Endless Beginnings: The Learning of a Life Lesson

By Arlette Noirclerc

Arlette Noirclerc was born with a silver spoon in her mouth and spent her early childhood playing at the royal Chateau de Versailles. Those factors did not, however, lead to the life of leisure and luxury that she might have expected. Growing up in occupied France, Arlette learned early to fear the almighty German army, a fear that she was not released from until she witnessed American soldiers rescue France when they stormed Normandy on D-Day. It was on that day that her interest in America was piqued.

Throughout her life, Arlette has always felt guided spiritually. She grew curious about people and their spiritual philosophy and set out on her lifelong career in fashion, seemingly by chance, when a visit to London landed her a short stint as a representative for the House of Dior. Before long, she was offered a long-term position and the chance to live where her dreams carried herAmerica.

Arlette faced a series of peaks and valleys, from fame as a fashion designer and courtship by a Moroccan prince to life-threatening surgery and financial wipeouts. All of these things have contributed to her awakening about the laws of the Universe. In her memoir, Arlettes spiritual journey unfolds, demonstrating how, through it all, she was always able to make things work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475976946

Arlette Noirclerc

Arlette Noirclerc was born in Fontainebleau, France, in 1935. Her family moved to Versailles and then Normandy, where she was during D-Day. She graduated from Les Arts Decoratifs. While visiting London, she was contracted and later hired by the House of Dior. She has two sons, a daughter-in-law and three grandchildren. She now lives on Cape Cod.

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Endless

Beginnings

38006.jpg

The Learning of a Life Lesson

Arlette Noirclerc

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Endless Beginnings

The Learning of a Life Lesson

Copyright © 2013 Arlette Noirclerc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-7692-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-7693-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-7694-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013902869

iUniverse rev. date: 3/29/2013

Table of Contents

Dedication

Prologue

Part One

Chapter One Learning to Walk Alone

Chapter Two Building My Imagination

Chapter Three The Liberation

Chapter Four Teenage Years

Chapter Five The House of Dior

Part Two

Chapter Six Land of Vision and Dreams

Chapter Seven Going Back to France

Chapter Eight Returning to My Adoptive Country

Chapter Nine Discovering Our Many Selves

Chapter Ten Chevry, My Parents’ Success

Chapter Eleven The Night I Cheated Death

Chapter Twelve Every day in every way, I am better and better…

Chapter Thirteen Sacha

Chapter Fourteen Morocco, A Thousand and One Dreams

Chapter Fifteen Boston, Newbury Street

Chapter Sixteen Mystic India

Part Three

Chapter Seventeen Moving to California

Chapter Eighteen Five Armed Men…

Chapter Nineteen Becoming an Entrepreneur

Chapter Twenty A Very Big Mistake

Chapter Twenty-One The Earthquake

Chapter Twenty-Two The Universe

Chapter Twenty-Three The Land of Tides

Chapter Twenty-Four Learning to Live with Cancer

Part Four

Chapter Twenty-Five Moving to Florida

Chapter Twenty-Six Orange Juice and Sunshine

Chapter Twenty-Seven Sunny Land of Florida

Chapter Twenty-Eight The End of a Career

Part Five

Chapter Twenty-Nine What Next?

Chapter Thirty Climbing the Lembert Dome

Chapter Thirty-One Peace

Chapter Thirty-Two Putting It Together

Chapter Thirty-Three My Universal Laws

Dedication

I want to thank my family, friends and people who crossed my path in helping me understand the lessons I had to learn in life. Their interactions and my experiences made me the person I am today. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the Unitarian Universalist churches, which were the perfect homes for me, thanks to their understanding and recognition of the liberty and beliefs of all people. They made it possible for me to reconcile my old beliefs with the new ones I found along the way.

Prologue

I once read that a soul mate is the person who inflicts on you the worst pains because through those pains you learn the most and therefore receive the most.

We learn through hard times and great joys. The changes in my life were not by accident. I reached the conclusion that the obstacles thrown in my path by powerful forces caused me to explore a spiritual world I had not always believed in. The results of my search would eventually lead to the beliefs I hold today.

Some judged my life as unstable. But the ever-new beginnings were necessary to bring me to a place where I would know peace, tranquility and clarity. It took a war, a trip half-way around the world, two broken marriages, a violent attack, numerous affairs, major operations, several business ventures, many moves around the country, numerous workshops and meetings with great spiritual teachers and, above all, the love of my children to mold my heart and soul and achieve a healthy mental, physical and spiritual life.

I took many chances, often acted impulsively and sometimes too quickly, but as I learned through books and experiences, I always felt guided. My decisions were made when I got a feeling that some action was the best thing to do at the time. I hesitated rarely, knowing I was following what was laid out for me. Eventually I would understand that the hardships were lessons, the joys were gifts and that things happen for a reason.

This book was conceived in the spring of 2006, when I was wondering if my patience was being tested again or if there was something else being asked of me. I had been at a crossroad, contemplating a new life and this new dilemma struck a chord in my mind. Finding another beginning was what I had been doing all my life and I was good at it.

I had sold my last business, a fashionable shop in the heart of Sarasota, Florida and I knew it was time to make drastic changes that included selling my house and planning my retirement. Florida was in a downspin real-estate bubble and properties were slow to change hands. As long as my house was not sold, my life remained at a standstill.

Then, one morning the strongest feeling of what to do next came over me: The story of my life had to be told. I sensed that others would benefit from knowing about my experiences, which had shown me the way to a sense of peace. It would tell how the universe has laws that have to be learned and respected.

My story would recall the circumstances, people and events that had changed my life. It would tell about my search and the tribulations of a gypsy-like, dynamic life that forced me to look for people who would influence me and help me get to the place in life I cherish today. Joy and pain had brought me here and I always had powerful forces and people helping me along the way.

Born in France with too much, I was selfish and uncaring as a youth. My destiny placed me at birth in an environment too restrictive for me to learn the true principles of life. My mother had been brought up by very strict parents who never accepted her free spirit and individuality. She married a man who adored her but had little in common with her. My father always wanted to do the right thing, but he never understood his own children. He thought his role was to tell them what to think instead of helping them develop their own minds. They were loving parents but had a hard time bringing up their teenage children as Protestants in a predominantly Roman Catholic country and a harder time coping with the German occupation during World War II. The aftermath of the war added more problems. Food was hard to find and people held resentments towards one another because of their political beliefs.

Too many ups and downs at home created an atmosphere I wanted to escape. Being the third one of the family, I was treated like a baby and nobody had any interest in what I had to say. I felt alone in a world that was scarred by the war and was just starting to set aside the memory of its atrocities. I dreamed of other shores and wanted to have fun and move away from it all.

The universe would eventually propel me into a life that would give me all the tools and experiences necessary to grow beyond my limited circumstances. I discovered that there are universal laws guiding us ever so gently and I had to learn them. After years of reading and sharing my thoughts with others, I eventually did learn these universal laws and I was able to read and accept the signs showing me the way. These signs became more obvious as I learned to pay more attention to what was going on around me.

So I hope my story will bring some clarity to the people I love the most, but also to others who might use it to make more sense of what appears to be complete chaos in their own life.

Part One

Chapter One

Learning to Walk Alone

Very early one April morning in 1935 in the city of Fontainebleau, seventy miles south of Paris, I came into the world. Shortly after I was born, my family moved to Versailles near the palace of Versailles and Paris, where my father began working in the headquarters of the company where he was employed.

My brother and sister, Dany and Roby, were very close in age, nearly twins, five and six years older than I. They did everything together and their private world was disrupted when their baby sister appeared. They never played with or had any interest in me and I never tried to understand why they left me alone. I was quite content and did not feel left out because I thought they were too old to play with me.

My isolation turned out to be a blessing as it forced me to look elsewhere for companionships. Later on, my love for people and the burning desire to express my feelings made me develop many friendships all over the world.

My ally was my father. He was a busy man, an engineer and general manager of a large business making electric cables. But when it came to me, he always had time and stopped what he was doing for a few minutes to listen to my stories. I still remember hiding under his huge desk while he smiled at my mother opening the door of his office to check if I had not intruded again. She had caught me many times in the sanctity of this room and had taken me away to let my father work undisturbed by my childish verbiage. He called me Alouette and was a god to me.

World War II was raging outside my world and food was rationed. But my father made sure we always had what we needed. Whenever he went to visit his company factory in Normandy he would visit some local farmers to get a ham, sausages or delicious jam to bring home.

While he was coming back from one of his food expeditions one day, his train did not stop in Versailles. Instead, it slowed down enough so that he could jump out. He had to throw his briefcase to the ground before making the jump himself. When he arrived home and opened his briefcase, to the family’s dismay we had to throw away just about everything he was carrying. The glass container of the precious jam had shattered into small pieces, making it too dangerous to eat anything he so carefully transported back for us.

At the time, Versailles was in the occupied zone and we had stopped going to our seaside vacation home because it was in the free zone and you could not go from the occupied zone to the free zone without passes and approval from the authorities. Some people could not leave the occupied zone at all.

During these troubled times I learned what fear was. The German army was everywhere. You could not step out of the apartment building without seeing soldiers and officers everywhere. I was afraid of their shiny swords with silver ornaments and tassels The German language and its guttural sounds became part of my world.

As a five-year-old I heard grownups talking about what was going on around us, people who were arrested, the fear people were living under and the food shortage. I used to hide and listen to what they were saying and I grasped the meaning of the horrors that people who had been arrested experienced.

I learned early to avoid all these infamous warriors. I remember once walking along the avenue, looking down, completely lost in my own childish dreams, when accidentally I bumped into one of the dreaded enemy giants. I was so small and he was so tall. At that moment, the ground disappeared under me. Was I going to be taken away from my mother? I feared that the stories I had heard were about to become my reality. All the nervousness, fear and anxiety surfaced in a split second. But I did not have time to dwell on this. The giant simply smiled at me and walked away.

Utterly confused, not understanding what had just happened, I asked my mother why I was not taken away. You’re just a little girl, said my mother, laughingly. But this answer was not good enough for me. I needed to understand why those giants could have good feelings sometimes and be so cruel at other times. This was the first time in my life I started questioning facts.

What was complicated for me to understand then would become clear much later in life, that people are very complex and can show good and bad intentions. I believe it was one of the first exercises given to me by the universe to sharpen my mind. Young children of five or six years of age often have spontaneous reasoning, which can be amazingly accurate before experiences, good or bad, teach them to copy their peers. In losing their innocence, they often lose their natural instincts and truthfulness.

One thing I remember about the German occupation was going to school with a tiny gas mask designed for young children. There were two small bottles and a gauze pad in the bag containing the gas mask. I was told by my mother how to use it. You first place a few drops from the number one bottle on the gauze pad and then add a few drops from the number two bottle. Place the pad inside the mask and then place the mask on your face, making sure you secure the nose clip on your nose. It was all very matter-of-fact. But we had been told that gas killed people, so it was scary to me as a five-year old.

The school where I attended kindergarten was in an old stone building about a mile away from home. Most of the time my mother walked me to school. When she could not, our long-time housekeeper, Maria, went with me and held my hand tightly, as if she was afraid I would run off. It seemed everyone was nervous at the time.

Kindergarten was fun because I made many friends there. But I had a hard time with my teacher who was determined to force me to use my right hand to write. A slap of her pencil on my fingers reminded me often that being left-handed was totally inexcusable in those days.

That same year at Christmastime I experienced the first moment of pure and complete joy in my life. My sister, brother and I had been sleeping in the same room as there were only two heated bedrooms in the huge apartment. On Christmas morning, we were just waking up when my mother asked us to come and join her and my father in their bedroom to see all the presents Santa had brought us. The three of us eagerly jumped out of bed and went to their bedroom.

I unwrapped my first present as fast as I could and, when I saw it, I went into a state of what I can only describe today as ecstasy.

There it was, the doll I had admired in the toy shop we visited on many occasions was now in my arms. It was the most precious and beautiful thing I had ever seen. It looked like a real baby, the size of a three-month-old with soft arms and legs. What fascinated me were her eyes, which could open and close and had long eyelashes. The doll was an expensive present and a little extravagant for a little girl, but my mother understood what it meant to me and bought it just in time for Christmas.

I had few friends at that age, so I played with my doll all the time.

When I was twenty four and moved to the U.S., I was very upset to find out that my parents had disposed of her. Still, the doll and the wonderful times I experienced with her stayed engraved in my memory as the happiest of those difficult times.

This gift of joy from my mother at such an early age helped me later in life to understand how deep children’s feelings are and how important it is to acknowledge them. Discipline is a must, but a little pampering goes a long way. The best proof of this is that seventy years later, I still remember a doll given to me by a loving mother.

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When I was seven years old I wanted a bird. My mother explained to me that birds should be free to fly in the sky and that it would be sad to have one in the house. She did not convince me, so I looked at pictures to learn more about birds. I imagined my bird different from other birds, as he would enjoy his cage and be happy to be in my care. I would talk to him when I woke up and say good night in the evening. From a very early age I knew what I wanted and rarely changed my mind, which made it difficult for my parents to get their way.

Within a few months after speaking with my mother about getting a bird, I put my allowance aside and, with the help of my older sister, bought some bird seed. My mother was convinced that I would eventually renounce my bird fantasy, so she let me keep my bird seed in my room, provided that it was stored in an aluminum box to keep bugs away. But I kept putting my allowance aside.

After