Apologia Pro Vita Sua

Le Petit Grignotage
Christine

My Dear Basil,

Hearty thanks for your memoir of some weeks back; it explains so much about you.

As for me, I must admonish you warmly for failing to pay attention, as many of your questions would have been answered by reading my confession published in these very pages. Therein, you would have discovered that I am of French-Vietnamese descent, of the royal line of Lê, the longest dynasty to rule the old country during what is known as its Golden Age, from 1428 to 1788. You would have known that my grandmother married a French colonel stationed in l’Indochine and bore two daughters, one of whom was my mother, who went on to wed a successful civil engineer—my dear father. As he was also chairman of a bank and my mother inherited a jewelry business, we were living it large, as they say; we had a cook to make our meals, a maid to sweep our floors, and three nannies to wipe each of our privileged bottoms.

But Mr. Ho Chi Minh, never one to pass up a pillaging in the name of equality, brought his own brand of freedom to town by seizing our possessions to keep for himself distribute to the poor. After my father fractured about thirty bones in a motorcycle accident, he switched careers to medicine, a lifelong dream. Two years into it, alas, he made the hard decision to leave his homeland for farther shores. With the new government, Saigon was not the same place. We bought one-way tickets to France and never looked back. Some years later, the Land of Opportunity beckoned, and the rest is history. Through industry (and not a small amount of grace), my parents have bought their own little corner of paradise in Florida and have put three children through college (two doctors, and one greasy lawyer, who's forsaken the prestige and profit of law firm life to raise her children).

I had the misfortune of being schooled publicly, but it was mitigated by the fact that, after the appropriate head tests, I was placed in the gifted program—which didn’t mean I was smarter than anyone else, just that I got to spend my days doing what I liked rather than what I was told: reading books, doing puzzles, drawing pictures, and learning about computers (back when Apple was king).

As to the rest of my tangled youth—my anarchist period, when I thought the height of musical purity was Minor Threat and Operation Ivy; my hyperCalvinist days, when the mere thought of reading The Institutes gave me a thrill; my pseudo-hippy phase, when I refused to shave my legs—these episodes must, to paraphrase Wittgenstein, be passed over in silence, as they serve more to embarrass than to edify.

After studying philosophy in Gainesville, Florida, I did a Master’s degree in Theology (patristics) at Wolfson College (an unfortunately secular college with no chapel, self-described as of “democratic structure” and “egalitarian ethos”, and, with its minimalist architecture and different colored windows, looks like an oversized Piet Mondrian; the advantage was that we were right on the Isis in leafy north Oxford, close to Waugh’s own St. Aloysius on Woodstock Road, which I would have attended every day if only I had been Catholic [oh, if only, if only...]). I would meet with my supervisor at Christ Church every so often, where he would promptly proceed to bite my head off in our tutorial sessions (he bit all his students’ heads off; it was his way of testing our mettle; One girl left each session in tears, but I was made of sterner stuff, which made him warm up to me in the end).

Now, my husband I met in the middle of all this. Let us say we met via unconventional means, and leave it at that. He was a math student back in the States, as well as being a chess addict whose favorite pastime was to play blindfold chess with his friends until three in the morning. He had me hooked, and before I knew it I was reading Nimzovich and studying openings and endgame strategy, and playing tournaments for the Oxford University Chess Club. This and being captain of my boat for college crew makes me wonder how I ever had time to write my thesis (vapidly titled Augustine and Modern Epistemology [note the absence of proper prefix St., as I was not a Catholic then.], and analyzing his Credo ut intelligam in the context of modern philosophy; my later law review article would draw on this thesis and incorporate First Amendment jurisprudence in the more whimsically named Epistemological Nonsense? The Secular/Religious Distinction). At my viva voce, I had the temerity to tell one of my oral examiners that he “hadn’t grasped my point.” His objections notwithstanding, I was recommended to probationer research status (for non-Oxonians, this means doctoral studies). For lack of funds and a desire to marry my one and only, I turned down the offer and moved to the placid Midwest.

But I haven’t said a thing about how we were engaged. Toward the end of my degree, during the Long Vacation, my beloved flew over to Albion’s shores, after which we took the Chunnel to Paris for a three-day escapade in the City of Lights. One evening as we stood atop Montmartre in front of the Basilique du Sacré Coeur, its white steps flocked by cadres of Parisian youth, and dusk falling all over Paris, its thousand lights twinkling, he proposed. I accepted. We weren’t Catholic then, and I wouldn’t have been able to tell you the difference between a Carmelite and a caramel, much less explain the sacraments. But looking back, I am more than a little pleased to know our nuptials were promised on the holiest site in all of Paris, where martyrs had forfeited their lives for the Church, and where Our Eucharistic Lord had been exposed and adored unbroken for over a century—and by whom? By none less than the Carmelites, whose convent, built with the same white brick as the basilica, stands on the same hallowed hill.

Unlike the Countess, I honeymooned with the spouse, in a pine cottage in Camden, Maine—after which we drove down the East Coast and hit the old universities: Harvard, MIT, Yale, and ended our peregrination in D.C. Then it was off to Notre Dame Law School, where I repented of my heresy and apostacy in my third and final year of studies through the help of a Canon Law course taught by a remarkable Franciscan priest.

But my memoirs have already gone on too long. My story is still unfolding, and whatever else is left will be revealed, as will all of ours, in the Great Beyond (where I hope, after a long spell in Purgatory, I hope to see you, Sir Basil…).

Yours felicitously,
Christine

You can read more from Christine at her own blog, Laudem Gloriae.

Comments

[Father M.]

Christine,
"...The difference between a Carmelite and a caramel..."

How wonderful that you should post your story about your engagement at Sacre Coeur on the feast of St. Margaret Mary, the visionary of the Sacred Heart.

[Christine]

Fr. M,
I hadn't even remembered. Thank you for pointing this out! Paray-la-Monial is only about 60 miles south of where we are. I hope to visit the church there where St. Margaret Mary's relics lie.

[Crackie]

I will always remember my staying too late at the top of Sacre Coeur, watching the sun go down. Descending alone in a pitch dark tower with slippery stone steps had me wondering if I would make it. Then I heard the Carmelite nuns singing, and I realized I was just getting a peek at heaven, albeit through a glass very darkly.
Christine, I think you may well be right about Sir Basil, alas, having a long stretch in Purgatory. But I am sure he will be worth waiting for...

[Mrs. Peperium]

Alright, I waited for 24 hours for someone else to make the observation, but no one came forth.

Crackie, Basil will not be worth the wait, because whatever it is that makes Basil, Basil, will have been burned out of him.

[Christine]

Oh, Mrs. P, surely not!

[Mrs. Peperium]

Think about it.

[Crackie]

Alright, I waited for 24 hours for someone else to make the objection that I was deliberately misreading Christine. Surely, in her original post Christine was humbly referring to her own potential long stay in Ecclesia Penitens--not to such a sojourn by Sir Basil. But now I find upon my return here that my deliberate misreading has been adopted as canonical. What is this blog coming to?

[Mrs. Peperium]

Crackie, a gentlemanly heads up -- you may want to wait another 24 hours before attempting to answer that one....and then it may be another 24 hours or longer before you can actually answer it...

[Christine]

To clarify, the placement of the phrase was meant to obfuscate...

[Lorraine]

Well, Christine, Sir Basil's neglect proved rather felicitous if it served to prompt this APVT. I am a sucker for family histories.

[Christine]

Lorraine,
You must give us yours someday...

[Lorraine]

Gulp.

[Mrs. Peperium]

A gulp that good means there something worth listening to. Yes, by all means, do tell us your story Lorraine..

We'll even give you your own invited guest column...

[Lorraine]

Here it comes...

[Mrs. Peperium]

Got it!

[Christine]

When do we see it?

[Mrs. Peperium]

Tuesday.

[Card's wife]

You were right about Maxy. No Prius in sight.

[Mrs. Peperium]

Now what have you done?

[Mrs. Peperium]

Did you crash Maxy's site? Maxy, if you can read this, you must understand something. While I may be a witch, the Card's wife is a woodland nymph...

[Card's wife]

No, I took the quiz and I'm a Vampire.

[Mrs. Peperium]

I thought you only drank vodka.

[Card's wife]

With a little dry vermouth. Speaking of, where's Crackie?

[Mrs. Peperium]

If I were you, I'd reconsider the vampire thing and og back to your original woodland nymph thing:

http://lov.li/img/media/allimages/1380.jpg

[Card's wife]

Resorting to art...