Sunday, June 19, 2011

A year from now

I am that type of person. The kind who takes things like moments, dates, anniversaries seriously. I stop, reflect...feel sad about the passage of time and wonder about the coming year. The next thing.


Paris.  All I ever wanted was to see Paris.  I would dream of learning French and walking through the streets unconcerned and at home, like a native. I would wander in my mind along cobble stones streets and across bridges, listening to the history of a world I've never know, getting lost in the immensity of it all. 


I've never been to Paris.


I can't speak French 


And yet, in less than a month, I am moving to Roquebrune Cap-Martin, France. 


600 miles south of Paris.


A year and half ago I was living in a room off my parents' kitchen. Not even a bedroom but a living room off my parents' kitchen. With all of my possessions in a 5 x 10 foot storage unit, except for my dog and my shoes and my many many clothes. And my TV.


And now I am married and living in Florida, with my dog and some of the shoes and more and more clothes.  I am trying to pack three months worth of clothes into 2 suitcases that will weigh less than 50 pounds a piece.  Sounds like a math problem that requires paper and a number 2 pencil to figure out. 


Life is wild, if you let it be. If you live without fear or at least without letting fear rule you. I was afraid for years. After dreaming of Paris....I forgot how to dream and I boxed myself in with fear as my only companion. 


I still feel fear. And regret. I still worry about what could have been, or should have been or what I didn't do. And yet, even with all of that, I am moving to France. I am going to learn French. I am going to write more every day. This is what I promise myself, today, June 18. The 34th anniversary of my beginning. I will reach that goal I dreamt of when I was young and poetic and a wanderer of wooded places. In the years when I would sit on the rocks under the trees in the woods behind where we lived and dream of what could be. I will learn French and not be afraid of new places and new things because that girl, that young dreamer reading poetry out loud to the babbling brook at her feet and the chickadees in the branches over head, because she believes in me. http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&pwst=1&q=roquebrune+cap+martin+france&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&biw=1276&bih=595&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x12cde999c102ce85:0x23682a842cf14aa0,Roquebrune-Cap-Martin,+France&gl=us&ei=ok79Te6tKYnBtgf58u28Dg&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CCIQ8gEwAA 

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Goodbye to Florida

One whole year passed in the blink of an eye.  I can't believe it even as I type it.  Already a week has gone by since Dennis and I crossed the 365 day mark and the time is continuing to whirl past us.

We were able to spend a delicious night and day away in celebration down in Miami at the Ritz on Key Biscayne.  It was romantic and lovely and far too short. We were treated like royalty and I grew accustomed to it all instantly.  The chocolate strawberries, the bottles of champagne, the rose petals everywhere.  From the moment we arrived to the moment we drove away with heavy hearts, every second was bliss. A perfect anniversary gift to each other.  Just the two of us, drinking our frozen cocktails with sand between our toes.

And then our family and loved ones threw us a beach island dream anniversary party complete with shells and sand and a cake decorated in sea blue icing.  It was an evening spent surrounded by those we love and those who love us.  For me the bittersweetness of the evening increases because Dennis and I have only a few weeks left before we leave for France.

We decided, after much thought and sweat and doubt and pro & con lists, that a move to help his mother is what we need to do now. So as of July 11th or so, I will be leaving Florida behind and heading North to be with my family in RI and then off to France for three months.  We hope to make it a permanent move to France, with the three months being the first leg.  We need to discover if we can make money there, have a place to live and many other odd and end decisions before we can say that we are staying for sure.  But our goal is to stay there for as long as Dennis' mum needs us.

It's an incredible idea, one I can't really absorb. Even as I write, I know that I am not fully expressing myself. My heart is at once afraid and thrilled, terrified and impatient to be gone. But one emotion I feel completely is that now my heart will be divided even a little more, because there are some beautiful people here that I will miss very much.  People who have loved me even though I fought this place with every inch of my being. People who have forgiven me for being unreasonably homesick and sweaty for a non-stop year. I have come to love my Florida family of friends and now that I am facing more goodbyes, I am heartsick.  It seems like for me, this whole year of marriage has been a road full of goodbyes.  I want to say hello instead.

Soon I will be saying HELLO to France, my new home. I will carry RI in my blood and Florida in my heart. I hope I can fully express to my newest friends how much they mean to me and how much I am going to miss them. Their kindness and comfort, their patience with me. One way or another, we will return, if only to visit again in September.  But I hope they all know that I am grateful for their friendships and sorry to have to leave them, no matter where I am headed. I refuse to grow used to saying goodbye.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Best of Friends

I am sitting at my desk and through the closed door I can hear my husband and his best friend Ed laughing as they watch Superman (the original movie) and The Marx brothers.  They seem to have their own language. You know, the language of friends that have been together since the first grade.  Dennis and Ed have literally been friends for fifty years. How rare is that?

I've had some close friends, some I thought I'd had forever.  But nothing as remarkable as what these two have.  They've moved across country together and through kids and marriage and jobs, they laugh together like they are six years old still.  Almost as if being together brings them back to an easier time, an innocent time.  When baseball and penny candy was the most important thing in your day.  And shouldn't that be the way of things?  Why can't we keep things that simple?

I am reflecting on my close, forget time and just laugh kind of friends now, as I sit here waiting for my toxic nail polish to dry, wondering if I am going to regret this color choice come morning's first light.

My one friend who makes me a fish stick wrap with american cheese and ketchup and the best coffee I've every had and its the best food I've ever tasted... and we can slip right into a conversation that feels like its never ended, and laugh about the craziness of how our lives have gone. She is the one who always comes to my rescue.

Then my other friend who makes the perfect cocktail, who always guesses right on my musical mood and who can talk me through or around just about anything, who always takes my side and who can just sit by me in companionable silence with the comfort only an old friend can bring. Like oxygen, I breath easier with her.

Or another friend I have who's calm existence is so overpowering that within minutes the tumult that is my mind slows down to a crawl and nothing seems so terrible any more.  Like a Valium to my soul, this friend's calmness steals over me and I am able to stop the whirring.

Or my sister who makes me laugh like nobodies business, who understands me right away, without any preface to my story. She is right on target before I even can get the words out, she knows.  She is my oracle.

Or my sister who is the poet in my heart kind of friend, who makes me believe in magic again and dreams and fairy dust.  She is eternally youthful to me, reminding me that anything is possible if you hold on to your hope. My role model friend

Where would we be without friends like that? The ones who take our sides, who know just what we need. Who run into the battle and never hesitate or  count the cost but would rather fight beside you and for you and defend you, even if you are your own worst enemy.

I can look back over my life and see exactly where each one of these friends scooped me up and saved me, from the most dramatic events to the seemingly mundane.  Life is worth the mess because of the people we get to love and know.  Here is to friendship, like Dennis and Ed, friendship that never stops, never changes and never quits. Here's to laughing until you snort. Here's to eating a whole roasted chicken together. Here's to laying on the kitchen floor in your friend's house and just waiting for things to make sense...and knowing that your friend will wait there beside you.  Here's to chickens someday having lips!