Yesterday, in Tavistock, I saw a cute little sign in a “stuff” shop: “Some things are better rich: Men, coffee, chocolate.” It put me in mind of a pillow I used to have with the same sentiment needlepointed on it. A good friend gave it to me when we were both between husbands 20 years ago; we both liked coffee and chocolate, if not men for a while as we were both recovering from the effects of marriage to a couple of substandard models.
That beloved pillow became, ludicrously, a bone of contention with one of my stepdaughters. She carried on about it several times, accusing me of marrying her father for his money. Simon is brilliant and does well, but he doesn’t have MONEY. I did, in fact, date a very nice and decent millionaire as well when I was first dating Simon…but I chose Simon. So no, I didn’t marry for money; I married for love.
And, indeed, the only person who wanted her father’s money illicitly was that very stepdaughter who proceeded to steal from Simon over the next year before we discovered it and put a screeching halt to her access and her excess. Needless to say, she is not named in his will.
And, indeed, the only person who wanted her father’s money illicitly was that very stepdaughter who proceeded to steal from Simon over the next year before we discovered it and put a screeching halt to her access and her excess. Needless to say, she is not named in his will.
But…back to a much more pleasing subject than family rancor, chocolate.
Chocolate has been much on my mind since I saw that sign yesterday, the pillow of contention notwithstanding. I awakened thinking about a chocolate cake I made for one of the other stepdaughters, Julia.
Julia seldom ate sweets, but loved the chocolate cake at The Olive Garden and asked if I could make one for her birthday dinner about four years ago. Sure. Well, maybe. It was an almost flourless cake—3 tablespoons of flour, I think, and a ton of chocolate. The thing had to be baked in a spring form pan wrapped in aluminum foil and plunged into a Bain Marie. A water bath. Yipes. However, I did it, and it was delicious. I haven’t done it since.
I might do it when Julia visits with her husband and baby in the fall. They can’t stay long, as her husband’s job is very demanding. So, I’m trying to make sure I fatten them up in every possible way in the scant week we have to work with. Chocolate never goes amiss, ultimately.
Sometimes chocolate gets a bad rep from those who equate pleasure with sin, as did the hard-shell Baptist wannabe townspeople in the movie Chocolat. Chocolate is, I think, a sacramental substance that can do good or evil, depending on how it is used. Like wine. Like any of the transcendent creations of humanity. Coffee. Tea. Rosewater. On that last, I’m admitting here that I adore Turkish Delight. I would say I especially like it coated with chocolate―as manufactured by Fry’s and purveyed in every Spar store in Britain―but I don’t. I prefer the two heavenly substances pure and unsullied by other equally seductive flavours. Turkish Delight is an acquired taste, I admit. But chocolate...or chocolat, if you prefer.....ah....
Chocolat is a film worth seeing more than once. Although many of the characters are caricatures, such caricatures help us to more clearly see the gifts we have by seeing such gifts simply and clearly drawn. The caricatures also show us the gifts we might ignore if, like a caricature, we should attempt to close off any part of ourselves―especially our desire for flavour (the British spelling seems so much more appropriate to the word used this way). Our desire for beauty, for real spirituality―that is, enjoyment of the wonders that are here for us. For friendship. Delight. Laughter. Wonder. Appreciation. And love.
In Chocolat, Vianne Rocher (played by Juliette Binoche, magically) brings all that to a small French village through her Mayan-influenced chocolate shop. She opens the doors at the beginning of Lent when the townspeople, held under the boot of a loveless nobleman far more than they are coerced by the young priest’s bemused attempts at religious rigor, are desperate for signs that the world is, after all, a delicious place to be. In the town, two elderly people need to fall in love at last, having denied themselves the pleasure for decades. An abused woman needs freedom and peace from her vicious spouse. A sour young widow needs to make peace with her mother, her child, and the man she loves quietly from afar.
I must admit, finally, that I love Chocolat because it presents to me all those things my journalist’s discernment ignores in its apparently endless quest for the unethical, the unconscionable and the distressing. I came by that trait honestly, though. When I was in kindergarten, the teacher asked me why I never smiled. I said, “Because I don’t see any reason to smile.”
Before you conclude that I had a miserable childhood, I didn’t. It was quite fine, in fact, with a doting grandmother whose special project I was, and lots of lovely little friends to play with. The fact was, I just had a sort of “glass half empty” mentality, and still do. So it is with some wonder that I find myself volubly appreciating sappy films such as Chocolat. Or wondering how we can pack more than a year’s worth of love into a scant week with Simon’s daughter Julia and her family. How to tell her how glad I am that she and Kevin and little Austyn have found their life together in a very nice first home near the beach in Maryland. How to tell her I wish her all the chocolate in the world, as I still wish chocolate for her two sisters who went wildly astray into theft and drugs and other very non-chocolate things. If only chocolate could return them to themselves and to those who love them.
Maybe it can. Maybe if I wish chocolate for them hard enough, they will repair their frightened souls. Or maybe not. The only thing chocolate can do, really, is open the pathway to delight, to the recognition that there is a deep richness, a just-right sweetness, a soft silken path through the universe that any soul can use to achieve, if not greatness, love and joy.
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