by Bobbi French
Maybe I’ll miss Canada more than I anticipate. I’ll be sitting in a café in France, a pain au chocolat in one hand, a fine Chablis in the other, turn to Neil and say “Aww, remember when the Conservatives raised the Goods and Services Tax, slashed Planned Parenthood funding and cut health care to the bone? Good times man, good times.”
SOUR CREAM? REALLY?
I am in love with lists. I could not survive without the endless array of Post-it notes that are the only connection between everything in my head and the outside world. Luckily, I married someone who likes to talk in lists. Really, I’ll say, “Neil, I can’t help but notice that the garbage is still inside the house, why is that?” The reply will go something like this: “One, as you can see I’m very busy here on the couch watching Gladiator. B, I was waiting for the last piece of trash to be produced to maximize debris removal efficiency, and three, okay, I forgot.” He counts it out on his fingers and it’s hilarious. It’s the mixing of the numbers and letters that I find especially amusing. We’ve been together long enough now to impose our habits on one another. He speaks perfect Newfanese and I speak perfect list. So when a friend asked me what I was going to miss the most, after family and friends, here’s how it came out, in no particular order:
1) English: The art of effortless communication. I can ask where the toilet is but I’m a long way from witty banter.
2) My big shower: Europe is famous for shower stalls so small that no six-foot woman can shave her legs without crashing through the door, sustaining minor physical injury but major humiliation, and yes, I know this for a fact.
3) Chinese and Mexican food: Not a Great Wall or Zapata’s to be found in all of Burgundy. I’ll have to suffer it out with French food.
4) My own car: I have to share with Neil, never before attempted, and our French car is a standard, which I’m not sure I’ll be able to drive. How can anyone drive a stick while eating and touching up mascara?
5) Claude, my hairstylist: While he is responsible for my current state of near baldness, I’ll still miss him.
6) My super capacity washer and dryer: Three hours to wash four socks and two T-shirts in a tiny French washer.
7) Convenience stores: Convenience in general. French stores close from noon to two-ish and have erratic hours in the evening and there’s no such thing as one-stop shopping.
8) My lovely doctor: I have no idea how to say, “Does this smell normal to you?” in French.
9) Shoppers Drug Mart: Farewell, dear friend, with your aisles and aisles of happiness.
10) Sour cream: I will put it on anything and eat it from the tub with a spoon. To date, in a country that likely puts butter in the pavement, I have not been able to find it.
I’m sure once we get there we’ll long for many things. But then I’m sure we’ll find new French things that we can’t seem to live without. I can only hope that the richness of the experience eclipses minor things. Living in a new culture surely outweighs big appliances, but if I can’t find the sour cream I’m coming home.
THE ECONOMICS
OF HAPPINESS
Right off the bat I need to say that I stole that phrase from a book I just finished called The New Good Life by John Robbins. Robbins as in the Baskin-Robbins ice cream heir who read Walden, walked out on his family fortune and lived on essentially nothing. Then he made his own fortune only to lose it all at the hands of a fraudulent investment adviser. It’s an interesting read about how we’re attached to money and things and offers advice on how to simplify life and achieve richness of spirit. It fits very well with where my head is just now.
I often chronicle my time with Neil, almost 10 years now, in terms of decades. When we first met we were the ’70s, free love, absolute abandon, nothing but groovy love morning, noon and night. Then came the ’80s, acquisition all around: houses, cars, more houses, lots of cash and energy put into having shiny things. To quote Robbins, we were suffering from “affluenza.” Then we were the ’90s: debt, buyer’s remorse and working like maniacs just trying to keep it all going. Ring in the ’00s with reflection and questioning how we live and trying to figure out how to be fitter financially. Now in the ’10s I am finally, finally debt-free and I feel the need to evolve, to try to live better with less and to measure happiness and success in a different way.
A very large part of running toward France is the quest for a completely different way of life. We will have far less income, actually about 70 per cent less. Over the next year my little adventure will require that I buy only the things I need instead of all the things I want. We will be renting so we will not pay a single dime of interest over the next year, for me, the first time since 1993. We are hoping to change the way we eat, more local and organic produce, maybe even try someday to grow some of our own food. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not planning to change my name to Soleil and live on a farming commune disavowing all material goods. I just want to try living a simpler life.
While most of this is practical it also represents a philosophical shift for me. I grew up with the notion that money is safety, that success is defined by university degrees and a prestigious career. This no longer makes sense to me. Of course, it’s certainly challenging to think about being dependent on my husband for money and I’m concerned about making it financially. But we’ve talked about this a great deal and we’re a team, there’s no his and mine. Well, except for the bathroom: mine. What makes sense to me now is really considering how I define happiness. Quality, not quantity. Experiences instead of things. Consume less and produce more. I wonder how many more books I’ll have to buy to convince myself?
THE ECONOMICS
OF REALITY
Well, so much for being philosophical, rambling on about living more with less, detaching from worldly goods and living the simple life. Ah, how Mother Earth of me, what a lovely little hippie I am. What a friggin’ crock. Today all I can think is that I’ve actually lost it with this whole opposite life business.
Up to now I’ve been fine with it all. There really hasn’t been much time to reflect on it. I’ve been in action mode, romanticizing the journey so much that I failed to notice that financing my way to France has left my bank account resembling that of a struggling student. To make matters worse, we finally received the shipping quote for the few things we are taking and I almost fell over from the shock of it. At first we assumed it was a mistake but no such luck. Apparently that is what it costs to ship a mattress, clothes, some artwork, a few odds and ends and a dozen or so French language books across an ocean. More motivation to separate the needs from the wants and the Great Canadian Purge continues.
Honestly, it’s the world’s slowest Band-Aid pull. It’s like my life is being stripped away one little piece at a time. I actually gave away a pair of pants today, almost unheard of in the Amazon world. I confess, it’s harder than I thought it would be. I suppose Neil is right, we don’t really need the most beautiful toilet paper holder ever made, no matter how hard I fought that old lady at HomeSense for it. But every golf ball in the house is coming (I’m told they get lost a lot). By the time I’m done I’ll be down to two pairs of underwear, any pants that are below my ankles and my computer. I know I need to stop this “poor me, off to France without all my knick-nacks” nonsense. Compared to Neil flying all the way to Montreal to get his visa only to find out that he didn’t even need one, it’s all pretty minor. Except for one thing.
Today I said goodbye to my longtime companion, my winter warrior, my ambassador of freedom. Today I handed my car keys to their new owner. Now he will enjoy the miracle of Bluetooth and XM radio and all wheel drive. He can go anywhere he wants whenever he wants while I have to politely ask Neil if I can use his car. How much oppression can one woman endure? I’ve been so spoiled in terms of transportation. Even before I had a licence I had a car waiting for me, so this is a very large shift. I really hope the marriage survives as we’ve already had a lively chat about who gets the car next Wednesday.
I know these thi
ngs are quite trivial but today I’m consumed by doubts about this whole “simple life” business. I had to ask myself, do you really expect to pull this off? Don’t you have any idea what a high-maintenance, complicated, neurotic person you are? You’re a trained professional, for god’s sake; can you not see that you are headed for absolute disaster here?
Do something, anything to stop this foolishness. You can get a job at the Orange Julius up at the mall and be joyful right here in Canada. Richness of spirit, my arse. I want my car back.
SURREALITY
How bizarre my little life has become. Two months ago I was mired in the gritty business of running a locked psychiatric unit, but now it’s just plain weird. I have no set schedule and no real structure to my day. It feels like it takes me hours to get around to actually doing anything halfway productive. The French study is down to learning one new word a day, incredibly useful words like otage (hostage) and helice (propeller). That’s not to say that nothing is getting accomplished, Neil looks quite busy. I’m too preoccupied contemplating the surreal quality of my state of being to be of any use. Someone asked me the other day if I was excited about the big journey and I wasn’t sure what to say. I don’t feel excited. In fact, I don’t feel much of anything at all. It could be that I have achieved some sort of state of enlightenment, a total detachment from all these changes. Or perhaps I’m so stressed that I have no insight into my own frozen state of terror. That’s the trouble with being a psychiatrist; everything is always some sort of psychodrama that evolves out of endless analysis and interpretation.
I am well aware that I’m going somewhere. There’s luggage everywhere I look. After the Purge the thing we own the most of now is luggage. There are strange men in my house putting things in a big wooden crate and Saran Wrapping my beloved mattress. I know that tomorrow I will leave this house forever but I have no real sense of this happening. It’s one of the oddest experiences of my life.
I figure that I must be subconsciously casting it aside. Maybe it’s just all too much for one little brain to take in, so it chooses to focus on frivolous matters like the minutiae of moving. Instead of succumbing to the anxiety of uprooting my entire life, I’m focused on coping with the disruption to my routine of daily living. The actual act of moving takes very little mental effort. We’ve done it so often now that we can actually pack, move, unpack and be set up with art hanging on the walls in 24 hours. For me the difficulty is the lack of a permanent and organized setup. I like having a place for everything in my life—towels here, husband there. And today that seems to be my only concern.
I’m not complaining about feeling so unaffected. I think it’s far superior to running through the streets screaming, “ISN’T THIS EXCITING?!” I just find it curious. All I need to do now is figure out how to stop saying, “Hmm, how interesting, tell me more about that,” to myself every time I have a thought about leaving. I’ll have to learn to just let my thoughts come and go and do my best to keep moving forward. It’ll hit me at some point. I just hope that I can get an appointment with myself when the denial dissolves.
LET THE GAMES BEGIN
This is it, the first day of the rest of my life. Apparently, mid-life upheaval causes the use of tired clichés. The transatlantic launch is in about five hours. I’m here at an airport hotel, homeless and jobless but full of hope and determination. There’s no turning back now, however, as everybody knows, an Air Canada delay would not be much of a surprise. So, passport? Check. Hockey bag jammed full of essentials from Rapid Release Tylenol to the riveting 501 French Verbs? Check. Supportive husband? Check. Fear and dread? Check. In spite of all my squawking over the years about the importance of planning, I have no idea whatsoever how to do this. I have no clue what I’ll be doing in this new property venture, what my days will look like, if I have the skills or aptitude for it or when I’m supposed to actually start working. I’m not even sure I want a job since unemployment seems to be going so well for me.
What kind of plan is this? Is there a manual of some sort and if so, will it be written in French? I function best with a well thought out strategy for most everything I do. I’m the person who actually reads the back of the shampoo bottle to see if two lathers are required. Today I feel lost without some sort of booklet outlining everything that happens immediately after I touch down in Paris. I know that my first three days in France will be spent at a bed and breakfast run by the people we plan to work with. What I really need is for them to greet me with a shiny brochure, one of those kit folders you get at open houses or conferences that has all the information you need neatly tucked inside; the steps to a successful new career and where to find a cheap bicycle made for a six-foot tall woman with limited neck mobility.
But as my mother always used to say, “What you wants and what you gets are two entirely different things.” There’s no step-by-step guide for this mid-life bedlam and I hope I don’t fall apart because I don’t have the manual for reassembly. Never mind, when we land there will be the fun of wading through the paperwork for Neil’s residency permit, alerting the local authorities to our presence and then having the immigration medicals, which I hear are quite comprehensive. Maybe they give you wine and cheese before any orifice probing takes place, just to add a little class to the whole ordeal. At any rate, it’s all part of the process and there’s no getting around it.
And so ends our life as we know it. Who knows what’s in store for us on the other side? Success or failure, laughter or tears, financial ruin or riches? As I step to the edge and leave one life for another I ask for nothing more than a little good fortune. Whether I’m walking away or walking toward, time will be the judge. For now, the only plan is one foot in front of the other.
~ AND A NEW LIFE BEGINS ~
SEPTEMBER
DEPARTURES
AND ARRIVALS
I’m great at coming and going; it’s the in between that does me in. There are few things in life that displease me more than air travel. Of course Neil loves it. He thinks it’s “fun” and he usually eats both our meals with gusto. There aren’t enough drugs on the planet to put me to sleep on a plane but he’s often out before we leave the tarmac. On this momentous flight he struck up a chat with a fellow who had been posted to Paris as an assistant to the Canadian ambassador. Next thing I knew, Neil and the diplomat were clinking wineglasses and ordering watches from the in-flight store like they were sorority sisters. At about the halfway point, the two of them were fed, watered and snoring peacefully, while I was on my third glass of wine trying to beat back the vision of plunging into the ocean. By the time we finally landed I was a wilted, dried-out pretzel of a woman, but my feet were on French soil. Where my luggage landed was anybody’s guess.
Twenty-one hours to get from a hotel in Halifax to a bed and breakfast in Burgundy, so for me, bed was the operative word. For the next few days we were treated like the royalty we are with exquisite meals, cold Crémant in the cave by candlelight, the works. I spent my last morning there strolling around the gravel courtyard, the morning sun on my face and the family dogs at my heels. I thought this could be my new job, Lady of the Manor with the Labradors. I could just eat, drink, feed the dogs and occasionally hunt for pheasant wearing some kind of tweed ensemble, then later pull on a little Dior number for the bubbly in the cave. I’m nothing if not practical.
Our next stop was the tiny hamlet of Etrochey, home sweet temporary home, an old mill house restored by a local farmer and his wife. When we pulled up, I couldn’t believe my eyes. We’d gotten an incredible deal on this place and I had to laugh at the irony of beginning a life as an unemployed layabout in a place such as this. The good news is that it’s long paid for and all I have to do is avoid becoming attached to a spread that could only be mine if I were holding a winning lottery ticket. If this is the simple life, count me in.
LOWERING
MY STANDARD
I’m more the bookwormy, nerdy type, prone to excitement about themes in literature and whatnot. Ma
th, I can’t even talk about it intelligently. The good thing is I don’t give a damn. I have Neil who can calculate the square root of 22,456 in his head, so why bother? There are competent engineers the world over who drool over principles of velocity and distance and whatever else goes on in physics books, so again, I leave those things to the experts. As for hand-eye co-ordination, I’m a disaster. I couldn’t play a video game if my life depended on it.
But during the very first week of my new life in France my devil may care attitude has caught up with me. For a while now I’ve been avoiding driving the car we’ve rented on account of the three pedals and the funny stick between the seats. So I asked Neil if he’d be so kind as to offer me a little instruction, figuring after an hour or so I’d be zipping along the highway, passing every Peugeot and Citroën in sight.
Mon dieu there was less bucking and grinding in Urban Cowboy. And speaking of mechanical bulls, I’ve never seen poor Neil quite so pale. Ever since a couple of surgeons pieced my neck back together with plates and screws, one of my biggest fears in my life is a car accident and this stick-shift business isn’t helping. All I can imagine now is desperately trying to remember what that third pedal is for as I am careening towards death on an icy curve. I know that many people love driving stick-shift cars and yes, I know it takes time to get it down, but I must say that I feel like a gangly puppet, hands and feet in perpetual motion with no hope of control. The secret is they make automatic cars that do all this for you. I know the stick devotees say that the joy of driving lies in the shifting but for me it lies in knowing that I, a highly distracted individual at the best of times, will not need to be doing four things at once on a steep hill in a foreign country. The remarkable thing is that I’m actually getting worse every time I drive. It’s a wonder Neil hasn’t had a heart attack or thrown up all over me from these rodeo rides. This can’t go on for much longer in somebody else’s vehicle as I’m not keen to call a Frenchman to inform him that I ripped out the transmission before leaving the driveway. I’ll give it a few more tries but I might have to admit defeat. I guess it’s not the end of the world, but how sad to be the lone loser in France who can’t drive a stick. Maybe I was expecting too much from myself and I need to shift gears philosophically. Rome wasn’t built in a day and building French Bobbi may take years.