Knock knock. It feels so strange to be back here after nine months. Like returning to an old childhood home, now fully deserted after a flood, or a storm, or a fire. The kind of events that spring to mind too easily these days. I know I have written many of these apologetic overdue posts before, and I will undoubtedly write them again. Consistency just doesn’t seem to be my forte. But despite letting so much time go by and not sticking to the weekly post schedule that was supposed to be the unbreakable backbone of the new, disciplined version of myself last year, I am grateful that I made it here. Even with a piece about the irrelevant and pre-historic times of Thanksgiving 2024. To me it doesn't matter, because over the summer, I wasn’t sure I would ever find myself on this site again, or anywhere for that matter.
It turns out that since I lasted posted here, our family had to move back to the United States. And as hard as it was to readjust to my Paris hometown after twenty years abroad, it was even harder to leave after only two years. So hard, as a matter of fact, that I just about lost my mind when all the details were finalized. This rather dramatic reaction took me by surprise. After all, I had been the first to complain that Paris was too triggering for me, that I wasn’t working, that the children’s school was too strict and performance-obsessed, that my older son was not thriving. There were months, the first year, when I would have given anything to get on the first transatlantic flight and move back to New York. So, when it became clear that it would be better for my husband’s work to do just that, I thought I was fine with it. Heck, I even thought I was happy. But when we reenrolled the children in their former school and passed the withdrawal deadline, I collapsed. Suddenly the prospect of having all my furniture taken out of an apartment I loved, of saying goodbye to my parents, my friends, the comfortable, cozy life I had made for myself – it all seemed unbearable, and so painful that I thought I would never be able to handle it. And indeed, at first, I didn’t. For two months, I pleaded with my husband to reverse course. I delayed giving notice to the school, and to our landlords, until I couldn’t reasonably wait any longer. Even after our movers came, I found myself wondering how we could stop the truck, then the container, then the ship. I woke up every morning determined to call the moving company and have the whole process reversed. I spent the summer with these crazy scenarios dancing in my mind, seeing myself putting all our books and furniture back into place in our Paris apartment, as I paced the various summer rental houses we occupied, sometimes randomly bursting into tears in front of my children. Yes, it was this bad, and certainly not my finest hour as a mother.
And I wasn’t in much better shape when we finally made it to New York at the end of August. After spending most of the flight silently crying, I stepped out of the airport in full resistance mode, hating the first whiff of hot, humid air that I knew would be my first impression of the city. Hating the bumpy taxi ride, the familiar skyline, and the weird smell of the car. Hating the hotel where we needed to stay for a couple of nights before our furniture could be delivered. Hating the apartment I had already hated when I quickly toured it a month before. Hating our first exhausting commute to school. Hating going down into the subway when my daughter asked me to go shop for school clothes. The city itself felt like an aggression. The sounds, the smells, the tall buildings, the crushing humidity. I woke up every morning wondering if and how I would see the end of that day. This was the strongest reaction I ever had to anything I have done, and the most unbearable pain I have ever experienced.
Thankfully, after a few weeks and the help of my extraordinarily competent therapist, I started feeling almost normal again, and there were even a few things I enjoyed. As summer started giving way to autumn, I remembered why in another life, I had loved the city so much. One day I found myself feeling light, and happy, as I walked down to Riverside Park on a sunny, brisk October morning The next, I felt happy for a few hours. There was even a full week when I was mostly okay. Meanwhile, my teenage son seemed transformed, talking like his future was in his own hands again. Enjoying school, signing up for various clubs, playing the piano unprompted. The apartment started feeling like home, or at least a little less like an anonymous airport lounge.
This blog was still very far from my mind, however, as were cooking, and my long-abandoned coaching business endeavor. All I could stand to do, apart from taking care of my children and trying to make our apartment livable, was taking long walks, haunting my favorite yoga studio, and spend hours sitting by the fireplace at the New York Society Library, reading the New York Times front- to-back. These were all good things, mind you. And things I had missed when I first arrived in Paris. The yoga studio and the Society Library are both true gems and remain my favorite place to be in the city. But for a couple of months, even those havens of peace and silence were not enough to make me feel fully at home, or make me enjoy anything related to home, as home to me then, was still Paris, and acutely missed every second of the day. I thought cooking, and writing, and simply wanting, were now things of the past.
But one day towards the end of November, as I ritually grabbed the New York Times from its old-fashioned wooden stand in the library’s periodical room, the inner section fell out, and right there on the floor, was pie. Thanksgiving was a few days away, and as we were invited this time, I hadn’t given it much thought. It was all part of the small grim package of those things I used to love about America, but thought were forever lost to me. The picture of pie, however, awakened something in me. And soon I was studiously reading the whole classic pre-Thanksgiving piece on updated, dressed-to-impress pies that I used to enjoy so much. And I found myself, without even realizing it, daydreaming about what pies I would make the following week and bring to my husband’s cousin’s house. For a brief moment, the Thanksgiving spirit was recaptured. And while it didn’t last long enough to carry me through the entire week, it was sufficient to have me standing in my kitchen on Thanksgiving morning, my hands covered in flour. Mind you, I didn’t make anything as grand as the…. Recommended in the article. All I could muster was a simple apple pie, and my revered Bourbon Pecan Pie, that I make every year. The pumpkin pie was purchased at a place I didn’t know before. And when we arrived at our cousin’s house that afternoon, and her husband asked me how I was adjusting back to my life in New York, I burst into tears. But it didn’t matter, because I had made the pies, and finally was able to see that I was quite simply heartbroken, and homesick. It wasn’t neurotic or crazy anymore. Just a little girl missing her country, and her family. A simple feeling I never experienced over the twenty years I spend in New York before moving to Paris. A painful, but good, simple, healthy feeling that I had been trying to snuff out and was given back to me thanks to the pies. It hasn’t been smooth sailing since then, and I am still struggling on many, many fronts. But the pies made home possible again and for that I am deeply grateful.
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