My Inner 15 Year Old Showed Up Today and Shook Me Awake
A long buried dream rose up and demanded to be fulfilled
“She speaks fluent French.” How can four words — a very simple sentence, really — knock my world sideways and open a long closed door? Here’s how.
I was reading about Melody Gardot, a singer I admire, when these words — “She speaks fluent French” — seared my conscious self and burned straight through to my 15-year-old self. What happened when I read those words is nothing short of a “Damascus road” experience. I heard my heart beating in my ears. I felt myself gasp as I caught my breath. I heard a voice in my head, that then insisted on speaking out loud, say “I want to speak fluent French.”
This voice was my 15-year-old self, that part of me that has been buried, pushed aside, and summarily dismissed. She came swimming up from the deep and tapped me on the shoulder. She is the starry-eyed romantic who sat on the front row of Mrs. Markert’s French class in 1977. She’s the one who made pâté de foie gras and chocolate truffles for the French club Christmas party. The one who dreamed of walking the streets of Paris, speaking fluent French, and finding a real Frenchman to fall in love with.
Of course, when real life came knocking, it didn’t have a ticket to Paris in its back pocket. I was able to continue taking French for a year or two in college, after three years of sitting rapt and spellbound in Mrs. Markert’s French class, but then marriage, family, bills, trauma, divorce and reinventing myself shoved most of my dreams not to the back burner, but completely off the stove. Speaking French fell way down the list of things that were important to me at the time. But it was always in the back of my mind. In fact, I remember a year in my 30’s when I regularly dreamed in French.
But that was a long time ago, and the French I knew has been dropped into the pond of “things you don’t use you lose” and sunk way to the bottom. I still remember enough to understand it when a book I am reading uses French words or phrases. I can still hear Mrs. Markert tap her desk with a ruler and say “Fermez la bouche!” and “Alors” and “Ooh la la.” When we were practicing speaking she would say, “Dites moi” or “Comprenez vous?” Now I want to say “No!” I forgot! Please remind me!”
So when I heard myself say out loud “I want to speak fluent French” it felt like I was coming home. It was followed by a sense that this is no longer optional. My 15 year old looked me square in the eye and asked “What the hell have you been doing? It’s TIME.”
A few years ago I paid big bucks for a language app and then used it about ten times and gave up. Two hundred and thirty dollars down the drain. So this time I decided to see what is available for free. Immediately I pulled up YouTube. I hit the jackpot! YouTube has hundreds, maybe thousands of free French language videos. I found a few teachers that I really like and started listening. I discovered I remember more French than I thought I did. I think this is going to be fun.
When I was talking to my aunt — the one who is like a big sister, since she was 6 when I was born — she said she would like to brush up on her French, also. She lived in France for a while when she was in her 20’s and she has always wanted to go back. Real life happened to her, too, and she never made it. Now, we have a plan. We are going to France together. We are going to take our passable French with us, and we are going to fulfill the dreams of our younger selves.
But what I realize is that even if I never make it to France, that isn’t even the point. The point is, I owe it to my 15-year-old self to learn to speak French fluently — or at least passably well. I refuse to let myself be deterred this time. I am not too old to do this, just 45 years late. But I’m not dead yet.
When I was reinventing myself in my forties I failed to consult my 15-year-old self. More’s the pity, because she was quite a girl. I am so glad she’s still in there and I was able to recognize her when she showed up. Wonder what she will get up to next?