‘Mon Plaisir’

Blog # 17 -- Monica Rae

February 22nd, 2021

‘

The ‘L’ word.

I thought I knew what it meant.

I heard it enough growing up. My mother would tuck my sister and I into bed and say the same nightly greeting, “Good night girls, sweet dreams, love you.” My grandmothers would sign our birthday cards with, ‘Love always.’

After six months of dating my high school boyfriend we exchanged those words as the feelings we had developed heightened over hormones, make out sessions and memories.

When my daughter was born this ‘L’ word was redefined. Everything I thought I knew about it was tested by a fierce and uncontrollable desire to protect, feed, nurture and teach this life I had grown inside me.

I thought I knew what love meant.

I didn’t have a clue.

Until.

I got divorced.

You are probably thinking—that is a strange time to learn about love.

Not really.

Walls were taken down.

And without the leaving, without the change I would not have learned about the choosing.

I had to be uncomfortable.

To know.

The freedom of letting go allowed me to truly learn about love.

Love cannot be confined to the mandates we impose on it—in so doing, it ceases to be what it is.

This four-letter word has no walls. No one person has defined its meaning and no one religion, culture or relationship has the patent on its design.

Love is not an emotion and yet it is wrapped up in our tears. Love is more than a feeling—it is fluid and uncontrollable in its attempts to be captured by our poetry and promises.

The truth is, Love, like everything connected to our heart, to our spirit, to our humanity...

is always changing.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference…” Robert Frost

“Why can’t things stay the way they were before?” my daughter asked some time ago as we made a big move.

She was not crying because she questioned my love and devotion. She was crying because I had made her uncomfortable.

With change.

I stood in front of her unapologetically, relaying to her that I had done the hard thing. On purpose. I was guilty of that. What I would not let her adopt was the notion that she was a victim of her circumstances. Speaking with clarity of mind and a firm embrace, I spoke the wisdom of necessary change and the beauty of the ache.

The chocolate that oozes because it is buried deep in the truffle. The part of the movie just past the problem, but not at the end. The season when the puppy is chewing on the furniture but has not lost its cuteness.

The moment when you realize you know more, are capable of more, and want more than what you are sitting in. When that realization hits you like a brick falling on your foot...

It hurts and it reveals…

You cannot unknow what you know.

I know, I have made choices that others would not.

“…Why are you moving 2,000 miles away from your family at 18? …You are modeling for artists—why would they want you on their wall? …Homeschooling your daughter, are you sure? … Isn’t it time to get a real job? ... You’re going to Africa for how long?...”

Our reluctance

Our fears

Our judgements

They are grounded in risk—

Because there is something more terrifying than falling on our face

and it is found

in the tragedy of waste.

Time is life’s reminder that we are fleeting, and we are left with one thing.

Our choice

Our choice to seek

The unknown

The French Impressionist Composer Claude DeBussy's ‘Clair de Lune’ is echoing off the walls of a studio space I have been invited to.

The song is familiar—a soundtrack for movies and commercials. Without knowing it, I am sure I heard my grandmother play it on her cassette player when I was a child. Her classical music the backdrop to my grandfather’s TV programs.

But I really listened to this melody for the first time in a studio space of a brilliant artist and woman named Stacey. Oliver, her affectionate Irish Setter, greets me with his nose as he taps his paws on the hardwood floor like a deer trying to walk on ice. Amos, the talking African grey parrot, is cautious at my arrival but in the weeks to follow he copies my tone of excitement and bends his head down to greet me. Two shy cats pop into Stacey’s studio—on their own timetable, their feline swagger the obvious alpha status in the home. Their fur tickles my arm in mid pose and smiling in delight…I know only joy.

I am there to work with Stacey on a piece she was inspired to create. I am humbled to be asked and even more delighted to form a friendship with a woman whose soul bleeds such integrity. She turns the music on and begins to cover her canvas with layers of paint creating shadows from the light that dances through the window upon my body.

I ask her what song is playing…

And I am lifted.

Away from the worry, the pain, the lists, the expectations. I have escaped into her painting through the sound of Michael Dulin’s rendition of ‘Clair de Lune’…French for “light of the moon.”

A basic melody wrapped in darker chords.

Light yet mysterious.

Sad yet triumphant.

Calming yet emotional.

I am feeling everything at once.

The artist—the creation. The black—the white. The chosen—the given. The day—the night.

It is somewhere in the shadows of the moonlight…when the differences, the change, the uncomfortable, the new, the unknown becomes familiar.

What is the scariest part of the ‘L’ word?

It is found in what it requires of us—the vulnerability, the letting go.

Not of who we are.

More like a door we are opening.

To the unknown.

The unknown that slams right into the longing.

Recently, my daughter attended her first community dance. She walked in the building, not knowing a soul and came out changed. In her teenage glee she relayed she had danced with a boy for the first time. I knew the feeling—the way the cheeks feel hot and the hands sweat uncontrollably. I asked her the name of her dance partner and she confessed she did not remember!! I laughed and hugged my teenage baby. She asks when the next dance is, and I tell her so she can daydream. I am proud of her choice to do the new thing, the unknown, the uncomfortable.

What I know.

Is what I want her to know—

Our worth does not come from abandoning ourselves and womanhood should not be characterized by martyrdom. There is a place where the heart and mind connect, and clarity and purpose collide. When she learns this, she will know how to surrender to the change calling, the god guiding and the hands alongside choosing to love. Her.

When the composer DeBussy was asked to describe the ‘rule’ he followed in the pursuit of his work, he wrote, “We should be constantly reminding ourselves that the beauty of a work of art is something that will always remain mysterious…"

He unapologetically answered, "What is my rule? ... I follow ‘mon plaisir.’" (my pleasure)

I’m soon to be on a road I have chosen.

Or more accurately, on a plane. To arrive on the coast of Africa and sit among a choir of souls who are singing me home ….

I chose.

I know now what I did not then.

How what we decide lives deep in our conscience.

I will learn and become.

And without a doubt…

I will Love!

DEDICATION:

To Stacey, for bringing light into my life again, as an artist and friend.

To Dawn, Judy and Jayna who, without reservation, have stood so close to me and my child that our souls are forever changed.

And to the African souls who have chosen me in the midst of inconvenience, distance and time. You have rewritten my concept of love!

And for your listening pleasure: Michael Dulin’s rendition of ‘Clair de Lune’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSQbBddLbE4