These past few days have been pretty hectic. We cleared out, cleaned out, donated, tossed, gifted, and hauled away as much as we could, but still felt we weren’t quite ready when that big moving truck showed up on Monday. For two full days, four men tore through our beautiful house like a tornado, wrapping and packing and reducing our possessions into 285 boxes and turning our furniture into giant molded packages — all with nifty pre-numbered and barcoded labels — and then drove it all away. Hopefully, somehow, in a couple of
We are staying in a local hotel for our last few days, busy with the tasks of closing out our lives in
Not so fun fact: nobody has window screens in France. I mean, NOBODY. And they don’t sell screening materials in their Home Depot type stores. When you ask people why they don’t have screens in their windows, they look at you like you are crazy, and ask, “why would you?” They don’t seem to mind having flies and mosquitos and birds or another flying object come through the open window. So, here we are about to move to France. We decided we should try to start a new trend in our new village. Maybe the concept will catch on. But we only bought enough screen-making supplies for our own house — they will have to find their own stuff.
Don’t get me wrong, we are prepared to embrace the ways of doing things in France. But flies are not a part of that deal.
For the past couple of days I have been visiting Fresno, where I lived for almost 30 years before moving to the bay area. I came to say some goodbyes. Everybody is sad to see us go, but excited for our big adventure.
It was hard to say goodbye to my 96-yr-old father (sorry to always refer to you by your age, Dad, but it’s so impressive). I showed him how to use Facetime and Words with Friends, and we practiced. My father loves technology (he wears an Apple watch!) and he told me he plans to celebrate his 100th birthday, so I have confidence I will be seeing him for quite a while longer.
My old friend Theresa had me over for breakfast, and had French music playing when I arrived. My friend Vernie sternly told me to stay away from the troublemakers in yellow vests, and hugged me hard with tears in her eyes. Today I sold my beloved car to my brother. I was sad to leave it, but he is good to his cars and I know it will have a happy life (silly, yes). I had my favorite pastrami and swiss sandwich for lunch (thanks, Geno’s).
Hopefully, the people who have promised to visit us in France will actually do it. I mean, who wouldn’t want to have friends to stay with in France who will show them around the Loire Valley?
Now I’m on Amtrak heading back home. Gliding through the beautiful Central Valley is making me melancholy. I moved here from Michigan with my parents at age 13 and began a new life, making friends and learning the California way of doing things, which wasn’t so difficult.
Now here it is 50 years later and I’m about to start over in almost every way. The challenges and difficulties, and the joys and discoveries, are waiting for us in France.
We leave two weeks from today. HOLY COW.
I’ve been reading David Lebovitz’s book, “L’appart,” chronicling his experience buying and renovating an apartment in Paris, where he moved after living many years in San Francisco. Something he wrote resonated with me: “I haven’t been a lifelong Francophile, one of those people who kept a poster of the Eiffel Tower by his bedroom window… I didn’t devour books about how effortlessly chic Parisians are, and never envied how French people could tie a scarf with a certain je ne sais quoi that I could never hope to achieve.” I, too, never thought much about France. I chose to study Spanish in school. France was as interesting to me as any other part of Europe.
It dawned on me that our decision to move to France was not so much to move to France as it was a desire to move away from our hectic life in Northern California, and to…somewhere different
The most obvious place to consider was Austria, where my husband, Bob, was born and has many aunts, uncles, and cousins. We’ve visited there many times and love exploring the Austrian countryside. But Austria somehow didn’t fit our goals. We knew we wanted to be able to use our new home as a base for further travel, so it had to be easy to travel from. Weather was a factor, not too hot or too cold, but the idea of real changing seasons was appealing. And housing prices were a consideration. The fact that we would need to learn a new language and culture was exciting and scary. Mostly exciting. Becoming bilingual has long been on my bucket list.
France was quietly waiting for us. I had visited my friend Connie there a few times without Bob, and when I returned home I always told him what a sweet life she has, and how simple and satisfying it must be to live there in the beautiful countryside of the Loire Valley, away from — but not that far from — the hustle-bustle of Paris. I was eager to return there with him so he could see for himself.
Last spring we took a trip to Europe, starting in Paris and ending five weeks later in Venice. We enjoyed a few days in Paris and then headed into the Loire to see Connie. She proudly showed us her life, introducing us to many of her friends and neighbors, cooking for us (a real treat as she is a former chef), and taking us on excursions through the lovely countryside, which, at the time was blooming with neon-yellow rapeseed.
After we left Connie, we couldn’t stop talking about our experience there with her. All the “what ifs” started then, and continued for the rest of our trip. We returned to California a few weeks later and resumed our usual routines. Surprisingly, our fascination with the idea of moving to France did not diminish. We eventually decided to return a few months later to spend more time exploring the crazy idea of moving to the tiny French village with which we were falling in love. So, in September we were back again, and had made arrangements to look at houses for sale, just to see what kinds of places might be an option for us.
When we stumbled upon a 300 yr old house for sale right in the middle of the village, we knew we’d found the reason to move. The house needed extensive renovations, but that was something that excited us, and once we found that house, we were sure of our decision to go to France and into a new life.
This is where my blog first picked up the story, and if you want to start at the beginning, you should scroll down and catch up.