OK. Granted, I'm a bit jet-lagged and slightly sleep-deprived (when I was still wide awake after half an Ambien at 2 this morning, I finally gave up, pulled out my laptop, and did some work for the Corporation until 5). And I am stressed about everything I need to do before the movers arrive at 8 a.m. Thursday. That's still no excuse for me to have been on the verge of tears while grocery shopping today!
I wandered through my beloved supermarket, Monoprix, getting misty-eyed in every aisle because it was probably the last time I'll shop there, and I just know I won't be able to find decent ham in the U.S. Or cherry jam. Or the butter cookies I love so much. And don't even get me started about the cheese and the yogurt! I even got nostalgic as I dodged the Zamboni-like floor-cleaning machines, thinking fondly that only a French grocery store would think that it's a good idea to clean the floors at noon on a Saturday. To make sure that I didn't miss out on my last opportunity to eat decent food, I spent double my normal weekly grocery budget, including buying 20 containers of yogurt. We can all rest assured that I will not have a calcium deficit between now and Thursday.
I'm trying to remember exactly why I thought it would be a good idea to leave this country that I love so much, and to wonder if it's too late to change my mind. As long as the movers haven't taken my stuff away, there's still a way to reverse this process, isn't there?!
Maybe not. I know it's time for me to leave; I just can't believe that I'm really doing it.
P and A are throwing a little going-away party for me at their house tomorrow, and although I'm really looking forward to seeing my friends, I know that there's a 99.7% probability that I'll turn into a blubbering idiot at some point. (For the record, when I left Washington six years ago--when I was sincerely thrilled to be fulfilling my lifelong dream of moving to Paris--at one point during my going-away party, I burst into wracking, heaving sobs, wailing, "I don't want to go to France! French people are mean! Why are you all making me leave?!" Yeah, I'm a real treat.)
I am, quite simply, very sad to be leaving my life here.
Reflections on France, the U.S., and everything in between.
About Me
Blogs I have known and loved
Latest Books Read
- My Life in France, Julia Child
- Murder in the Marais, Cara Black
- The Corrections, Jonathan Frazen
- Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver
- First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria, Eva Brown-Waite
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer
- The Hours, Michael Cunningham
- Bookends, Jane Green
- Shadows on the Grass, Isak Dinesen
- Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen
- Le petit Nicolas a des ennuis, Sempé-Goscinny
- Le petit Nicolas et les copains, Sempé-Goscinny
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- Public Enemies
- Away We Go *
- Up
- Elegy
- The Hangover
- Pelham 123
- The Proposal *
- Last Chance Harvey
- X-Men Origins: Wolverine
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2008
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June
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- BNT: Every New Beginning
- My Last Post from Paris
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- The Point of . . .
- TIMM: France Friends
- Panic Sets In
- MPAS Reminder: I wanna go to a movie!
- Silver Lining
- Giving Back to the Blog Community
- Code Name: Folgers
- TIMM: My Sunday Morning Commute
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June
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3 comments:
Awwwww. It's OK to cry. It doesn't bother me a bit. (In therapy, it doesn't even slow me down, unless it's that loud sobbing kind with the sucking noises.)
Here's some very soft American brand-name Kleenex.
We're going to try to make it nice here for you. Right now it's 77/48 and just lovely. For lunch we went to a nice neighborhood place and I had a frittata with bacon and havarti. Really good bacon. We've got the pig here, I promise.
There's an evening concert at the Lake Harriet bandshell, and then later we can go to Liberty, where the flavors of the day are chocolate chocolate cake or pralines and cream.
It'll be OK.
Do you ever get anybody who cries so hard they get salty tear-foam around their eyes? That happened to me once when I was watching a really, really bad made-for-TV movie called "Who Will Love My Children?", starring Ann-Margret as a mother with cancer, whose husband was an alcoholic, so she had to give her six children away to different families before she died. Then, because they hadn't quite used up their allotted two hours of TV time and the mother wasn't dead yet, she went around to all of the families again to say good-bye to each child one last time before she croaked. And by the end of this, I had cried so hard that I had foam around my eyes. Loud, sucking, sobbing noises were just a given.
Do you think it's possible that the fact that I watched this film at the end of my junior year of college, when all my friends were leaving on study abroad programs, so that we would never ever see each other again, had anything to do with my emotional distress? No, I didn't think so either.
Also, I bought a big pack of French brand-name Kleenex at Monoprix yesterday to bring with my on my move, because American brand-name Kleenex, although soft, is just too linty and not sturdy enough.
Do you promise we'll go out for Liberty frozen custard, though? (I cry hard, but I'm easily consolable.)
not a day goes by that someone you know and like or tolerate doesn't go to liberty. Eric and I go every Sunday evening after vacuuming our new car at a gas station specifically chosen for its proximity to liberty. And many other days too. In fact , I shocked myself when I turned deb down last night. I was not supporting the tenets of liberty. One could say I was not being a patriot I suppose. But I ran nine miles and went to a party I didnt want to go to and I was done. And the reason this is written poorly and punctuated even worse is that we are driving to Monticello for brunch. Happy fathers day.
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