Since our visit to the French embassy a couple of weeks ago in Seattle to apply for our long stay visas, we’ve been in California visiting my family. We first spent a week in San Diego and stayed at my parent’s house. Then we flew north to San Jose where we are currently camped in my aunt and uncle’s backyard in-law suite. The visits were designed to be time-killers while we waited for the visas to be approved, and our passports returned to us with the much-anticipated “Pass-Go” documents glued inside granting us a full year in the EU. Without them we would be required to continue what has become known on YouTube as the “Schengen Dance,” which means strictly observing the laws requiring three months maximum in the EU and then three months minimum out. As Americans, we aren’t required to return to the US, but as there are now 29 Schengen member countries, there aren’t a lot of options left to go to near Europe. The UK and Ireland are popular choices, as are Albania, Montenegro, and Turkey. Or, hey, you can go lots of other places in the world, right? With the visas, we are now free to travel all over Europe for as long as we like.

We are sensitive about overstaying our welcomes when we come home, and as I wrote in my last post, our friends in Bremerton were more than generous when they let us stay with them for a week. We are coming back to stay with them for another week soon, so again, we will try to be very conscientious guests. Same goes for my family. A week with each of them is enough before we will get old. I know they are anxious to see us and hear about our journey in more detail than they get from this blog or our limited phone conversations, but we are still invading their space, their routines, their bedtimes, and in some cases, grossly increasing their wine consumption. There is also the elephant in the room that can’t be ignored. That being, we are moving to the other side of the world. They are equal parts excited for us and sad for themselves that we need to leave them and our country to live our best lives. This dark cloud with silver lining is always there, hanging over everything, all the time. Happiness tinged with gray.

To make things even more sharp, my brother and his wife are on their own journey, and they have opted to move to Nicaragua this spring. This is also very exciting news for them as they prepare to sell their home and most of their belongings and relocate to a beautiful golf resort with a private beach, but now doubly sad for my parents. My brother, who is technically my stepbrother, and who I resemble in virtually no way physically, is nearing 60 but weighs what he did in high school and can still surf every day as well as swing a golf club with power and accuracy. While I am good at food and wine and am proud of myself when I walk 10,000 steps or up a few stairs, he is an athlete and requires lots of exercise to feel good. He will get all he wants in Nicaragua.

This leaves our sister to be there when my folks need help. My sister has always been there for them, and I am forever grateful to her. She brought them food during Covid while keeping a safe distance. She goes to the hospital with them in the middle of the night on those rare but scary occasions. I’m sure she would like to be moving to France or Nicaragua or wherever her version of a better life is, too. She is supportive of us moving to France, but I’m sure there is some part of her that is bitter, understandably. (Sorry and thank you times a thousand). My parents also have an incredible group of neighbors who they have known for 30 plus years and who told us over a breakfast they invited us to that they will always be there for my parents, so not to worry. That certainly helps.

You no doubt can tell by my tone here that there is a mixture of feelings involved when returning to see our loved ones. The same thing happened for Chien-hui when we were in Taiwan. All of the emotion, the laughter, the joy of catching up and having deeper, detailed conversations with our loved ones is tempered by pangs of guilt, the fear we are making some huge mistake, and the knowledge that none of us are getting any younger. Sharing our journey with everyone through words and pictures (not only this blog but the slide shows I make) helps everyone because they see what we are doing, and they continue to live more vicariously. And I feel they are more along the journey with us and therefore better understand our decisions and perhaps are more forgiving of our selfishness. I like to think so because it makes me feel better.

As each piece falls into place for us, I can hear the metal locks tumbling into place. The apartment is found. Click. The lease is signed. Clack. The visas were delivered yesterday. Clang, clang, clang…echo. I know I can unravel it all at some expense, but it feels rather permanent. Half way around the world. Certainly, we are still very excited. I do have to remind myself whenever I am overwhelmed by anxiety that I am about to live on the French Riviera a few mere blocks from the Mediterranean Sea. Prior to May 2024 I had never set foot in France and with our upcoming visitors I will have been in Paris six times by the end of this year. Let me state definitively that it is an impossibility to go to Paris too many times. We’re doing something many people dream of, but let’s not sugar coat it: We’re doing it for financial reasons just as much for the experience of living in a different country. We will be better off there than here, plain and simple.

Back here in California, the weather has been very Mediterranean in both San Diego and the Bay Area. My parents and Chien-hui and I were able to walk in Mission Beach along the boardwalk of my childhood with my dad’s life-long friend one morning and then again in Coronado with just the four of us. These walks keep my aging parents in amazing condition. Their minds are sharp and they walk miles each week. We also walked through Balboa Park and saw a brilliant exhibit on women photographers at the Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA).

Earlier this week, Chien-hui and I took the Caltrain up to San Francisco. It has been fifteen years since my last visit. San Francisco is the first city I fell deeply for. I was 16 and on a school trip with my good friends and I was so overwhelmed by how European it was, although I didn’t have any understanding of what that meant at the time, I just knew it wasn’t anything like my quiet, beachy San Diego home. When I got back, I immediately applied to Bay Area colleges and I was accepted to San Jose State University regardless of my lackluster grades and SAT scores—an impossibility these days. This was as close as I could get to my beloved San Francisco. Two years later I was living in the city and going to art school. Imagine me at 19 walking up and down the hills, on the buses, aiming my camera at the city and making images. Still later, I was working for one of the city’s most successful commercial photographers. And even later, there I am with Chien-hui sharing our first kiss at the top of Twin Peaks. My brother flew up to San Francisco to witness us exchanging our vows at San Francisco City Hall a year later. She claims she has no idea what the judge made her agree to, her English not being as fluent yet, but it seems to have worked in my favor. Needless to say, the city by the bay has always held a special place in my mind.

After we made our way up the peninsula, we arrived at 4th and King in the city, exited the train and crossed the street to jump on the N Judah streetcar, which whisked us out to the inner Sunset neighborhood. There we found our favorite noodle shop, PPQ, at Irving and 19th absolutely unchanged. After thirty-something years, the same furniture, same menu, the same locals slumped over their soup, slurping loudly. We ordered the same number 8 we used to, coconut milk chicken soup with a serious float of chili oil, but it wasn’t as good as I remember it to be. It probably hadn’t changed at all, but of course, we had. Well, there was one significant difference. We used to drive from our first house in Hayward, CA, and spend $15 on gas and tolls for that $8 bowl of noodles, which was now incredibly $16.

From there we took the N back downtown and then walked up the very steep Powell Street from Market Street all the way to the top of Nob Hill. Along that climb we passed a friendly San Francisco beat cop who stopped and asked if we were lost or if we needed anything. The surprise of this friendliness led to a joyful fifteen-minute conversation where we reminisced on the San Francisco of our youths and how things have changed. Like Seattle, San Francisco is making a comeback after a rough few years, post-Covid. The officer shared smiles and wished us well, hoping we would enjoy the city.

Buoyed by this exchange we made it up and over the peak, past the Fairmont Hotel, and back down into Chinatown. Again, virtually unchanged. The ducks hanging in the window, the men squabbling loudly in Cantonese over fish freshness and price, old women picking through each and every green bean before the competition could take the best ones. From there we crossed Broadway into North Beach and suddenly everything was Italian. We saw that The Stinking Rose, an all-garlic restaurant we used to love, had moved across the street into the old Calzone’s location, another restaurant we used to frequent. We stopped for cappuccinos at Café Greco and sat outside and watched the people float past. From there it was onto Washington Square, the smell of pizza filling the air and overwhelming us, even though we were still full of noodles and chili oil and coffees. It was a beautiful day, and people were enjoying the sun in front of the Saints Peter and Paul church.

Chien-hui said to me, “It feels like Paris here.” And it clicked for me. My god, this whole time, it’s been the Europe of the west that I have been in love with. What a great city to grow up in, to have become who I am in its streets and parks, surrounded by it’s artistic community. It shaped me and continues to, even today. There is no living in France for me without having discovered San Francisco first.

So, these past two weeks seeing family has been more than killing time. It has been reconnecting to myself, my original sources of inspiration, and refilling with all that makes me who I am, the top of that list being my family. I couldn’t travel the world the way I have my entire life without them.

Much Needed Family Time

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