Getting Ready

Welcome back to my long-winded saga of our move to France.  I know it’s been a while since my last post.  We had a lovely vacation and some visitors from home, but now I’m ready to get back to telling my story. 

This will be from the time we made the decision to move in July 2018 until we left San Diego in December 2019.  Please bear with me as this may not be the most interesting or uplifting part of “living the dream,” but it is definitely a major part of our journey.  Since I waited so long to actually write about all of this, I’m finding myself eager to get on with it. I want to write about different and, hopefully, more interesting things.  

After reserving our cabins and kennel on the Queen Mary in July 2018, my brain switched into high gear and I began to set our plan into motion. Nothing was set in stone at this point – the deposit for the ship was still refundable and no irreversible decisions had been made, but in my mind it was definitely going to happen. There was so much to do, but everything had to be done in specific stages and with much deliberate thought.  Being such an obsessive planner, this was very challenging for me.  Waiting and having faith that things would work out had never been my strong suit (control freak much?)  In that regard, I would describe myself as sort of an “Eeyore-like” optimist; glass half full, but also about to teeter over and crash to the ground at any second. You can probably imagine the internal chatter I contend with

I became so heavily immersed in researching every detail and task and the painstaking  planning became my second full-time job.  I was so absorbed with thinking about our future and when I look back, I regret not staying more present in my life – in real time.  It makes me so sad that I didn’t savor every precious moment before leaving my home.

This was a very selfish time in my life since I was so single-mindedly focused on my own goals. I remember apologizing to a few people before I left for having my head lodged so firmly up my own ass.  I know I wasn’t attentive enough to the people in my life who deserved so much more from me.  In fact, as I’m writing  – in this moment – I’m feeling anxious knowing that I’m going to be dredging up memories from this time in my life.  

But…that’s not to say that there wasn’t a plenty of joyful moments during this time.  Skip and I are always at our best when we’re working on a big project together – and this one was a biggie!  It was so fun to dream of the future and marvel as our plans progressed and things kept falling nicely into place (much to my inner Eeyore’s surprise).   So many people were so  supportive and interested in our plans.  It made us happy to be able to share our excitement and enthusiasm.  And even though I was so preoccupied during this time, I never lost sight of how fortunate I was to be living in San Diego with its perfect weather, beautiful beaches, healthy lifestyle and spiritual community.  I had a job I loved, an amazing group of friends and of course my awesome kids and grandkids.  We didn’t felt like we were running away from anything but instead heading toward something new and exciting.  But during this time, particularly as the time to leave got closer and closer, we would often ask ourselves — sometimes jokingly, sometimes seriously “why are we doing this?”.  The answer to ourselves always came back to recognizing just how fortunate we were to be able to follow this dream.  We didn’t wanted to look back in 10 or 15 years and regret that we didn’t take the big leap and always wonder “what if”. 

Anyhoo………

For several months before we ever thought about “the big plan,” Skip had been thinking about when he was going to retire. Once we secured our reservation on  the Queen Mary, Skip chose January 3, 2020 for his official retirement date – the day we would board the ship. It seemed the perfect time for him – 18 months to wrap up a long and satisfying career.  He felt ready for the next chapter for sure.  For me, before “the big plan”, I would have never considered retiring at that time, since I would only be 54 years old then – just a wee babe!  I referred to it as my “hiatus” from working – probably partly from not wanting to acknowledge that I may never work as a nurse again and probably also due to vanity – not wanting to say I was “retired” since I was just a spring chicken after all!  However, I certainly recognized how fortunate we were that I wouldn’t have to work, since living in France would be very affordable.

In order to move to France, we’d have to have long-term visitor’s visas; good for 12 months with the potential of being renewed each year.  The best way to do that was to go over as retirees and declare that we would not work in France.  We had to prove that we’d be able to support ourselves financially and have living arrangements for at least the first 3 months after arriving.  Of course, by this point, I  read every possible morsel of information I could find – from French and US government websites (super fun), expat Facebook groups, traveling blogs, etc, etc, etc.  I asked a million questions and got lots of advice – and horror stories – from so many sources.  I wanted to be able to trouble shoot every possible situation and have a contingency plan for everything. One important piece I discovered early on was that we could not submit our applications until just 90 days before our intended arrival in France.  This was so crazy to me! So many irreversible parts of this project would be in motion by that point!   Everything hinged upon successfully obtaining the visas! I was so skeptical that any government agency could be efficient enough to get it done in that limited amount of time. Obviously that part did end up working out, but it was a mind numbing and overwhelming pain in the ass!  The French do love their paperwork!  I remember the stacks and stacks of papers, post-it notes, and paper clips all over our bedroom as we made copy after copy of so many documents, chasing down birth certificates, bank statements and on and on and on.  It was particularly stressful when we finally handed over the reams of paperwork – including our passports – to be sent off to yet another government agency.  Having never done anything like this before, we had no idea if our visas would be granted or denied.  If the visas were denied, the whole damn plan would come to a screeching halt!   In the end, it was all manageable even though it caused so much angst. I won’t bore you with any more of this process, but if anyone wants to know more about it, I’m happy to answer any questions and share our experience.

Another super fun thing when uprooting your whole life is figuring out what to do with a lifetime of “stuff”.  I wasn’t too much of a pack rat, but I did definitely hang on to things with sentimental value.  I had 10’s of thousands of photographs that I just couldn’t  part with.  I know they could all have been digitized, but I still wanted to hang on to the tangible photos themselves.  My Dad taught me so much about photography and I clung firmly and stubbornly to real film for as long as I could. There were so many memories attached to each photo and I couldn’t see just throwing them away.  I did, however, go through each and every one over several months.  I had stacks of photos all over the house!  I organized them by date and then reboxed them.  I did end up throwing a lot away that weren’t worth keeping and I was able to share a lot of the duplicates with family and friends.  It was fun to share those memories with them.  I was able to visit each and every memory from every one of those photos and even though it was a big, messy job, it was quite satisfying.  I was able to reduce the volume quite a bit, and while are still 1000s left, I’m quite happy to keep them.

We also had a storage unit from when we had downsized several years before. We were finally forced to get rid of the majority of that stuff. Furniture that seemed important became so  easy to part with. It’s funny the stuff I thought held so much value became a burden.  It was a challenge just to give so much of it away after storing it for so long, but definitely a huge weight was lifted.  

I took all of the boxes of memorabilia from the storage unit and put them in our garage space of our condo.  Then I spent the better part of the next 2 months going through every last piece of paper, card, letter, toys, stuffed animals, baby clothes, odd trinkets….…everything.

I had saved pretty much every bit of paper, artwork, report card and award from the kid’s schools….…boxes of it!  I loved going through all of that….so many adorable gems discovered!  How did that time go by so fast?  I had also saved so many cards (every one from my Grandma – as she said she saved every one of mine), letters, notes and memorabilia from my own childhood and teenage years.  Oh my…lots of weird, funny and embarrassing things, for sure!  Like with my photographs, I  loved visiting every one of those memories. 

I also had to go though a million files, old bank statements, bills, receipts for items long gone – all the crap someone said was important to keep, but why? Does anyone really need to see my checkbook registers from the 90’s?  I think not. I have a very good friend – a CPA – who told me that she only holds on to the most recent copies of things and that if anyone asked her for any thing older, she’d tell them it all  burned up in a fire.  I hung on to that valuable tidbit as I trashed all of that dead weight.  So cathartic!

It was definitely a time consuming and overwhelming task, but as it with my photos – taking a journey through the past was a profound and worthwhile experience.  It was so good to completely immerse myself in all those memories – the good and the not so good.   It helped me to better understand where I came from, the person I used to be and to acknowledge all of  learning and growing I still needed to do. 

Looking back now, it seemed very fitting to spend so much time reliving the past as we were preparing to embark on an uncertain future.  

Another very important task on our giant list of things to do was to learn to speak French!   Many people assumed that we MUST know how to speak French since we were moving to France.  A valid assumption, but nothing could be further from the truth! We were such dorks…we could barely speak a word!  Neither on of us even took French in school (unless I count that one very unsuccessful semester in 7th grade – which I failed because I was too afraid to speak out loud….brilliant.)  

So, in October 2018, I found a French school near us and signed up for weekly classes.  We’d have over a year to learn to converse with our prospective fellow countrymen.  Perfect plan, right?  We showed up to our first class like enthusiastic simpletons – we didn’t even bring a pen and paper!  What we were expecting….easy, passive lessons that would somehow flow effortlessly our old brains and make us fluent French speakers?  Oh my god…I can hardly stand think about this …so embarrassing!  Anyway, there were a few other people in our beginner’s class.  I thought we’d be started out at a very basic level – a little vocabulary perhaps, but it seemed that the other “beginners” had a lot more previous instruction under their belts.  At one point, the teacher played a recording in French and we were supposed to answer questions about what we heard and understood.  For me, it was “bonjour Maria” and not one word more!  Dear lord….what were we thinking?  

Our French teacher was a lovely, lovely young woman named Melissa.  She herself was French and had moved to San Diego just one year before.  He husband was a chemist working at UCSD.  Melissa also had her PhD in chemistry and was teaching French as a side gig until she got a job in her field.  She said that she barely spoke a word of English when she arrived in the States, so that gave me some hope that we could learn a lot in the year plus before we left.  Oh….weren’t we so cute!  So naïve and misguided in those early days!

We continued our weekly lessons with Melissa and bit by bit the other class participants moved on to other classes….we were DEFINITELY holding up the works for the others.  Melissa was so sweet and patient with us as we stumbled, stumbled, stumbled and made extremely slow, nearly imperceptible progress.  Months after we started I could barely understand one or two words from those stupid recordings.  We were so ridiculous.  

After a while, the classes ended up just being Skip and I with Melissa.  They would try to add more beginning level students, but being at such a low, low level of understanding, we were incompatible with any other students.  The owner of the school did NOT care for this arrangement AT ALL and was always pressuring Melissa to either add students or get us up to speed. Eventually she quit teaching at the school and we continued with private lessons with her.  

What ended up happening, though, was that we fell in love with our Melissa!  We had so much fun chatting and getting to know her that we really weren’t getting a lot of learning done.  God knows she tried!  We ended up spending more social time with her and her family, had play dates with her adorable little girl and our grandson, and even had her family over for their first 4th of July celebration.   Melissa was also pregnant with her second little girl at that time and it was a joy to experience that time with her.  We so hoped to meet her new baby before we left, but we missed her delivery by just a week or so.  

Our grand plan to become fluent (hahahaha) was truly stupid and misguided.  Our French was still practically non-existent by the time we left!  But I have no regrets. We did learn a lot of other valuable things from Melissa, like lots of practical tips for living in France and she helped me so much with translating things to prepare for our move.  We also learned about how difficult it was for her to be in a strange country, not able to speak or understand the language, unfamiliar food, stores, customs and feeling lonely and isolated.  It did help to mentally prepare for the challenges we would be facing on our own journey. Melissa is still our very good friend and I wouldn’t trade those “lessons” for anything.  

And finally……….

My idea was to write about the entire period from making the big decision to the time we left our home for good, but this is getting way, way, way too lengthy.   I can’t seem to avoid writing in my typical long and rambling way.  I’m sure you’re bored to tears by now….if you’re even still with me!  God knows I’m boring myself!

So, I will stop here for now and finish up this part of the story later.  It’s been challenging for me to tell this story in a purely chronological way.  Each event and experience seems to flow into another, almost seeming prophetic now in the present.  It’s almost like a time machine to the past – but also knowing what the future will bring.  OK…enough!  I’m tripping myself out now!  It’s clearly time for a break!

Until next time….  As always, thank you so much for reading this mumbo jumbo.  It’s been quite therapeutic for me to share my story.

❤️ Lisa

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