families, for a book project called “Cuentos Para Dormir,” or “Bedtime Stories.” For nearly a year, educator and activist Sophia Sobko has crossed the border to Tijuana almost weekly to help the parents craft their stories into books that could then be given to children and family members in the U.S. She said the idea came to her about a year ago after listening to a segment on National Public Radio about the children of incarcerated parents.
KJ