fifteen

I arrived home exhausted. All this new information was whirling around in my head. So many changes to make in such a short time! I needed a good bath to relax. I put in a ton of bubbles and slipped into the scalding water to play with the foam like I used to when I was a child: wonderful!

For once I had the time: the previous evening, rather than watch TV, I had gotten supper ready for tonight. All we had to do was sit down and eat.

The meal was a real treat and earned me a chorus of oohs and aahs of delight from my men’s satisfied taste buds.

“It’s wicked, Mom! You should go on MasterChef!”

I laughed to myself when I saw my son serving himself a third helping of the tart, in which I had slipped some silky tofu and zucchini with olives and slices of goat’s cheese.

He’s eating zucchini . . . He’s eating zucchini . . .

It’s true that it made a change from frozen food.

After supper Adrien often asked me to play a board game with him, but I never felt up to it. Besides, wasn’t I a bit old? When this time I said yes, his jaw dropped. The gleam of joy in his eyes, that unadulterated joy only children feel, swept away any remaining doubts.

Again, this was something Claude had suggested. To stop being too adult. To let myself go more in sharing moments with my son. “The secret is to join in,” he had said, winking in complicity. So there I was trying to reconnect with my inner child, that playful, creative side of myself too often held in check by the adult, party-pooper side of my character. Against all expectations, I enjoyed myself. And my son’s radiant face made it all worthwhile. With his need for play and for company fully satisfied, he went to bed without any fuss. Bingo!

“Come and have a cuddle,” said Sebastien from the sofa when I rejoined him in the living room.

“A bit later,” I replied gently. “I’ve got work to do.”

He seemed surprised, even slightly taken aback. Maybe because it was usually me wanting physical contact. For once, the roles were reversed. Could it be I had found the right tension on our elastic band?

I sat at the table in the dining room with my laptop and some paper and pencils. I began with the simplest task: to make a list of the famous people I wanted to be like.

I wrote in a rush:

I’d like to have the wisdom of a Gandhi, the calm of a Buddha, the grace of an Audrey Hepburn, the business acumen of a Rockefeller, the willpower and self-denial of a Mother Teresa, the courage of a Martin Luther King Jr., the deductive skill of a Sherlock Holmes, the creative genius of a Picasso, the inventiveness of a Steve Jobs, the visionary imagination of a Leonardo da Vinci, the emotive power of a Chaplin, and finally the composure and good nature of my grandfather!

Pleased with my brainstorming, I searched for and then printed photos of all these people to create the collage of my role models. I had not been expecting to feel so good doing this exercise: all those faces inspired and revitalized me. Looking at them, I tried to understand—as far as I could—the secret of their talent, to learn just a little of the lesson of their success. I found that this small exercise allowed me to highlight some of my own good qualities and to focus more keenly on what kind of person I wished to become.

The collage of my role models looked fantastic. I decided to give it pride of place next to my desk. Then I continued to research my favorite subject: the fashion world. I read biographies of the great designers, including my all-time favorite: Jean Paul Gaultier.

I avidly read his Wikipedia entry:

At the age of fifteen, he designed sketches of a children’s clothes collection. It was after seeing the movie Paris Frills by Jacques Becker, for which Marcel Rochas designed all the costumes, that he decided to make fashion his profession. He sent a portfolio to Yves Saint Laurent but was rejected. Next his sketches went to Pierre Cardin. On the day of his eighteenth birthday, he joined that fashion house, where he spent a little under a year before moving on to the “madcap” Jacques Esterel. In 1971, he joined Jean Patou.

How could such a talented man be rejected at the start of his career by Yves Saint Laurent? Unbelievable. It reminded me of the story about perseverance that my grandfather often used to tell me:

“Do you know who this man is? He was born in poverty and had to face defeat throughout his life. He could have given up many times and found a thousand reasons for doing so, and yet he didn’t. He had the mind-set of a champion and in the end became one. And a champion never gives up. As a child, he was driven from his house. He lost his mother. Went bust for the first time. Was defeated in the state legislative elections. Lost his job. Went bust again and took seventeen years to pay off his debts. His fiancée died. He suffered a serious nervous breakdown. Was defeated as chairman of the House of Representatives in Illinois, then elected to Congress, but not reelected. He was never appointed to the post of county surveyor in his native state, although he applied for it many times. He ran for the United States Senate but lost. Was a candidate for the vice presidency at his party’s national convention and won fewer than a hundred votes. He ran for the Senate again and was beaten again . . . That man, Camille, was President Abraham Lincoln!”

He always smiled as he came to his punch line.

What about me? Had I persevered throughout my life or had I given up too quickly on my dreams? That thought soured my mood. Disgruntled, I went to the closet at the end of the hallway and took out my portfolio. I silently flicked through the designs I had drawn years earlier as a student. I was astonished to see how freely I drew: I had a real talent back then. Maybe I could have done something with it, if I’d gone to art school rather than taken up business studies. But it was too late now. Alongside academic exercises, I had enjoyed redesigning typical children’s clothes. I’d imagined altering the fabrics, adding accessories, making them look really original.

“Wow! Are you really going to poke your nose into those dusty old things? What a nostalgia fest,” Sebastien teased me as he went past.

I shot him a furious look.

“I’m sorry! I was only joking,” he said, kissing me on the cheek. “Your drawings are really good. Are you coming to bed?”

“No, not straightaway. I want to look at these a while longer.”

I caressed the sheets of paper with my fingertips the way you caress a dream. What if I decided to bring my dream back to life? Would Sebastien understand? Would he support me? I couldn’t answer that question . . .