Why France?

When I was 4, my father had decided he wanted to try living in France, preferably close to Paris, and asked his company for a transfer, resulting in us relocating to Chartres. It was just in time for me to start French kindergarten at age 5.

I immediately fell profoundly in love with France. It was my first time ever in this country and it simply felt right. We had only lived in Chartres for just under a year, effectively one full school year, yet living here for that short blip would dramatically impact my life.

Most of my memories of that time were of winter. Every winter here now, as an adult, I am reminded of how it felt, the smells and visuals, especially that of the stark, leafless trees against the dark gray sky, something I would see as I looked up and out of the car window as my mother drove me back and forth from kindergarten.

French kindergarten alone was reason to fall in love with this country; my father vividly remembers how I came home each day, exploding with excitement, describing what we had eaten for lunch between classes. I mean, I was in love. The carefully prepared meals of fresh, nutritious food (I remember a lot of lentils), the real silverware, the actual china plates, it was all pure magic to me after tater tots and other brown fried things served at American schools (sorry USA, but France absolutely wins this one).

I remember being in the librairies (bookstores) after school, turning the pages of the comic books I liked as I sat in the children’s corner, hearing hushed and whispery French spoken around me. There is a real ASMR factor to the French language, it is so soothing. Hearing spoken French calms me, I relax, I can breathe easier, my nervous system is at peace.

I remember learning We Will Rock You by Queen in the kindergarten, slapping my thighs and clapping on beat with the rest of my French classmates, the teachers using the opportunity to teach us a little English, everyone feeling very cool. I remember Fabienne, the very strict French teacher who was known to hit the kids if anyone was out of line (yes, this was a real thing); I was terrified of her and constantly vigilant about following the rules so I would never be in trouble.

One particularly cold day, it was also where I encountered my first (but definitely not last) French crush, out on the playground. The bell had rang, signalling playtime outside was over and I had tied my very 1990s windbreaker to the jungle gym to keep safe as I clambered around. When the bell rang, I could not get it untied despite my best efforts, the knot was too tight. Panic had welled inside of me at the thought of being hit by Fabienne for coming in late and I tugged harder at my jacket, trying to get it loose. A young boy in the class one grade above me came by and untied it for me, handing it to me with a grin. I had searched my brain desperately for the right word and finally managed a merci as we both ran inside.

The house we lived in is a story in itself, my mother had been horrified by the stairs as they had no railing, she was convinced one of us would surely slip and fall to our death (nobody did). I had taped up snowflakes on my bedroom window, cut carefully from shiny French craft paper, and remember how peaceful the winter landscape looked outside.

My parents had met other expats in our small community and befriended them, trying to quell their loneliness and swapping stories of frustration of the impossible-to-navigate French systems. At one point, we all took a trip to Martinique together; I was terrified of the numerous crabs that scuttled along the beach and absolutely delighted by the food.

When I am asked why I love France so much today, why I moved here, why France of all places, I always struggle to find the answer. It’s chasing some fleeting feeling of safety that I must have felt here as a child, quite possibly the last place that I ever felt truly safe. It’s the way the light filters through the windows here, the ancient buildings with equally ancient wooden beams, the soft whispery nature of the language, the way it is both deeply familiar and yet completely foreign. I once took a 23andMe test to know if perhaps it is something in my genes, but other than some murky Swiss roots, there is no real French genetic history in my DNA makeup.

I also think when we moved back to the USA after that short year in France, everything felt infinitely more dangerous to me, somehow less real. Everything from the food to the people had a veneer of inauthenticity and sugary-fakeness that I could not shake.

Since having moved back to France as an adult, I can confirm those feelings of safety have indeed come flooding back, even though I am not actually safe at all. From navigating the notorious bureaucracy, to finding a job with a permanent CDI contract (the most desirable), to trying to figure out the health care and tax systems, to working and dealing with people that seem to endlessly love telling me non (to even the most trivial matters), and having done this all in the middle of a pandemic, I should actually feel anything but safe here. And yet, there are moments where this great love swells up in me, without warning, signalling to me that I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

It happened when my coworker asked me to lunch and was happily chattering away to me in French about her weekend plans and I suddenly realized I could understand every word, some glorious old church bells ringing nearby, the beautiful afternoon light shining down on us as we walked through a perfect Parisian alleyway to get our perfectly nutritious Parisian lunch (probably lentils).

It was when I had a different lunch, also with coworkers, and that magical light shone through a window in a restaurant in a building from the 1800s, as my colleague spoke softly to me in French, asking me what my plans were for the holidays.

It’s when the famous pink light we see here falls on the iconic Parisian building facades, something so spectacularly beautiful that your heart hurts, every time.

It’s when I see the soft, misty fog over the pastures in the countryside, when I take a train to anywhere in the country and inevitably see vineyards dotting the landscape, when I am reminded of how stunning France is. This country is truly beyond beautiful.

I am incredibly grateful to be able to live here, despite the imperfections and “quirks” (and believe me, I will write about them). I have such enormous pride for la France. I bawled my eyes out during the 2024 Olympics opening ceremony, pretty much immediately in the first minute of the spectacle. I feel an intense kick of patriotism every time I see Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité on a building in Paris (whether these ideals are successfully implemented and upheld is, of course, another discussion entirely).

I suppose I could say I came here to “find myself” but the more accurate phrasing would be that I came here to return to myself. The less angry girl, the girl that felt safe, happy, protected, the girl that just wants to peacefully eat some charcuterie with crusty baguette and read Tintin comics. Somewhere, since that time when I was 5 and in Chartres, that version of me got lost and life became really, really stressful and hard and I became really, really angry. But I am here now to honour that little girl and the adult version of myself that deserves that safety and peace.

And I also just really love France.

Things you can do to recreate the safest moments of my childhood: 

1. Have it be wintertime somewhere cold.
2. Get in a car and drive to your closest bookstore, be sure to look out the window occasionally at some leafless winter trees.
3. Curl up into a corner and page through the comic books, specifically The Adventures of Tintin.
4. Buy the Tintin edition of your choice (my personal favourite as a child was Les Bijoux de la Castafiore).
5. Go home and sit at the table, open your big Tintin book and prop it up with a plate, grab some crunchy baguette and cut yourself slices of saucisson, preferably with a side of olives.
6. Eat, read, and know that you are safe.