Next month we come up on our one year anniversary of moving to France. We left on June 17th, two days after school ended for the boys. Life then was a blur of yard sales, good-bye parties and shipping sea-containers.....I was just under three months pregnant, already feeling 'different' and excited and thinking back we had no idea what we were heading into. We had ideas on what it would be like, but not one idea was right...in both good and bad ways.
Almost a year later, I still feel like there is so much more that has to happen and more that I need to do to feel completely "at home" here....but it is happening.....
....s-l-o-w-l-y. We have started doing things outside; gardening, planting, setting up...we have squeezed, stretched and filled our little house with our personal things to make it feel more 'homey'.... the beach down the road, has become 'ours', the garcons go almost every day to play, explore, sometimes swim .... the so-important routines have been created; Thursday night pasta-night, Pizza and movies on Friday, weekend markets, brocantes on Sunday....
One thing that occurred to me as I was thinking about this pending anniversary, was that feeling at home in a place is not about not missing the previous place anymore, it's about becoming a part of the new place. In order to do that here, I need to become a little French. (maybe even a little less American but I am not willing to go there yet!)
Of course the most obvious thing would be the language... a subject I am pretty worn out about and not so keen on. French (as in the language) has become a 'four letter word'...... it is a source of frustration and self doubt...and keeps me at an uncomfortable and discouraging arms-length from truly feeling at home here....
But I have been becoming a little more French in other ways ... maybe. I now eat plain, (unsweetend, 'nature') yogurt ... and I LIKE it! In fact, I eat it a few times a day! On eating; I SIT to eat lunch now (oh, and I eat off a plate rather than a paper-towel or napkin...or my hand!) I do, on occasion, have a glass of wine at LUNCH....not normally, but sometimes. I wear scarves...a lot. A LOT. (Well actually I have always had a thing for scarves but now I blend in with all the other ladies wearing scarves year around). I eat chocolat -- any time I want--and I don't feel guilty about it....oh, and I don't diet ... (but I do jog--and as I have said before..French women don't!) I wear my hair in a chignon....and I know how to spell chignon!!!
The interesting thing... the 'ah-ha!' moment in all of this, is that to be at home here, I may have to be a little more French, and may want to be a little more French, but that doesn't mean I have to be any less ME.
Some things will never change, and don't need to. I am in love with cuisine and cooking... I love to read, write and create, (I love to talk too!....and believe me, when I get within a mile radius of another English speaker -- look out!) I love my kids, our silly pets (most of the time)...my darling husband
The point here...what I have realized just less than one year after moving to France ... is that ALL of these things I have brought with me...and have with me...no matter where I am...
...and that is what makes a place home. N'est-ce pas?
A bientot, mes amis!
1 comment:
lovely. that's the thing,huh? you never lose the YOU inside, she just bends and improves.
aidan xo
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