Roots

http://polaroid41.com/roots/

Sunday, July 18th, 2021 - 11:22am.

I arrived in France in July 2004, 17 years ago this month. I landed at Charles de Gaulle airport and took the train into the city with a backpack, about three words of French and an address I could barely decipher. The initial plan was to stay for two months while I took French classes and put together a Fulbright application, but I really liked Paris and decided to stay until Christmas, and then stay until summer, and then, and then…

For about five years I was convinced that I shouldn’t put down roots because I wasn’t going to stay. I met my husband after my first year in Paris and though many people assume that I stayed in France for him, it’s much more the other way around. He was keen to move to Rome or travel around, and we talked a lot about setting up camp in San Francisco or New York. We had an apartment on a month-to-month lease, and I refused to get a cell phone plan. Then one day, I looked at him and said: ‘We always talk about moving, but we never take any steps towards making it happen...maybe we don’t actually want to move? If we really wanted to do it, wouldn’t we do it?’ I remember calling my mom, ready to give her my big coming out speech, ‘Mom, I think I’m going to stay in France.’ She happily replied, ‘I know Titi, we all know that.’ Ha! Apparently I was the last one to realize. France has my heart, and those roots I thought I shouldn’t put down had been growing under my feet the whole time.

I won’t deny it, France is beautiful. It’s not for nothing that it’s the number one most visited country in the world. But it’s also real life. If you think I’ve spent the last 17 years prancing around Monmarte with a beret on my head and a baguette under my arm, well, sorry to disappoint you. I have to-do lists, grocery shopping, laundry, car insurance, an in-box full of emails, prescriptions to refill at the pharmacy. Real life.

But sometimes? Sometimes a moment catches me and I see it all anew: the little Minnesota girl who grew up and made a life for herself over 4000 miles away from where she was born.

It happens when I walk across the Seine on le Pont Marie from le Marais to the l’Ile Saint Louis, or when someone casually opens a bottle of champagne at a child’s birthday party, when I sip a glass of very good wine for 4€ in a restaurant at lunch, when I drive our little Citroen through tiny French villages on our way to a weekend getaway. It can happen when I find myself at a long wooden table covered with foie gras, paté, charcuterie, fresh bread and salad to start the meal, or when someone is playing an accordion on the street, or when I’m admiring the selection in a cheese shop. (I’m only half joking when I eat really good cheese and say, ‘You see, this is why I can never move back to America. I know too much now.’)

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The complete 'polaroid' - text, minicast and polaroid photo - available at: http://polaroid41.com/roots/