Tag: Personal

Pucker up and say moi

Published on by NouveauSoileau6 Comments

Unless you’re someone who knows my husband and I personally — or if perhaps, you hail from Louisiana — you’re probably a little mystified by the title of this blog.

NouveauSoileau, ya see, is a little clever play on words. My last name is Soileau, and I’ve only been a Soileau for a few years, hence I am a new Soileau. A nouveau Soileau, you might say, if you spoke French.

I think it’s fun — and hey! It rhymes.

Wait a minute. What? You didn’t know? You don’t know how to pronounce “Soileau,” do you?

Well, you’re not alone. Most of the speaking population, as far as I have been able to determine, could not correctly pronounce “Soileau” if their life depended on it — but only when confronted with the printed word S-O-I-L-E-A-U.

But you can do it, my learned reader, with a little help from the sure-fire Soileau Pronunciation Method™, perfected by my husband, who has more than 50 years of experience with this.

There are a handful of French words that most people can say, if you put a gun to their head, one of them being oui — or Wii, as it’s currently spelled. It means “yes.”

Another is voila, or as most people write, “wah-la.” It means “here,” not “ta-da” as most people mistakenly believe.

A third is moi, which means “me,” and is not spelled “mwah,” no matter how much time you spend on the internet.

Lastly, there’s plateau, which despite all that Frenchification there toward the end, it’s pretty recognizable to the average person as the word for “a flat place in the landscape.”

So let’s review: moi = mwah; plateau ends in something that sounds like “oh.”

I’ll wait a minute while that percolates.

OK, now substitute an “S” for the “m” in moi. Say it aloud …. swah.

Now tack on the end of “plateau” …. oh.

Now remember that Soileau has an “L” in there somewhere amongst all the vowels. Swah-low.

Soileau = Swallow! Like the bird! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a Soileau! Nouveau Soileau! Get it? It rhymes!

I’m glad we had this little talk.

My home town

Published on by NouveauSoileau2 Comments

I’ve been thinking about the place I’m from for the last few days. Thanks to Facebook, I’ve made contact and chatted with people that, in a different world, I may have never spoken to again. Not out of animosity, but simply because I doubt our paths ever would have crossed.

I rarely go to Carrollton any more; since my mother moved away in the 1990s, I no longer have any family there and I have to, as I tell people, “mean to go.” That happened in 2003 when I thought my then-boyfriend might like to see where I’m from; yes, my husband and I had a very good time.

But every few years, I get together with a few members of our old “gang” — we actually did, and still do, refer to ourselves that way. We re-established contact with one another in 2001, just a few weeks before 9/11, and have managed to cobble together mini-reunions every couple years or so. That doesn’t count last summer, though, when the mother of one of my best friends died. Attending her funeral allowed us back in touch, but the occasion was far too sad to have much fun.

So Facebook calls Carrollton to mind. And 2011 — the 30th anniversary of my graduation from high school. Thir-tee years? A 20-year reunion — well, that just sounds like Yes, Time Has Passed. Thirty years sounds like grandparents and where’s my scooter and the bottle of Geritol.

Be that as it may, in the spring of 1981, I graduated along with 111 other souls from Carroll County High School. Then I went out into the world.

Sidewalks and alley-ways

In some ways, my childhood was idyllic, insular. My little world revolved around Ninth Street and my friends along those two blocks: Lisa and Greg; Laura and all her brothers and sisters; Chris, Luanne, Ginny; the Bunnings, the Hills. It was a neighborhood overrun with kids, and with widow ladies. We played in their backyards, we patrolled the alleys behind all our houses, sucking the nectar out of the blossoms on the honeysuckle bushes and collecting pebbles in the alleys’ crude roadbeds.

Along with those alleys, the sidewalks and the trees were our homes. We were always outside, drawing hopscotch or four-square blocks on the sidewalks or driveways. We climbed, until we were gooey with sap, to the top of the highest pine tree in the back yard at the corner of Tenth and Sycamore streets.

And if we weren’t climbing or inventing some game or another on the sidewalks, we were riding our bikes. Our bikes were freedom, fast-moving freedom, and I’ll never forget my blue flowered banana-seat bike. I rode it until I got my 10-speed for my 12th birthday — which widened my horizons to the edge of every city limit Carrollton had.

We lived in a small square house with red shutters and dormers upstairs. A single window unit air-conditioner cooled the entire downstairs; upstairs, box fans blew the hot air out during long sweltering summers. In the winter noisy, banging steam radiators heated the house. Oh, how warm they were. A bay window looked out over Seminary Street and the cemetery beyond. Mom always made us be quiet during funerals.

People had problems and there were tragedies, but like most children, I was insulated from the world of adults and their troubles. For me, life was school, friends, and St. John’s Catholic Church.

St. John’s had a school but it closed after my third-grade year. But I’ll never forget the boys in my class (for I was the only girl). I sang in the choir, and knew without realizing it that we had one of the most beautiful voices in the world in the person of our church organist, Nancy Jo Grobmeyer. The choir was filled with some of the sweetest ladies I have ever known — Janie and Helen, sisters; Jeannie, many others. Life at St. John’s was my life: going to the annual Halloween Party, potlucks without number, the mysterious Easter Vigil Mass, 40 Hours Devotion. They’re all tied together in the sweetness that was my childhood.

I know I’ll go back again — some time soon, the gang will get back together and we’ll watch as our children will make another leap in age, going off to college and to their own lives. Most likely I’ll go to the class of 1981’s 30th reunion — if my Facebook campaign to organize it is successful.

It’s often said that to know who you are, you have to know where you’re from. I know where I’m from — a small town in Kentucky, sitting at the confluence of two rivers. Sure, small-town life has its faults — and I know as I’m sitting here this morning, I’m glossing over the lows and difficulties faced by any kid growing up.

But you know, sitting here I also am quite proud of the place that helped form who I am. That close-knit community nurtured and cared for me, and I know any time I go there, there are folks who would welcome me, even after I’ve been 30 years gone.

Graying gracefully

Published on by NouveauSoileau5 Comments

Or, going salt-and-pepper in a Clairol world

Ever since watching a video the other day of the woman who’s had the most plastic surgeries in the world, I’ve been thinking about aging.

Specifically, about me aging.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve thought about going gray ever since my mother began coloring her hair years ago.

Specifically, I vowed not to.

“You’ll change your mind, Ellen,” she predicted. “Just wait until the gray starts coming in and you look old.”

Looking old. That’s the problem. Like everyone else, I maintain that I’m the same person inside. I may have changed some of my opinions, sure —  may have even actually abandoned some previously held notions due to two strange things that seems to have happened to me: namely, wisdom and experience.

That said, though — I can still relate to the thin, dark-brown-haired 22-year-old version of myself. I remember much of what I thought and felt at the time. Then, my life was before me. Now, a good chunk of it is over. Yet youthful optimism has not left me, despite the slings ’n’ arrows of outrageous fortune and other Shakespearian tragedies that I have endured.

So what’s all that white stuff in my hair? Do I look old?

Strangely, I don’t think so. Or more specifically, it doesn’t scare me and I don’t think it looks bad. Those coarse gray hairs have brought a little curl with them. The variations in color give my bushy head some depth. They add a little — dare I say it? — style to my general appearance that I think looks pretty good with the cowboy-boot-and-swinging-serape thing that I’ve had going on the last few years.

I’m starting to think how hip it might be to look like a colorful old broad with a lot of life left in her. Seriously, I realize I’m not really breaking new ground here. Like everything else that’s happened to me in the last 10 years, many Boomers already got there first and their brand of aging with style has already become well-documented — particularly in car commercials and ads for erectile dysfunction medications.

But no matter. I’ve already taken a tip from the best of them. Several years ago, a friend who’s about 10 years older than I told me what she found so great about turning 50. She no longer cared what people thought. She’d emancipated herself, she confided, from the shackles of others’ negative opinions. She’d do what she liked, wear what pleased her and generally divorced herself from the crippling tyranny of the judgmental disapproval of others.

So I thought, hey I’ll beat the rush and start not giving a damn now. By the time I’m 50 I’ll have gotten the hang of it perfectly.

So that’s pretty much what I’ve done.

I should add here that I certainly do care what I say or do, if it hurts others’ feelings. I’m not talking about blazing through life like I’m the only person that matters.

No, I’m talking about dressing to please myself, listening to the music I enjoy, going against the grain and completely avoiding television and maintaining a completely oblivious state when it comes to either college or professional sports.

And letting my hair go gray.

Sure, like Mom predicted, I might change my mind if I indeed start looking too old. But I figure by the time that day comes, I’ll actually be old, instead of just being a little gray and a little wide in the butt.

As my 40s spin out and 50 seems more and more to be an actual age I’ll become one day, I see also the possibilities of 60. As my mom heads toward 70, somehow that doesn’t seem like the end of the world either. And as I glance at my now-age-spotted hands, I don’t see imperfections, I see the hands of my grandmother — hands I loved dearly and miss every day of my life.

And becoming like her … well, that’s not so scary either.