Mademoiselle de Paris

One of the sweetest memories I have of my sister Ludwina ( 1962-1998 ), when she was a five year old child and I was ten, is tied to a song written by Henri Contet and Paul Durand in 1948. My little sister must have heard the tune numerous times on the radio back then, because one day, at school during her Kindergarten recess, my entire 4th grade class heard her singing the refrain of the song over and over again, mostly humming what were supposed to be the words. I looked out the window, and so did our teacher, a very relaxed woman we called Miss Regina, as everyone in my class started smiling, listening to my sister's enthusiastic repetition of "...Mademoiselle , Mademoiselle de Paris, la,la,la, la-de-la,...Mademoiselle de Paris...", as she paced up and down, oblivious to any of her play mates around her. She was the cutest little kid, with her blond curls, and big smile and wide eyes. How my heart hurts to think back on this, as I invariably do from time to time, as her birthday draws near on July 20th. She would have been 50 this year, she was 35 when she hung herself in our parents' garage in their house in Georgia, with a lasso my parents had bought at the Grand Canyon in 1973. How did she figure out how to use the lasso so deadly effectively? Our parents' garage was big, and had a second floor, with high sturdy beams, and that  is where they found her, hanging from the tall beams. How did she know how to tie the knot, so it would hold  on the first try? Did she study knots, get a book from the library? To think my sister was so desperately unhappy, that she entered that dark tunnel of despair, and wanted to die. It never gets easy to deal with, even 14 years later. Mademoiselle de Paris is a bitter sweet song, about a seamstress who makes beautiful ballroom dresses for young women, and is lonely for love herself. My sister had a series of very unhappy romances, and it makes remembering her singing the song "Mademoiselle de Paris ", so fervently at such a young age all the more devastating. It was an almost prophetic song, as far as her future unhappy love life was concerned. It makes me wonder if there is such a thing as destiny, for better or for worse. Or maybe she had a fragile heart from the beginning, one that was impacted from a very young age by a distracted and socially ambiguous , narcissistic mother.