No ordinary island

Pandemic be damned, it’s summer. And summer means vacation. Because this is France, and liberté-égalité-congés payés is what. As for myself, I may never truly be on vacation again because I am self-employed, but Covid-19 has suddenly placed new emphasis on the free aspect of freelance, so sure, bailing for several weeks is fine.

Normally, my parents were due for a visit this summer and we were all going to Ireland, but the whole 2020 pangolins-bats-yada yada-cough cough-touch nothing-go nowhere-viral armageddon kind of threw a wrench into that. Plus President Macron told us to behave and stay (relatively) close to home.

Us: Corsica is technically in France. Let’s go to Corsica!

When in Corsica, one definitely needs a car. So we decided to cross nearly the full length of the mainland and take a ferry docked in Nice, thus keeping our car and avoiding the airport. The very thought of the airport sends my cortisol levels through the roof. Maybe because of multiple experiences such as this one.

Sure looks good from here.

Parking on the ferry was interesting. Its staff for some reason was made up of 100% irate Italians, barking barely recognizable orders as we maneuvered our way onto one of the lower decks. I don’t know what madman came up with the parking plan on this thing, but the cars were crammed in so closely together that we couldn’t so much as open either of the doors on the right-hand side. Weird. Somewhat barbaric. Borderline panic-inducing. Oh well!

The crossing took six hours, which maybe would have been OK with the kids if the on-board activities and attractions had been open, but thanks to our pal Coronavirus, everything was closed. The whining commenced almost immediately.

Dear son: Mom this boat sucks so muuuuuuch! There’s nothing to doooooooo!

Me: Do you know what you sound like right now? Like an overprivileged white kid with first world problems. You are lucky and I mean really lucky to be voyaging across the Mediterranean with your sister and two parents who love you while other kids out there are hungry or homeless or caught in the midst of war—do you hear me?—WAR!  

Dear son: *stares blankly at me*

Me: Oh never mind. Here’s half a Twix.

Dear son: *smiles*

Exiting the boat was hellish. Actually, scrap the -ish. It was straight-up hell. Dark, hot, crowded, airless, and definitely not compliant with social distancing measures. It was bad. They really need to rethink that whole park-on-top-of-your-neighbor concept. But we lived. Next.

The first week, we stayed in Lumio, a charming hillside town overlooking the sparkling Bay of Calvi, and also the home of supermodel Laetitia Casta (who knew?). The rental was fab:

Each day, we explored northern Corsica to the best of our abilities. We took twisty windy hold-onto-your-faith-with-both-hands cliffside roads with breathtaking (and potentially life-taking) views. We discovered the UNESCO world heritage site of Scandola, with its turquoise coves and rainbow rock formations:

The kids dug it:

We ventured onto secret beaches and swam in natural pools. We enjoyed picnic lunches and al fresco dinners. We caught some lizards and a few sea critters. We scraped the finish off the side of our car on a giant yucca. We ate some exceedingly pungent cheese. We visited perched villages in the 90° heat.

The kids dug it:

Northern Corsica is rugged and wonderful, surrounded by turquoise water and vegetation that looks surprisingly similar to that of San Diego (represent!). It also has simply incredible rock. Quartz, limestone, rare pink granite, basalt. Gorgeous. Every river, every beach, every natural pool is a treasure trove of multi-colored boulders and pebbles:

I’m hooked on macro photography, for better or worse.

Only downside: the heat. I don’t do heat (I don’t really do cold, either, but that’s a topic for another day). In fact, the older I get, the less I do heat. At least when it’s cold, you can put on an extra sweater. But when it’s hot, all you can do is stand in front of the A/C or go swimming. So we stood in front of the A/C and went swimming. A lot. I actually ended up with a tan, which totally flies in the face of the whole Scandinavian vibe I usually have going.

At sunset, we would climb up to our rooftop terrace with a view of the bay for apéro, every surface still radiating the day’s warmth, crickets chirping, the lights of Lumio twinkling on the hill behind us and the stars sparkling above. It was otherworldly.

Then suddenly, a whole week was over and it was time to head south. Despite its modest size, Corsica has a remarkably rich and varied landscape; we traded the golden cliffs and Californian vegetation of the north for the sandier, balmier, more Côte d’Azur feel of the south (which is somewhat bizarre considering we were farther than ever from the actual Côte d’Azur, but OK).

Our next rental was also nice, although less “authentic” than our first. It had a little cubby hole kids’ room accessible via a really dangerous-looking ladder, a classic example of what the French would call a fausse bonne idée (an idea that seems good at first but is actually a curse in disguise). The A/C was right on the money, though, so we just upped our level of vigilance by about 200%:

What lawsuit?

Our “mini villa” (*grabs dictionary, looks up oxymoron*) was also in close proximity to some of the world’s most beautiful white sand beaches, so we hit the beach and I mean HIT IT. Lots of sand and sun and more sand and more sun! I got even tanner! My pale-faced ancestors were surely spinning pirouettes in their graves!

We also visited the southernmost tip of the island, a splendid city called Bonifacio. Magnificent scenery. I took roughly 200 photos because how could you not? Many of them were macro shots of flowers and the famous Corsican maquis, but I will spare you!

One of the “musts” in Bonifacio is a staircase carved into the side of a cliff known as the Staircase of the King of Aragon, which is a secret passage to a natural spring with fabulous views of the sea. According to legend, it was built by said king’s troops during a siege one night in 1420, although the truth is that it was probably built by monks (which is just the absolute opposite of the legend, but whatever!). In any case, after donning protective gear and completing the visit, I came away feeling highly dubious that any king, legendary or otherwise, ever huffed it up and down this killer staircase. Pity his servants and water-bearers, although I’m sure their rear ends were as finely chiseled as those 187 steps.

The kids dug it, bien sûr:

And lest I forget a personal highlight, mountain child that I am: Corsica is also blessed with absolutely glorious mountains. In fact, so mountainous is the island that it is often referred to as une montagne dans la mer (a mountain in the sea). So many ridges and peaks to choose from! We explored just a smidgeon, but I’d gladly have lingered far longer. I mean look at this:

An extraordinarily magical, mystical land altogether. Being a fervent admirer of all things Tolkienian, and in the midst of reading The Silmarillion with the utmost relish, Eru Ilúvatar, Varda, Ulmo et al. were on my mind quite a bit throughout our travels.

Corsica or Middle Earth?

In conclusion, and if I may wax profound for just a minute here—Corsica took my breath away. I have been travelling around France for nearly 20 years now, and have discovered countless things to love, but this island had an entirely different, deliciously unique feel to it. In Corsica, the imprint of French Civilization is far less overwhelming than it is on the mainland, where art and architecture speak passionately and eloquently of human history, of human achievement. In Corsica, the roles are reversed: structures, however handsome, are ultimately mere props; Nature is the true star of the show. Polychrome rock. Spirited wind. Fiery sun. Crystalline water. They spoke deeply and powerfully to me on this trip, cutting through the layers of suppressed anxiety and accumulated mental clutter. 

In these strange and often surreal times, the “new normal” for many of us is one of uncertainty, of disorientation, and a gnawing fear that the Covid-19 crisis is but a warning shot. Yet these timeless elements of earth and air, fire and water, which existed long before we arrived and will endure long after we have departed, are a reminder that perhaps our view of our own lives has itself become too “macro.” Perhaps we need to zoom out, shift our focus off of our little selves, forget our all-important problems for a while, and remember that we are part of a much larger picture. We and All That Is are made of the same stuff—are works by the same Artist. Checking in with the heart, reconnecting with the present is simple: hear the rustle of wind in the trees. Slip one foot, and then another into a cool brook. Close your eyes and feel the sunshine on your face. Ultimately, what makes me feel safer, healthier, more in touch with life itself: checking my Twitter feed for the umpteenth time, or lying in silence on a warm boulder, listening to the sound of water flowing over pebbles? Maybe the key to soothing a weary soul really is as easy as that. Contentment doesn’t have to be fleeting. 

Someone should tell my kids.

And a little child shall lead them

One of the things that I love the most about living in France is its proximity to other countries, which makes international travel a breeze. Thus, we do a lot of it. Our latest trip took us to Bavaria, a very reasonable 6-hour drive from Paris. Le Mot Juste is not an adventure blog, so I won’t delve into the delights of the region (which are many). Instead, I’d like to focus on one particular aspect of travel that has been part of our experience since 2013 and will continue to be part of our experience until we lose our minds and give up altogether: travelling with small children.

Now, I will admit that I once used to be somewhat child-intolerant, but a) that was pretty much limited to screaming babies on public transportation, and even then they had to REALLY be screamy, and b) as the French say, il n’y a que les cons qui ne changent pas d’avis (only idiots never change their minds). I am not an idiot, generally speaking; therefore, I am not averse to changing my mind. With regard to children, I have definitely changed—for now I am on the other side of the aisle, as it were, and find myself frequently confronted with varying degrees of child intolerance.

But this most recent trip took it to a whole other level.

I was not prepared for the amount of blatant anti-child nastiness we encountered on our journey. Blank stares, outright glaring, impromptu lecturing, knocking on our hotel room door to tell us to pipe down…. At one point, we had just arrived in a crowded restaurant whose decibel level was off the charts, and yet we STILL managed to piss off a couple seated at a table next to ours, simply by our encroachment on “their” sphere of existence.

Are we unnaturally obnoxious? We make more noise than a couple, that’s for sure. But we are not insane, shrieking, out-of-control freaks, either. We’re what one might call a “family,” with these things called “children,” which, contrary to what many folks apparently believe, are not in fact miniature adults whose primary goal in life is to conform to other people’s unrealistic expectations. They make noise, and cannot understand why everyone keeps telling them to shut up—or better yet, go away—in a more or less aggressive fashion. 

My little girl, who is three, was “shhh’d” at with irritation in a church in Munich, simply because she was running. Not racing around screeching and knocking statues over, mind you. Just pitter-pattering her little feet as three-year-olds are wont to do. You know, because she was feeling joyful. Did Jesus not say, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these”? I should have said as much to the shhh-er, except my German is limited to dankeschön—and this was not a dankeschön kind of moment.

But lest anyone think that I am singling out Germans, don’t worry; our ability to aggravate is truly without borders.

We have been scolded and scoffed at on the TGV in France on many occasions, simply because our kids were existing too loudly in the library-like silence of the “family” coach.

We travelled to Scotland two summers ago and were dismayed at the number of cozy, welcoming-looking bed and breakfasts that formally refused families. 

Italy is the exception that proves the rule: our kids are treated to a chorus of Che bello! Che bella! at every corner and so UNUSED are we to warm smiles and spontaneous displays of affection from perfect strangers that it often takes us a few days to acclimate. Do Italians have bigger hearts than everyone else? I think they just might!

Contrast that attitude with all the “anti-stroller” restaurants (I’m looking at you, NYC), kid-free zones on trains, and the very real demand for childless flights. Never mind how demonstrably loud modern living is; apparently the sound of a disgruntled baby is so disturbing to some that they would happily pay a premium, just to shield their delicate senses from the nuisance. 

What does it say about our civilization as a whole that we are ready to go to such lengths to exclude entire swaths of it, simply because we find something about “them” insufferable? If we had any sense left in us, we would recognize and cherish the very old and the very young for what they are—our greatest treasure and our greatest hope. Instead, we have turned them into pariahs. The elderly, the sick, the weak: we don’t want to see them. The young, the high-spirited, the willful: we might be okay with seeing them, but we sure as hell don’t want to hear them. We’d rather embrace the insanity of imagining that it was never and will never be our turn—that “they” are nothing like “us.”

How many so-called woke people who pride themselves on their open-mindedness and inclusive attitude toward other cultures, ethnicities, and religions see no hypocrisy what-so-ever in turning up their noses at children? Today, being blatantly intolerant is uncool—unless your intolerance is directed at a child, that is. Then it’s justifiable, for how dare that child not comply with your idea of what she should be? 

You do realize that hating someone because he has ancestry that you don’t like is EVERY BIT AS LUDICROUS as hating someone because she’s a child acting how normal children act, right? Saying “I don’t like children” is NO BETTER than saying “I don’t like short people” or “I don’t like foreigners” or “I don’t like redheads.” All of it is intolerance, and all of it is unacceptable.

How does this even need to be said? And yet clearly it does.

Meanwhile, look around you the next time you’re out. How many couples and even entire families sit together in absolute silence, eyes glued to their telephone screens? The art of human interaction is rapidly fading away; we appear to be more at ease with Siri than we are with one another. And yet we find that normal.

We invite dogs into our restaurants and no one bats an eye. Quite the contrary! Oh, how sweet. Can I pet him? But a child—or worse, a baby? Immediate wariness. Nine times out of ten, when my husband and I enter any restaurant other than a fast food joint with our kids and are shuffling around getting ourselves situated, there are multiple pairs of eyes staring disapprovingly at us. I swear I can feel the judgement like hot coals on my skin. C’est in-sup-por-ta-ble.

How bad is it for you really, childless person? Is someone else’s kid (mine, for example) doing a tap dance in the middle of your dinner plate? Knocking over your cocktail? Setting your hair on fire? Probably not. His PARENTS, on the other hand, are undoubtedly exhausted in every sense of the term. Why? Because nothing—NOTHING—is harder than parenting. It is, to quote Jerry Maguire, “an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege that I will NEVER fully tell you about.” 

On behalf of all parents, try to have some empathy. We are fully aware of the disturbance that our kid(s) can cause, and are trying our best to keep things as calm as possible. We do not need your dark looks, your audible sighs, your eye-rolling, or any of your other insensitive, self-superior, and frankly childish theatrics. You don’t like kids? By all means feel free not to have any. But leave your reverse ageism at home. Better yet, stay at home yourself: it is guaranteed to be quiet and totally free of those small creatures you seem to loathe so much—who, incidentally, also represent the survival of your own foolhardy species.

I was on a plane not that long ago from New York to Paris. A baby cried intermittently throughout the 7-hour flight. It wasn’t fun for anybody—but do you know who it really wasn’t fun for? The mother. She spent the entire time rocking her clearly suffering child, singing to him, and trying to soothe him as best she could while also caring for his sibling seated next to her. When the plane finally began to descend toward the runway, and the ill child’s whimpering intensified, one woman seated two rows up distinctly said, without a shred of irony, “Decapitate him.” 

Decapitate him.

That’s where we are today. And we should be absolutely ASHAMED to have let our “enlightened” values sink so low as to justify pointing our finger at a beleaguered single mother and her sick baby instead of pulling our heads out of our own cold, disdainful asses and going over to ask her what we can do to be helpful.

Naturally, no one took the mother’s defense. So I did. And my husband did. And together we told that passenger and her bloated ego to STFU or go buy herself a spot in first class instead of on a low-cost red-eye that only the heavily drugged would ever have managed to sleep through in the first place.

Tell me this: is it the child whose behavior is truly destructive? Or is it yours, the so-called adult who refuses to accept the nature of children and would rather condemn them for somehow offending your over-privileged sense of decorum?

As we head into the Christmas season, a season that still smiles fondly on children, let us remember why we celebrate it in the first place: because God so loved the world that He took the form of a tiny child in order to save us from ourselves.

But we’d rather smirk at such a notion and write it off as myth, all the better to justify our refusal to love one another in return, whether adult or child—even when deep down, we know better.

A life uncommon: part V

I followed my bliss all the way to Paris on September 7, 2001, arriving with an overstuffed suitcase and a heart full of hopes, dreams, unavowed fears, and the inexplicable assurance that I was where I was meant to be. In honor of the 17th anniversary of that leap of faith, I have decided to write a short series of posts recounting the little-known tale of my love affair with France. 

Read part I here, part II here, part III here, and part IV here.

Fraternité

When I think back on those first few years in Paris, I remember feeling as though I were walking on air, buoyed by the delight of seeing my dreams materialize ... but I also remember the deep and incessant anxiety that those dreams would be torn away from me. I used to fear that I was nothing more than a stowaway aboard a luxury liner, a kid who’d managed to sneak inside Disneyland after hours, a lottery winner with an erroneous ticket—it was all too good to be true; someone was bound to find out sooner or later and that would be the end. Every immigration-related trip to the Préfecture de Police, appropriately situated within the complex of the Palais de Justice-Conciergerie—where thousands of prisoners under the Reign of Terror, including Marie Antoinette herself, spent their last moments before meeting their fate at the foot of the guillotine—left me quaking in my faux leather boots. Each visa renewal, each request for a status change, each interaction with an immigration officer engendered an icy knot of dread in my chest that seemed to be the price to pay for waking up in paradise.

As the years passed, I learned to combat that truly existential fear—the fear of losing the existence I so cherished—by carefully stringing together little pieces of legitimacy like so many precious pearls: a job, a renewed visa, a successful status change, a Master’s degree, a husband, a baby, a business, another baby ... until at long last, nearly 20 years after the soft autumn breeze of Paris first caressed my face, carrying the whispered promise of a life uncommon, I no longer question my right to live it; I no longer question my right to live here. 

As for feeling accepted—my other bugaboo—I ultimately gave up trying to perfectly emulate the French, figuring that any sense of being an outsider was mostly in my head, and deciding not to care about the part that wasn’t. And yet, when it came to seeking French citizenship, I long remained surprisingly ambivalent. After all, was I French? Would I ever be? And then the tragedy of November 13, 2015 happened, and with it came the realization that living among the French was no longer a question of “them” and of “me,” for the unmistakable feeling that flooded my heart that day was one of unity, of family, of … fraternité. These were my people. Period. It was a wake-up call if ever there was one: stop agonizing over where you belong. I began filling out my request for citizenship three days later.

When it came, the news that my request had been accepted struck me not as it would have in previous years—as a blessed relief—but rather as a formality whose smoothness and rapidity left the distinct impression that France had been expecting me to ask all along, and had been wondering what on earth I was waiting for. Citizenship was the last pearl on my strand of legitimacy and, as such, it prompted me to wonder whether I had reached the end of the road. Was that really it? Was I at last bona fide? The citizenship ceremony came and went, and as irony would have it, my only memento is an out-of-focus photo of myself flanked by two blurry officials, snapped in haste by a fellow new citizen. Something about it felt strangely anticlimactic, as though I’d just crossed the finish line of a marathon—only to turn around and realize that I was alone. The world went on as before; I remained for the most part unchanged. Perhaps the full significance of the moment was too much to wrap my mind around. But I suspect the truth to be somewhat more poetic: despite my latent sentiment of eternal otherness, France had wholly accepted me long before that ceremony. For all intents and purposes, I had been French for years.

I used to wander through my neighborhood Monoprix, just for the pleasure of looking at the things on the shelves. Everyday things. Shampoo bottles (their shapes and colors are so much prettier than American ones!), hair clips (look at the beadwork!), scarves (such elegance!), the produce aisle (is this a grocery store or is it Babette’s Feast come to life?). Even in its humblest incarnation, the French aesthetic contains something of the sublime, something of the fundamentally beautiful. Beauty. Beauty is perhaps what resonated the most with me upon my arrival here. Beauty was everywhere, woven throughout everything. It shone forth from the mundane as well as the marvelous, allowing me to see the world in a new light. Joy found me in France. Love found me. Grace found me. And yes, while it may sound hackneyed, I found myself. I didn’t come here expecting a revelation, but a revelation is what I received. France introduced me to a sensory universe I had never imagined; France filled me to the brim with history, art, and art history; France spoke to me in the language of the soul. The awe, the pure wonder of those first few years was so overwhelming, so intoxicating, that it formed the bedrock of my determination to make this country my permanent home. I have tried not to lose touch with that sense of wonder—which is never far off if I’m only willing to pay attention. 

France and I have not always been on the same wavelength, and I do recall threatening on a few occasions to “LEAVE and be done with it!” But, as in any marriage of love, we have worked through our difficulties and our differences, and matured hand-in-hand along the way. Today, I am a proud French citizen, wife to a Frenchman, and mother to two beautiful little Franco-Americans who skip from English to French and back again with delight. I will always be an American, and will probably be handed the English menu by well-meaning French waiters for the rest of my life, but in the end, my goal in moving to France was never to cease being myself—it was to be my best self.

FIN.

A life uncommon: part IV

I followed my bliss all the way to Paris on September 7, 2001, arriving with an overstuffed suitcase and a heart full of hopes, dreams, unavowed fears, and the inexplicable assurance that I was where I was meant to be. In honor of the 17th anniversary of that leap of faith, I have decided to write a short series of posts recounting the little-known tale of my love affair with France. 

Read part I here, part II here, and part III here.

The long and winding road

Business school it would be. Ever the perfectionist, I buckled down and gave the admissions process all I had. I asked a couple of alumni to hook me up with some advice; I read several books on culture générale, which is key to French exams of all stripes (realizing in the process that my education had some rather large holes in it); I bought a severe-looking suit and practiced my “business voice.” In the end, I wasn’t accepted by one Grande Ecole—but by two. So I said a fond farewell to my boss, who had done everything in his power to help me gain admission, and went off to buy some cool French school supplies, including plenty of that liney lined paper (why ever does it have so many lines?), certain that this would finally be my big break.

I suppose disappointment was inevitable. My undergraduate years remained decidedly rose-tinted; there was little chance I could ever relive them. I had imagined that this elite French institution would be the equivalent of Harvard, that I’d be rubbing elbows with the intellectual aristocracy, that classes would be as fascinating as they were inspiring.... In short, I wanted graduate school to be more than a means to an end; I wanted it to be an end in itself. Alas, non. My classmates were indeed brilliant, but the reigning atmosphere was hardly scholarly. The first week, I stepped into the school’s stately cobblestone courtyard only to be met with a scene worthy of a carnival. An inflatable fun house crowded the entrance; music blasted over loudspeakers; students in giant chicken costumes waddled about, distributing rolls of toilet paper. I feared that I’d unintentionally slipped into a parallel universe.

Unfortunately, that was only an introduction; the carefree attitude that reigned in the courtyard seemed to reign in the lecture hall as well. Students would meander into class oftentimes well past its start, strolling right beneath the professor’s nose without eliciting so much as a grumble. Many of those seated were hardly any better: some blatantly perused the morning newspapers; others texted sweet nothings on their phones; still others surfed the web on their newfangled laptops. Many didn’t show up at all. Yet the lecturer would continue lecturing, not seeming to care one iota. If anything, the lack of respect appeared to be mutual: one professor quite simply fell asleep during a series of (clearly unimportant) student presentations. I know that turnabout is fair play and all, but COME ON. What is actually happening here? I wondered, unable to shake the sense that somehow, somewhere, somebody had made a mistake.

In hindsight, it’s obvious that the mistake was mine. I embarked on the graduate school adventure believing that I had an open mind, when in truth I had a very fixed notion of what the experience should be like, and was profoundly disappointed when reality did not live up to my lofty expectations. That’s on me. But in my defense, I know what superior education looks like—and that wasn’t it. Anyway, things kept on keeping on for months, and then suddenly coursework was over. We took a whirlwind trip to India, zeroed in on a thesis topic, and poof! We were granted the right to brandish the school’s hallowed name and watch the internship offers roll in. By that point, I’d set my heart on going into wine and spirits marketing, but in light of all that I had witnessed that year, I was highly skeptical of the school’s reputation, however illustrious, being able to work its magic and land me an internship … until it worked its magic and landed me an internship—in marketing; in the wine industry. Mind. Blown.

As it turned out, I rather enjoyed wine marketing. Plus, the start-up I went to work for decided it rather liked me back and, heaven be praised, after proving my mettle as an intern, I was offered a full-time position—and along with it A NEW EMPLOYEE VISA! Betting everything on a business degree had actually paid off; I couldn’t believe it. My graduate school had not given me what I wanted, but ultimately, it gave me what I needed. Perhaps I had been too quick to criticize (I said perhaps). In any case, I ended up remaining in wine marketing for a little over three years. The company met a sad fate, but it taught me invaluable lessons about management, mismanagement, wine, and most importantly, copywriting. My boss—and I will forever be indebted to him for this—recognized a certain affinity I had for the written word, and often gave me copywriting projects. With time, I couldn’t help but think that perhaps I was meant to take up my pen and make a living out of it. Hmm.

Meanwhile, that other quest of mine, l’amour, remained frustratingly out of reach. Then, in the autumn of 2007, just when I was beginning to think that the love of my life might actually literally be France, and was imagining what kinds of crazy hats I would wear as a spinster, it happened—I met someone. A human! Who liked me! And whom I liked back! I’d been single for 95% of my six and a half years in the so-called city of “love,” and then all of a sudden, here was this tall, handsome, French guy with beautiful eyes and really nice shoes, who was neither a sociopath nor dating someone else nor related to any of my bosses in any way. I pounced (and by that I mean I batted my lashes a lot and hoped for the best). And lo and behold, sparks flew. We moved in together the following year, were engaged a year and a half after that, and married in a picture perfect Franco-American ceremony in my hometown in the spring of 2011. What is it they say about good things coming to those who wait (and wait, and wait, and wait...)?

After jumping ship from the by then rapidly sinking wine company, I switched gears and joined a mid-sized design and communication agency. Over the next several years, I put my newly acquired managerial skills to the test—and realized I just didn’t have it in me to be a manager. In fact, I seemed to be singularly ill-suited to the entire open-plan paradigm. It was a sobering realization, but it was unavoidable. Much soul-searching ensued. And in the end, I came to the conclusion that while each stepping stone in my professional journey thus far had served a purpose, if I ever wanted to find the Holy Grail, I couldn’t simply take another step—I would have to take a leap. 

So I quit my day job, moved to the suburbs, opened a copywriting business, and had two children. 

TO BE CONCLUDED...

A life uncommon: part III

I followed my bliss all the way to Paris on September 7, 2001, arriving with an overstuffed suitcase and a heart full of hopes, dreams, unavowed fears, and the inexplicable assurance that I was where I was meant to be. In honor of the 17th anniversary of that leap of faith, I have decided to write a short series of posts recounting the little-known tale of my love affair with France. 

Read part I here and part II here.

Egalité

After a two-year honeymoon period, a bit of disenchantment slowly began to creep into my French utopia. Taking stock, I was 23, earning scarcely more than minimum wage, still single and not making any headway in that department.... But mostly, I was fed up with feeling inferior. I’d worked assiduously in college and had graduated with high honors—departmental distinction, Phi Beta Kappa, Summa-Cum-freaking-Laude for Pete’s sake! What was I doing fetching coffee and fielding angry phone calls from people I only barely understood? Where was the appreciation—and the salary—I felt I deserved? And where in blazes was l’amour? I had had enough of playing the endearing but inconsequential American ingénue. But then, what was the alternative? Quit? Go back to the US with my tail between my legs? Prove the naysayers right? No way, André.

My non-renewable work permit was drawing dangerously close to its expiration date when my boss invited me into his office and said that he would be willing to sponsor me if I wanted to stay. WHAT?! Sponsorship was the only way I could keep working legally, and it was a big deal. From the very beginning of my quest to live in France, people warned me how difficult it would be to find a sponsor—essentially a French company both willing and able to prove to the government why I should be hired and not one of the country’s many native job seekers. With unemployment a perpetual hot-button issue, a foreigner like me being given the go-ahead to “take” a position at a French company was far from a foregone conclusion.

Suddenly I didn’t mind fetching coffee quite so much.

Being sponsored for an employee visa meant going home to California for four months while the paperwork was being processed. It also meant explaining myself to my parents, who had never intended for that one semester of studying abroad to morph into my life’s calling. “God works in strange and mysterious ways,” I airily reminded them, promising that if one day France rejected me, then I’d move back to the US—but so far that hadn’t happened; on the contrary, everything seemed to be falling into place. Being in California in the autumn of 2003 also afforded me the extremely unpleasant opportunity to experience the great Cedar Fire, a conflagration of epic proportions that destroyed thousands of houses and very nearly wiped out my entire hometown. My parents and I had to evacuate for 10 days, returning to a charred, nightmarish landscape steeped in smoke. That was not the high point of my visit home.

I flew back to France, chastened, in January of 2004—and proceeded to have my heart stomped good and flat by my first French boyfriend, who also happened to be my boss’s eldest son. That was not the high point of my return.

Vowing not to cast any more pearls before any more swine, I soon resumed my lighthearted Parisian existence and tried to shrug off any dreams of professional grandeur. After all, even if I was confined to office work, how could I dare complain when I had the City of Light? Henri IV himself had had to make a sacrifice or two in exchange for her—Paris vaut bien une messe! Still, that nagging voice in my head wouldn’t quit. “WHAT are you playing at?!” it hissed. “You have no money! Your career is going nowhere! You can’t bury your head in the sand forever! TICK-TOCK.” Finally, I had to admit that the voice was right. I couldn’t stay at that job any longer; it just wasn’t enough. And while it had enabled my French to reach heights I’d never imagined, and had certainly taught me the fine art of getting along in a French company, I was thirsty—very thirsty. I yearned to excel, to achieve, to stop scrubbing the proverbial floor and put on the damn proverbial glass slipper.

But in a country where it is customary to name-drop one’s alma mater early and often, sometimes going so far as to include it in one’s signature, acquiring the proper academic credentials is nothing less than imperative if one is to entertain even the faintest hope of squeezing one’s foot inside the door of any major company. And as far as my American accomplishments were concerned, France neither recognized them nor cared; in the eyes of the Powers That Be, I was pretty much a nobody. I would be less than candid if I said that didn’t hurt, since it did—rather a lot, actually. But like it or not, I had to accept the fact that if I ever expected to achieve any semblance of égalité with the French, I would have to humble myself before the gods of academia and return to school, in France. Wounded ego notwithstanding, part of me was relieved: thinking about graduate school felt good. As the daughter of two teachers, the classroom had always been a second home of sorts; maybe returning to school would at last grant me the opportunity to shine in a country that I felt was still waiting for me to prove my worth.

So it was settled—I would trade in my highly coveted employee visa for a lowly student visa. It is difficult to express the magnitude of the gamble that such a decision represented: I was essentially giving up my “safe” status as a worker bee and betting my entire future in France on a Master’s degree, or rather, on my ability to persuade another French company to go through the whole employee visa sponsorship process again once I had completed said Master’s degree (was I crazy? Yes ... crazy like a renard!).

Going back to school also meant assuming a fair amount of student debt, which only added to the already considerable pressure I was placing on myself to make this degree THE magic bullet. I’d lived in France long enough by then to know that the outcome of my wager would hinge on two factors: what I studied and (more importantly) where I studied it. The highly respected Grandes Ecoles (France’s Ivy League) were therefore the only acceptable prospects, but their admissions process was rumored to be draconian. To further complicate matters, it was fairly obvious that business school would be my best bet if I wanted to play ball with the big kids, but a business degree seemed somehow wrong for me. Tricky. Then again, I’d double-majored back in college: art history and advertising. Surely introducing some business acumen to either field would pry open a few sealed doors; I just had to pray that one of them would be the right door.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Photo by Lily Heise

A life uncommon: part II

I followed my bliss all the way to Paris on September 7, 2001, arriving with an overstuffed suitcase and a heart full of hopes, dreams, unavowed fears, and the inexplicable assurance that I was where I was meant to be. In honor of the 17th anniversary of that leap of faith, I have decided to write a short series of posts recounting the little-known tale of my love affair with France. 

Read part I here.

Afoot and light-hearted

My life in France began in earnest when the United Airlines flight touched down at Charles de Gaulle airport on a perfect September morning in 2001. Destiny, it seemed, was on my side; I’d been offered a living situation that couldn’t have been more perfect if I’d dreamt it up myself. Once again, it had materialized out of nowhere at precisely the right moment. A mere few weeks earlier, I was at a theater in San Diego with my parents and some family friends, lamenting the fact that I had no housing solution for my Paris work abroad program. At intermission, a couple seated in front of us turned around—they just so happened to know my parents’ friends and had obviously overhead my whining. “We may be able to help,” they said. And before long, I was holding the keys to a beautiful Parisian apartment a mere 10-minute stroll from the Arc de Triomphe. 

So, I had a place; I had a visa; I had a plane ticket. I just needed a job. The organization in charge of getting me to Paris kept records of every French company that had ever hired one of its participants, so I rifled through its binders and jotted down everything that seemed remotely interesting. But then came the moment when I had to actually call some of these people. Summoning the courage to pick up the phone and speak, in mediocre French, to a bunch of perfect strangers in an attempt to convince them to grant me a face-to-face interview was just the sort of thing we introverts have nightmares about. However, it was also necessary, so I swallowed my pride and did my best to not sound like a blithering idiot. A few near misses later, I struck gold—an American expat who owned an art gallery on the exceedingly fashionable rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré, virtually next door to the presidential Palais de l’Elysée, agreed to hire me—ME!—I about died.

All that was left was to make some friends. And that prayer was soon answered too, in the form of a little group of Canadian kindred spirits pursuing dreams not unlike my own. Thanks to them, I finally discovered some of what Paris had to offer in the way of social life. I worked five days a week at the gallery and spent nearly every weekend travelling. Chartres, Amiens, Beauvais, Senlis, Laon…. I visited every great Gothic cathedral within a few hours of Paris, and then ventured further afield, almost exclusively by myself. I slept in youth hostels or cheap hotels, ate alone in carefully-researched restaurants, read my trusty guidebook cover-to-cover—and savored every minute. When in Paris, my friends and I dined out, took in movies and plays, and drank quite a bit of wine. I was happy once more. Exceedingly happy. But despite that, a nagging fear remained in the back of my mind: what would I do in December, when my non-renewable work permit expired?

My first impulse was to level with my employer. As a fellow American and art lover who had moved to France in her youth, we had several things in common; surely she would understand my desire to remain in Paris. “Oh, everyone says that,” was her dismissive and frankly disappointing response. I bristled. This woman clearly had no idea who she was dealing with. Thankfully, one of my dearest friends, and a highly skilled problem-solver, pointed me to an 18-month “professional internship” program that would allow me to keep living my dream—just so long as I could find an employer willing to do the paperwork. Destiny went to bat for me again, and that elusive employer appeared in the form of a Franco-Russian publisher who had recently hired an Irish friend of mine and was looking for a bilingual assistant. Not quite the stuff of dreams, but hell, at that point I’d have accepted street sweeping if it meant I could stay.

And so my adventure was given the green light to begin a whole new season. This one was marked by another desperate search for an apartment, since my too-good-to-last rental agreement near the Arc de Triomphe had to come to an end. The Parisian housing market is notoriously difficult, and being a foreigner did me no favors. I visited something like 40—FORTY—different places. Many were “reserved” or off the market before I got there; most were too expensive to begin with. Some were shockingly small; others were shockingly decrepit. One of the more memorable visits was essentially a crumbling hallway overlooking a cemetery. Nonetheless, I kept at it. In the meantime, I house-sat, crashed on the couches of friends and then friends of friends, hid out for a month in a bedroom in the suburbs, and tried not to lose hope. Finally, finally, my new boss’s wife put me in touch with the owner of a one-bedroom just behind Montmartre, who agreed to take a chance on me. Sure, it was an 86-step hike to the top floor of a not-so-nice building in a so-so part of town, but it was MINE ALL MINE! A new coat of paint, a few unlikely furniture acquisitions, an oversized Robert Doisneau print to reign over it all, and voilà! One happy, homey, truly cosy Parisian abode.

I was elated. Forging ahead. Living the dream. What could go wrong?

TO BE CONTINUED...

A life uncommon: part I

I followed my bliss all the way to Paris on September 7, 2001, arriving with an overstuffed suitcase and a heart full of hopes, dreams, unavowed fears, and the inexplicable assurance that I was where I was meant to be. Today is the 17th anniversary of that leap of faith. To mark the occasion, I have decided to write a short series of posts recounting the little-known tale of my love affair with France. We American expats are not so numerous as one might imagine. Those of us who go abroad and remain abroad all have very personal reasons for doing so. 

Here are a few of mine.

Liberté

Their lined paper is so … *liney*, thought 8-year-old me, leafing through the French notebook I’d received from a friend who’d just returned from Nice following his dad’s short-term teaching exchange. Years later, in high school, I would choose to study French over Spanish, under the guidance of that very same friend’s dad (hi Mr. Johnston!). My parents joke that he is to blame for awakening my love for France, but really, the dream was there to begin with: I was certain that France was some kind of fantasy land graced by castles, cathedrals, and surely a bit of Deep Magic from before the dawn of time. Attempting to master the language as an adolescent was a humbling experience, but after four years of grappling with irregular verbs and impossible strings of vowels, I was college-bound and had every intention of spending a semester studying abroad in Paris.

Well.

A bashful, hopelessly romantic, straight-A art history major like me never stood a chance of resisting France’s legendary powers of seduction. The flight from Dallas I shared with 39 fellow SMU students in late August of 1999 hadn’t even landed when already I sensed a shift in my personal space-time continuum. As the plane descended, I gazed down on a patchwork that looked nothing like the neat American checkerboard I was used to. This looked ancient. Mysterious. Old World. The airline lost my luggage; I barely noticed. I floated out of Orly airport and onto a bus, which took us to picturesque Fontainebleau. Everything seemed miraculous to me: the crisscrossed rattan of the chairs adorning every sidewalk cafe, the canary yellow mailbox perched on a street corner, the hardboiled egg slices peeking out from my first baguette sandwich. I wrote my parents a postcard from the gardens of the highly enchanting Château Vaux-le-Vicomte, gazing dreamily at a perfectly manicured lake dotted with perfectly manicured swan boats, and knew that some part of me had already decided. I wasn’t going back—this was True Love.

I have always preferred Paris in the autumn, perhaps because it was autumn when we first met. After a week of orientation outside the city, my classmates and I were driven into the heart of the Latin Quarter to enjoy a welcome cocktail with our host families. “See those leaves?” asked a visiting professor from Texas, motioning to the mottled foliage of the elegant chestnut trees lining Boulevard du Montparnasse. “That’s what they call l’automne.” All of us descended from the bus, and I redoubled my efforts to resist gaping, open-mouthed, at everything inside Reid Hall, the stately 18th century former porcelain factory that would be our school for the semester. I clearly remember pinching myself, and then laughing under my breath because who actually does that? And then we met our host families. Mine was perfect, obviously. They were kind, and cheerful, and very forgiving of my pathetic language skills. Fun fact: I’ve remained friends with them to this day, and they still delight in reminding me how awful my French was so long ago. That’s what families do—even host ones.

For four months, I lived in absolute bliss. Classes were held alternately at Reid Hall, alternately inside the Louvre (!!!). Or the Musée d’Orsay. Or the Musée Pompidou. Or simply out and about in Paris. The art historian in me was euphoric. I walked all over the city, rain or shine, scrupulously recording each day’s discoveries in my diary each night. I took trips across France: to the east, the west, the north, and the south. “Everything here is so beautiful,” I gushed. People just laughed. She has it bad, they must have been thinking. They were right—from the Chagall windows in the Metz Cathedral to THE Impression, Sunrise at the Musée Marmottan; from the Roman amphitheater in Arles to the Rothschild gardens on the Côte d’Azur; from my first encounter with the Eiffel Tower in all her glory to the sensory rapture that is a Provençal market, I was gone, gone, gone. Smitten. Love-struck. Over the moon.

Reality slapped me across the face—hard—when the semester came to an earth-shattering conclusion in late December and I had no choice other than to return to “normal life.” My mind reeled. The flight home was a weepy blur. My poor parents didn’t understand what was wrong with me. Why wasn’t I happy to be home? Didn’t I have a good time? YES—far, far too good! Those first few months back in the US were a masterclass in pain. I felt so heartsick I didn’t know what to do with myself other than search high and low for some way—any way—to return to my beloved France. I was treated to a lot of oh-everyone-says-that and oh-everyone-loves-Paris, which naturally only cemented my resolve to not be like “everyone.” 

Halfway through my senior year, while my entire graduating class seemed to have internships, job offers, and juicy MA programs all lined up, my standard response to the dreaded question of what I was planning to do after graduation remained a falsely confident “move to Paris,” which always drew a raised eyebrow, an awkward laugh, or a condescending “good luck.” Except for one of my favorite art history professors, that is, whose unexpected response was an earnest “take me with you!” Those words were really all I needed to hear—why stay and go the academic route like everybody was pushing me to do, when this professor whom I admired so much was clearly in agreement with what my heart had been telling me all along?

In the eleventh hour, as has so often been the case in my life, a way was made where there seemed to be no way. My own Red Sea moment. Right behind the university, no less, were the modest offices of Council Travel, which offered none other than work exchange programs, including to France, for recent graduates. EUREKA! Letter of acceptance in hand, I graduated Summa Cum Laude from SMU in 2001, threw a shaky French résumé together, and promptly moved halfway around the world—where I had no job, no friends, and where no one gave a damn about my degree, my accomplishments, or my qualifications. But those were mere details to me at the time. What mattered was that I’d proven the naysayers wrong: I was libre to pursue a very unique version of the American dream.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Illustration by Corey Egbert