Miles to Go Before I Sleep

           It is nearly four am and I am wide awake in my studio after cup of coffee number two. Tomorrow, or rather, today, I leave for California. Not definitively. Not permanently. At least not yet, and who the hell knows? France is now home, come hell or highwater. I spent Monday running around this city doing last minute errands--chocolate to buy for the stepdad, laundry to do, friends to see--before I leave.

            Let's repeat that: in six point five hours I will take off from CDG en route for San Francisco for the first time in eighteen months. I am so excited to go see my family but I am also terrified: what if America isn't how I remember it? Or worse, what if it is and nothing has changed and it all just feels so fucking unfamiliar? What if I don't like it? How strange it is to realize that the place you grew up in and where you are from feels so out of tune with who you know you are at present. Like layers of old selves long shed.

            I had usual Monday apéro this evening with R, and we were discussing just this: how it is good to go back, necessary even, to get some perspective. She just returned from job interviews in Boston suburbs sucking her lungs out for dear European life. But she said it was good to know she didn't want to be there. It gave her perspective. I hope I can get some too.

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              There are many miles to go before I sleep. In the few times I have flown back to California, I have found it much more efficient to pull a nuit blanche and stay up all night. I then dress, go to the airport, stay awake. Once I've boarded, I eat something, pop a benadryl, and then I conk out hard for the ensuing 12 hours in the air. If I can make it through the first 8 hours in the air asleep, then I've only got to entertain myself for four other hours, which include a few walks up and down the aisle to stretch my legs and my lumbar. 

               Not to mention check out the insanely attractive Air France male air hosts. My mother reminded me while we were chatting earlier to have fun oogling the sexy attendants. Now if only one would PACS me...

               Actually, no thank you. Warning: a rant will ensue. 

               In my quest to stay in this country, I have finally hit a nerve. I am tired of every single person telling me all I need to do is find a Frenchie and get PACSed or married. 

               I DOWN RIGHT REFUSE. 

               Not because the idea of being with a Frenchie is repulsive or because I would not enjoy having a significant other ( lets be real, singledom is getting somewhat boring), or because I do not want to PACS or marry the right Frenchie if that happens, but on principal. I WILL NOT make a man my means of staying in this country. I came for this country, not for its men. I admit that if I stay here, odds are I will end up with a Frenchie. Just saying. I will not start hunting one down for a visa though.

                 The fact that every single person who tells me that I need a Frenchie and then laughs nonchalantly as if it's truly funny  does not thoroughly grasp what they say when they are saying it; ultimately, what they are saying is that I, as a female immigrant, am incapable of coming to this country on my own terms and need a man to make it possible for me. 

                I have two words to respond: eff that. 

                 Now that the rant is over we can return to our regularly scheduled programming. 

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                 Yesterday was my last day with girl kiddos. Everything ended on good terms, and I was much more emotional that I expected to be. I definitely got weepy. It hasn't hit me yet that I am no longer obligated to play mommy. It has hit me that I will be missing being around kids, in general. 

                  If anyone out there on French, mostly Parisian, soil feels like temporarily lending me their children so they can go to dinner, you're looking at a very well trained, very experienced nanny! 

                 And so the transition to a whole, strange other life begins.  

                 With a pitstop in California first. 

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                 I won't be asleep until I've been up in the air for a good hour or so, so I've got seven hours left and will have been awake for 27 hours at that point. All in the name of a long flight. 

                 And I am flying through the proverbial night of my life: I know where I want to be, I have a vague inkling of what I want to do, but there are many, many miles to go before I can finally sleep. 

                 Literally and figuratively.