dreaming in chocolate
For the last 7 years, in the month of June some time, there was a chocolate dinner at Chez Sue’s. All the planning would happen in fits and bursts of inspiration starting the day after the last chocolate dinner closed – a spice, a texture, an infusion of flavors that would make up each chocolate-filled course of this epic meal. The friends – and even friends of friends – who hoped and wondered all year long if they’d get an invitation to the next one, whenever that would be. In June…it was always in June, by the way. Here we are in June when I will now mention this is not only the month of the Haute Cacao (that’s the name for the chocolate dinners) but it’s a month of so much more significance to me. You see, this is also the month of my birthday and the anniversary of losing my Dad – just one precise week after that birthday. For all the years before I held my first Haute Cacao, the month of June (OK…the month of May, too) was a month of sadness and dark clouds and heaviness. I struggled and suffered for what often felt like eternity.
But one day... 8 or so years ago, I came up with this idea – to fill my days of May and June planning this epic meal. And in planning this epic meal, it would also mean that the people I cared about most would be in my company to enjoy the fruits of my ever so chocolate-y labor.
Here we are in June and there is no chocolate dinner I’ve been planning for. My crutch – the motivation for why I needed to dream instead of walk around town with a broken down heart was not planned. I stuttered for too long contemplating if I should even have not just THIS epic dinner party but really any dinner party at all. You see, I’ve been struggling with so many more things that have been weighing me down leading up to June that as the days came ever closer, the spirit of the chocolate dinner became lost in translation. In all my sickness, I have been pressed by those who support me in living to explain who I was supposed to be versus who I was becoming. I questioned the lessons I was supposed to have learned so that I could free myself from everything that was making living such a chore – figuratively and literally. Because this wasn’t me…not the me I had worked so hard to bring to life.
This brings us to living. The premise for this blog has always been just one of the many ways for me to fight for my identity. It came about because I was looking for a way to continue to remember who I was working so hard to live for. I was looking for the most important reasons for living. Living the best life I know includes all of the things I compose in the form of a cookie, a card, a cake, a book, a story, an epic meal -- dreams come true, for the people I love and who have supported me in my best and the – ever more frequent – worst of times. It also includes getting on my bike and riding for as long as I please across the rolling hills of Tuscany or any place else for that matter. And the laughter…there is a lot of laughter. If there wasn’t that laughter then everybody would know – the person I was becoming was certainly not me at all – who they saw before them was just a shadow, an imposter of some sort.
This now gets us to today. I used to practically hold my breath to get me to today – the day AFTER the day that is the anniversary of losing my Dad. When I instituted the Haute Cacao – shoot – when I became the Chocolate Girl – I stopped holding my breath. Instead I funneled my energy into demonstrating to my friends in the best way I know how what they mean to me in every little detail that is the Haute Cacao. With a bar of the bittersweet or a bottle of Pinot Noir (or both!), one by one 9 guests would enter my home and for hours we’d savor whatever I dreamed in chocolate. Junes became easier to endure. This time around, I didn’t have a chocolate dinner I was planning for. But I also didn’t hold my breath. Instead, I’ve spent my month making it a point to surround myself EVERY day with the most important people – the ones who make me laugh, the ones who listen to me cry, the ones who have helped me to evolve and grow stronger than I ever thought I could become. All this while at the same time I strive to not just endure a sickness that brings me to my knees like kryptonite in Superman’s hands but to overcome it – to defeat it. I don’t even know that I can defeat it but this woman I recently met, she told me to believe in miracles – that they come true. I followed her blindly for months – hopeful. Recently this same woman demonstrated to me what this really means. I understand now. I know what I need to do. I don’t need crutches. I no longer need to hold my breath. I just need dreams.
When I look back...my biggest dreams have always come true -- including those of the Haute Cacao variety...there will be another. I just realize now that it doesn't have to be in June. I mean I dream in chocolate all year long. Why can't it just be whenever I've dreamed in so much chocolate that it is enough to make up an entire meal?
Haute Cacao -- Le Septième is coming soon.