Open Arms

Tomorrow, it will be one week from when I walked off a plane, stepped out of French customs and into a sweet French family in Paris.

The last few days have been full full full. Imagine: three children, three adults, communicating in two languages in a two-bedroom apartment in one big city.

There’s a lot to learn, when you suddenly drop into someone else’s lifestyle.

I’m not complaining. Far from it. Nope. I’m dumbfounded. This is reeeaaal good.

We are on the northern edge of Paris’s northernmost neighborhood, Montmartre, in a sunny, 7th-floor apartment. The living room windows look out on lots of other apartments, geraniums, nudity, big screens and all. They also permit a Midwesterner to see the skyscape, which is comforting.

This “we” includes myself, the newcomer, then Jonathan, Amélie, superparents, and their three kids. E is 4 ½, I is 2, and S is just about a month old. They’re a dynamic, loving family; the kids are happy, strong, and adventurous. Maman and Papa are gentle, joyful, encouraging, and challenge their children to do accomplish things on their own whenever possible.

Jonathan and Amélie have taken such good care of me. We’ve had discussions (once over a rather large pot of Swiss fondue) about our hopes and expectations for our relationships together this year. Jonathan has helped me set up various accounts at the bank, cell phone company, and Paris public bike system, and oriented me to the various bike and bus treks I’ll need to know to get E from school a couple of times a week. Amélie has been showing me everything I need to know about the neighborhood, like parks and grocery stores. Even better, this formally-trained child psychologist is teaching me about each of the children, their phase of development, and different techniques to healthily communicate with children.

In the middle of all of this, I’m rediscovering France. It feels like being with an old friend. I know her well, it seems—not just the romantic things that charm people the world over, but also the weird, less appealing sides that frustrate. Several times a day, I find something I haven’t experienced since I was last here, and find myself smirking, confounding the inevitable passerby. Something about being here is comfortable and right.

Amazingly, I’m finding that I’m not the person I was the last time I was here (four years ago), and certainly not the one that lived in Marseille at 18. For the last few years, as I’ve waited for God to bring an opportunity for me to come back here, I’ve had dreams where I’m in France, with various classmates from my time in Marseille. Unlike my interactions then, the exchanges in my dreams are easy, free, full of laughter. Last night I was chatting with a young woman in our house-church, and I was joking with her. Suddenly I remembered the dreams, and I realized they’re at last coming true. I was free and comfortable and myself.

The Lord has indeed liberated me these last years. Now I am unencumbered, able to reach out and embrace this experience, this people, this land, with open arms.

Sweet Sorrow

I’m moving to France, right now, in transit.

Leaving Kansas City, my home. When you’ve got a philosophical bent to you, like I do, this becomes a prime opportunity to consider what home is, what it means.

What’s become tragic to me as I consider this concept right now is that there’s no direct translation from the English home into French. Wordreference.com, my online dictionary of choice, gives these all-to-many options:

I. noun
1. (dwelling) gen logement m;
(house) maison f;
to be far from ~ être loin de chez soi;
a ~ of one's own un chez-soi;
to work from ~ travailler à domicile;
to set up ~ in Madrid s'installer à Madrid;
I've made my ~ in France je suis installé or je vis en France;
it's ~ to me now je m'y sens chez moi;
2. (for residential care) maison f;
to put sb in a ~ mettre qn dans un établissement spécialisé;
3. (family base) foyer m;
broken ~ foyer désuni;
‘good ~ wanted’ ‘cherche foyer accueillant’;
to leave ~ quitter la maison;
4. (country) pays m;
to consider France (as) ~ considérer la France comme son pays;
5. (source) ~ of (country, area) pays m de (speciality).

Oh dear! So many nuances of what, for me, is one deep, wide thing of utmost importance. Home is part of my very identity, an elusive feeling always looked for.

I’ve been learning about child development in order to prepare for my new task of caring for children full-time, and it’s been completely wonderful and fascinating. I read Maria Montessori’s The Absorbent Mind, in which she elaborates many, many capacities of the child’s malleable mind, particularly in his first six years. One thing that completely baffled me was the fact that in a very short time, a little being takes in and learns to emulate an entire culture. Think what that entails: language, posture, taste in food, values, relationships, and so much more! Within a couple of years, a child has absorbed home into his being, and has been irreversibly formed by it.

This explains why, when I lived in France for the first time at the age of 18, I ached not for Chicken McNuggets, nor for the punk shows I loved to go to, but for wide-open spaces. I craved clouds, fields, bird song like I experienced frequently as a child. These are what I anticipate craving in the next months.

But, as the adage goes, “Home is where the heart is,” too. As I step forward, my heart is full, full, full of love poured out from friends and family in Kansas City. I have a lovely book busting with notes from you all, and my computer’s stuffed with music you’ve passed along to me. I’ve been lent a camera, given an iPod, helped and fed and served. And whoo boy, did we all shed tears over this parting. Such sweet sorrow. It’s a gift to have so many friendships worth tearing up over leaving, and I’m humbled and thankful.

Still, onward ho! There’s adventure to be had, and a home to be won in France as never before. If home is where the heart is, then I go ready to plant my little heart in Paris soil, in Paris family, and let it root. I’m learning through this that where the soil is Love, uprooting and rerooting are not so bad.