Making the Move

The actual move from Stamford to Pozuelo took some planning. Since our rental house was furnished, we didn’t have to send furniture or other large items to Spain, but we decided to put our things into storage and rent our own house unfurnished. (It rented easily to the first family that looked at it.) We figured we would load up our suitcases with everything we might need the first few weeks, and we sent just one small shipment of larger items we’d like to have—cooking equipment, winter clothes, the computer—that would come in six weeks. “I think we should ship our paintings,” Mike said. “We’ll feel more at home if we have them on our walls.” We also sent plenty of books and CDs and some of the girls’ toys.

Mike came home for a week to help with the moving. We didn’t have to do the packing ourselves, but the big job was dividing things up so they would get to the right places. There were clothes going in suitcases, kitchen items going in an air shipment to Spain, and furniture going to storage, and everything had to be marked. The dining room was the staging area for the air shipment stuff, which overflowed the table and started to pile up on the floor.

My friend Eileen Kinnaird came up from Washington to say goodbye. A great traveler herself, she was excited for me. “I have a chance to go with Mike on a business trip to Paris a few weeks after I get there if I can figure out the babysitting,” I told her.

“Okay, let’s strategize this,” she said. “You get to the school, you meet with the principal, you ask if any teachers like to do overnight sitting for extra money.”

“Sounds great,” I said sarcastically, dubious about my ability to get this done.

“You’ve got to do it,” Eileen said. “It’s Paris! You can do it!”

Before she left, Eileen took Mike aside. “Don’t run off to work the minute you get there,” she warned him. “You can’t leave her alone right away.” He nodded dutifully as he put her on the train. She had picked up on my state of terror. I was stuck on the fact that after a few days of adjustment Mike would be in his work routine, the girls would be in school all day—and I would have to invent a life for myself. An exciting prospect for many people, I’m sure—and I felt some of that—but I was full of fear.

I talked to my sister Sally. “I can’t figure out how things are going to work,” I said. “When we were there in April, it was cold, and Mike’s apartment had no clothes dryer. We didn’t have enough warm clothes, so we washed what we had and hung it out on the balcony to dry, but it was too cold and damp. It took days to dry, and we had nothing warm to wear.”

“Look,” she said, “it’s like when I lived in France. You get used to a different way of doing things. Maybe you’re going to lose your American standards about how clothes have to look. Maybe you’re going to wear something a second or third time and not worry if it’s wrinkled. You’re going to learn where to buy more warm clothes, or where to buy a dryer. The point is, you’re going to be living somewhere else, and you’re going to learn how to do things their way.” I was mystified about what she meant.