A Place for Me
“Community” is something we tend to take for granted, something we may not even notice, until it’s not there.
And when you’ve moved from your home culture to a new land and language, your community shrinks just like that, or is suddenly lacking all together.
Living abroad seems glamorous and exciting to the outside observer. And it is. But it can be very difficult too.
Especially in the beginning, it can feel like negotiating life on a tightrope strung high above the earth without a safety net, or one that’s riddled with holes. Every day is a constant struggle to find balance. You do eventually get there, but until that day arrives, you live with the foreboding that you could stumble and fall at any moment. And it’s not clear who, if anyone, will be there to catch you.
At least that’s how it was for me on arrival in Paris, France in 2004.
Our family unit – Jim, Loo, and me – bonded as a tiny community throughout that summer. We clung to each other. We had to. It was a necessity. Lucky for us, Jim was happy from the word “go”. He was already a French speaker, having spent his primary school years at the Lycée Français in New York. In addition, work provided him the immediate association of like-minded people, as well as a means to structure his days. He anchored Loo and me as we struggled to regain our confidence.
Then, once sorted, school became a strong community and affinity base for Loo. Indeed, at that point she found her feet again and began to sprout wings.
But for me, the “trailing” spouse, deprived of my career by force of law and with no school or work culture or structure to buoy me, finding community in France was elusive.
It's true that in those first anxiety-filled days at the bilingue, I fell in with a lovely group of other new mums. We connected quickly by virtue of our parallel circumstances, and I remain close with many of them today. But when I no longer shared a school-based community with them, I was often shut out of their conversations and events. Though I moved in their circle, I was on the periphery. And while my kinship ties with that school environment grew no further, theirs continued to expand.
Meanwhile, over at the International School, I had missed the important early occasions to mingle with and make the acquaintance of other new parents. The affinity groups there were few, owing to the small size of the school and a psychological phenomenon that I’d never before encountered in my life, which is just this:
Generally speaking, when we believe that our time in a new place will be temporary, we tend to eschew close ties. Why? Because we know on some level that we will grieve them when it’s once again time to move on.
Members of International School populations – families of diplomats and global execs who move every two-three years on average – understand this all too well, from first-hand experience. With each new departure they experience another period of loss. So, little be little, to avoid hurting too deeply the next time they pull up stakes, they may tend to seek no more than superficial connections, and usually unconsciously.
Don’t even ask about my seeking community amongst the French – impossible without the language!
Which is all to say that I was quite alone throughout our first year here, and well into the second as well. I was adrift in a turbulent sea without an adequate paddle. What's more, friends back home were deaf to my complaints. I lived in Paris after all! The cheek!
So, I plunged myself into learning French as a full time occupation and attended every guided visit to every museum and monument that I could possibly find. I took classes at the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, in part to learn about the art, in part to improve my French. I started riding horses again and joined a local choir as a way to get out of the house and make French friends. These activities filled my time, but I wasn’t exactly happy. I missed working. I missed having a purpose. I missed my community.
Then one sunny February morning in 2006, I woke up with an idea.
That idea would change my life.
