Au revoir, États-Unis, jusqu’à ce qu’on se revoie
Philadelphia view
I’m looking out the 12th floor window of my hotel in Philadelphia. The fog hangs over the century old buildings and matches the color of my paper cup of shitty hotel room coffee. I’m in a reflective mood because our flight leaves in eight hours. Are we really going to do this? Am I really leaving this country to live in another where I only kind-of speak the language? Nice, France, is touristy and expensive, right? Of course, it’s a little late to be having internal existential dialectics, especially after everything we’ve had to do to get to this point, but I’m human, and it can’t be helped. The dynamic and interconnected nature of reality and the importance of change can’t be ignored. I’ll be 60 this year and this is something that will bring me challenges and joy in the third phase of life. It will help me to live my last third as intensely as I did the first two, and that’s something that’s very important to me. I do not want to just fade out even though it is clearly my fate, as it is yours.
The last 40 days here in the United States have been memorable, emotional, and some of the best days of my life. When you don’t live here anymore and you instead bounce from house to house seeing family and friends, and you watch the sand clock slowly dripping time like honey from a bottle, life gets piquant. Everything is perhaps the last time you will do something, at least for a long time, and so the things you see and hear, the flavors and the conversations are all the more stimulating and exciting. And in our case, when our friends are the generous kind, and we share meals we make and whiskeys and wines that were bottled when we were in our twenties, time is always on the menu.
Spending time with my parents, my siblings, my aunts and uncles, their life-long friends and neighbors who may as well be aunts and uncles, my oldest friends, and my dearest friends has been something I will forever be grateful for. Everyone of them—you—has wished us well and given us your energies. Without exception, you all want us to do this, and do it right, and we feel buoyed by that. We feel responsible to treat your love with care and to not waste a minute of it while living our new lives, doing those things you hope we’ll do, as you would if only you could be in our shoes.
Many of you already have tickets and reservations in the next weeks and months and for this we are also grateful. It makes saying goodbye more temporary, and less painful, the weight of those goodbyes being lighter and easier to carry with us. Imagining where we’ll go and what we’ll do when we’re together again is valuable currency that makes us feel rich.
As we wrapped up our years-long to do list this week and could see the that the long scroll of boxes was finally all checked, it left us with only enjoying ourselves, and that we did. The Pacific Northwest, damn, it’s never not just stunning no matter what the weather, especially Kitsap County. We went up to Butcher & Baker Provisions for lunch in Port Gamble. We visited an artist and chef couple’s house in Brownsville who were selling their things as they prepared to move to France. (Are we trend setters?) I bought a pan and a knife. We went to one of the most stunning houses we’ve seen in the PNW when we saw a friend’s brother and sister-in-law in Port Orchard. They have acreage on Long Lake, a wood shop, a meadow, and he personally cut in a mile-long trail through his property that we walked along with Rigby, their golden retriever, who was literally a pig in slop along the trail. We witnessed pure happiness in that dog. After an amazing steak dinner that they prepared, we sat outside along their edge of the lake view and drank whiskey in front of the fire. On another day my friend and I spent the entire afternoon cooking a Mexican feast together as we killed a bottle of rosé sparkling wine, and then fourteen of our friends came over and wolfed it all down. It was a thing to behold. I took a solo drive from Silverdale to Bremerton along the Sound through the little towns of Fairview and Tracyton which is something I did often when I lived in the area a few years back. Here, I really debated again whether moving to France was brilliant or stupid. I passed old trees and the moss, the water and the mountains, the winding road past horses and fields, houses that I might have purchased had I been so inclined, or more prescient—all of it demanding me to recalculate my decision making for the millionth time.
The black and white images below are from the artist’s house. The color images are from the Port Orchard lake house and Rigby.
But as I sit here now looking at the window clicking away on my laptop, having just downloaded my boarding passes for tonight, it’s time to look forward. The floodgates can be opened, and the deluge of excitement must finally be let in. One would think that had already happened a long time ago, but it hasn’t. It can’t if you want to actually do something like this—not talk about it but do it. There is so much to do to prepare for such a transition, and it requires focus and clarity, so emotional distractions aren’t helpful. But I find that right now I need them. I can draw upon recent memories while projecting into the future.
The vision that comes to mind first and often is holding Chien-hui’s hand as we walk along the Promenade des Anglais, that impossibly wonderful wide walkway along the turquoise and cobalt blue Mediterranean Sea. We did it so many times when we were there in December and it has become synonymous with Nice. It’s the ultimate battery charger and as we shrink into our old selves over the next couple of decades this is where you’ll find us every day allowing the ions to wash over us.
The Promenade along the sea and the old city in the foreground
Next are the winding alleyways of the Vieux Ville (Old City), the long shadows thrown by the medieval buildings protecting us from the sun and creating multiple directions to explore. The light is a photographer’s playground. There is a butcher there that I love, a fromagerie, a bookstore, and several wine shops. The smell of butter wafts through the air. The line of people waiting for Socca as it is called in France, Farinata in Italy, the unleavened chickpea flatbread that people are crazy for. It’s where history meets the good life.
The daily outdoor markets, especially the one at Libération, with its dozens of fresh fruit and vegetable sellers and the permanent fish stalls selling the freshest things from the sea you’ve ever eaten. We’ll shop there at least three times a week. I’ll get to know the vendors as I practice my broken French and they, their English. And then I’ll go home and cook, and my apartment will smell good, and we’ll eat on our porch as the sun drops behind our building.
The famous blue chairs on the Promenade
The sounds of Nice will be part of my day again. The omnipresent rolling of the pebbles in the waves at Nice’s beach that sound like a distant crowd’s roar, which can be heard from anywhere along the Prom. The opening and closing of the doors on the tram. The jaunty little clip of music that you hear on the coastal train when it enters or leaves the stations at Monaco, Menton, Cannes, Antibes, or Ventimiglia, Italy. Scooters everywhere, some old and loud, some newer ninja-quiet electric models. The lively conversations in front of the cafés, or the mix of English and French between the baristas at Copenhagen Coffee Lab, our favorite coffee shop. And the birds in the morning as the sun shows itself again on one of its 300 days of sun per year in Nice. They make a racket, and it’s lovely. The birds, not the sunny days.
It's not really a feeling of excitement, but more one of anticipated peace. It overtakes and soothes my fear. That’s what I am most looking forward to as I sit here looking out at the cold and the fog, knowing I will miss America deeply, but also knowing that I have to do this.
Goodbye, United States, until we meet again.
(As an addendum, let me state that Philadelphia is a great city. This is the third time we have been here in the past year and the area around Rittenhouse Square, where we always stay, and in the city-center, is just full of life, energy, and the most amazing places to eat. Here is a very short list of places to try if you come soon: My Loup, Zahav, K’far, The Love, Parc, Le Columbé. But this barely scratches the surface.)
