On Moving - Be warned: It's a very long post...

This post was prompted by thoughts that I had after reading entries that V-Grrrl has been writing about her impending move back to the U.S. from Belgium, where she and her family have been residing for the past few years (four years, maybe?), and Marty's move to another city, where he will begin a great new job on February 4.

First of all, moving scares the crap out of me, it's something that I really do not want to have to do again for a long time.

With my family, back in France, we moved when, on his doctor's orders, my father had to get rid of his tombstone-making business (I still think that it was utterly foolish of him to have gone with the doctor's order - he should have kept the business, which was beginning to thrive when this happened.) I was only 6 or 7 at the time, and did not understand how vast the trauma of this life change and move was on my mother and father. My father, who had never been the most stable person, went into a depression that never really ended - it would ebb and flow, but it was always there. I still wonder if my brother and I had been sent somewhere else when this move occurred, because I do not remember anything at all about it - just that, from one day to the next, we were in another town, and I was in a new school, one where kids wrote not in cursive, as I had been taught to do, but in print, which made me look like I had an IQ of 3, both to the teacher and to the other kids.

We moved again when I was 10 years old. My parent hated working in a cafe (it is no fun, and very hard work, to deal with inebriated customers!), so they bought a store where they sold poultry of all sorts and fish, as well as prepared foods that my father (who had learned how to be a chef in the meantime) would make. My father also worked a catering business from that shop, and, soon thereafter, landed a fairly good job as head chef of one of Lille's largest hospitals affiliated with the Catholic Church. Since I was in boarding school when that move happened, I also do not remember any of it - again, one day we were in that cafe in Orchies, the next we were in that shop in La Madeleine (that building is no longer standing, our block, made up mostly of old storefront houses, was razed in the early 1970's, new shops were built on that site.)

Our last move, as I was still growing up, was when I was 15. Due to the rise of supermarkets in France, and the fact that the Roman Catholic Church had lifted its rule about eating fish on Fridays except during lent, my parents' business was going through very tough times (my mother read this move by the Church as a personal attack against her, who earned most of our family income by selling fish!). My mother began diversifying, and started selling grocery items and fruits and vegetables after the grocery store that was next door to us had closed down (its owners had retired), but this was like putting a band-aid on a gangrened limb, so my parents decided to get rid of their business. By then - it was 1968 - my father was 48 and my mother 47, and they both agreed that she should go back to work as a secretary, something that she had done when she was in her twenties. When I think back about the enormous change in their lives that this decision entailed at the time, I am amazed at the fact that I really never realized then the importance of what was going on. My only thought was that we were moving in a house that was brand new, and had all the comforts of a modern dwelling - and that was a very cool thing (I never lived in a house with an indoor toilet until we moved into that house!). By the way, the couple who took over my parents' business undertook huge renovations, and then went bankrupt - they moved out in the middle of the night, leaving no address, they never paid their debt to my parents (I guess, the way it worked, was that they were making monthly payments not to a bank, but to my parents), and this created another wave of financial hardship in our household.

Again, for that move, I do not recall packing anything, although we lived among boxes for quite a while, since the construction of the new house - due to the "events of May '68" in France - was not finished in time. As a result, as we were moving into a brand new housing development, we were able to move into the model home, while workmen were finishing the house in which we were supposed to move. This took much coaxing of those guys with many bottles of wine that my father would bring them everyday (it beats me why my father thought that giving wine for workmen to drink on the job was any help at all...). One thing that I recall vividly is that my brother, who was slated to leave for a year as an exchange student in the U.S., was in dire need of the paperwork that he had to take to the American Embassy in Paris to get his visa. My mother knew that this paperwork was in a folder, in one of the boxes that were laying on the floor of the model home, but she could not remember in which box that folder was. It took a while to find it!

I never moved again until I married Rick and moved permanently to the U.S. - basically with just one suitcase in my hand. This, of course, was the most memorable and momentous move in my entire life. It altered forever the very fabric of my existence and, frankly, as difficult as things were for the first few years that I lived in this country, and at the time when my marriage was unravelling big time, I never really considered returning to France (something that, I was told fairly recently by my brother and my uncle, my mother secretly hoped that I would do after my marriage came to an end.)

For about a year and a half after we were married, Rick and I lived in the one-bedroom apartment in which he had been living since his graduation from college and beginning teaching French at Saint Mark's High School in Wilmington, Delaware. Frankly, I was never comfortable living in his old digs, which, I believed, were not really mine. We decided to move into a two-bedroom apartment (although Rick still very much gerrymandered the way the place was set up and decorated - I never had much of a say in this respect.) I really do not recall much about that one move.

A few years later, after I had started working for the Franklin Mint, we decided that it might be a good idea to move closer to my place of employment (Rick, at the time, was still teaching high school in Wilmington, but the school was very close to Newark.) As a result, we looked for a place to rent in North Wilmington, where we found a lovely little town house with a small backyard. This is really the first place that I considered mine as much as Rick's. By then, we had acquired knick-knacks and decorative objects that we had purchased together, and would make common decisions on how to set up and decorate our house. Again, I have no huge memories of all the packing and carting of furniture involved, but I remember that some friends and family members helped us move. That townhouse was probably the locus of the happiest years of our marriage, in spite of moments when we were really struggling financially. This is also the place where Claire lived until she was just about three years old.

After Rick had finished his Ph.D., he was very reluctant to move away from Delaware, where he had lived his entire life, and where his family resided. He had been offered the job he now holds at Pitt, but turned it down and took a French teaching position at a small liberal arts college in Baltimore (a very bad decision, if there ever was any.) During that year (1988-89), he commuted to Baltimore, where he stayed from Monday to Wednesday. He was home with Claire on Thursdays, and then went back to Baltimore to teach on Fridays. Within a few weeks into the fall semester, Rick knew that this was not the place for him - he hated everything about it, especially his cantakerous and difficult colleagues. Pitt called him to let him know that they had never filled the position that he had turned down about six months before, and asked him if he would be interested in putting his hat back into the ring. He immediately said yes. Ironically, that second time around, Rick was not Pitt's first choice for the job, but the first choice turned it down, and Rick was offered it again - and he knew then that he had to take it. Hence, we were now facing our biggest move since we had been married in 1975.

Rick and his mother took a few days' trip to Pittsburgh, and were ill-advised by the Dean of his school at the time to look for a place in Monroeville, an eastern suburb of Pittsburgh. They found a nice house with a huge yard that we rented for nearly two years. There were two drawbacks to that place: 1. The commute to Pitt was unwieldy (the Squirrel Hill tunnel is a commuter's nightmare!), and 2. We had the neighbors from hell - the guy was unemployed and drank beer and smoked joints from 8:00 a.m. until he would pass out in the evening, we also always suspected that he abused his wife and 3 or 4 year old son. What I do remember from that move is that, for the very first time, we hired movers, because Pitt was reimbursing part of our move, and that I gave the movers the largest part of my vinyl record collection (something that I regret having done to this very day!). I also recall that Rick cried on the day we left Wilmington - he probably knew right then and there that he was leaving something comfortable, and that his life would become unsettled for the next ten years to come or so.

The move to Pittsburgh was also seminal in my own life and career, because it led me to reassess what I could and would be doing from then on. I tried to get a job in business, got one, and that lasted only about five weeks (I quit - that job was untenable. I was working for a small high tech company that I will not name here, whose owner was a lunatic, nothing short of a tyrant, with whom, ironies of ironies, Marty has had a business relationship for the past few years.) I had a small child to care for, and it was clear that my husband was now invested in his own career in a manner that soon became excessive in a very weird way (there were huge pressures on publishing - Rick was permanently at his office, and got tenured and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in five years, instead of the usually six that this process normally takes.) I thought about getting a teaching certificate to become a high school social studies teacher (I had a B.A. in Political Science), but Rick put his veto to that, because, he claimed, my being a student in his department would constitute a conflict of interest.

That's when I decided to pursue a Ph.D. in French (ironically, Rick had, and still has, a 1/4 contract with the Department of French & Italian, but he never opposed my decision to pursue this degree.) I had no clue, when I undertook this course of studies, what I would do with a Ph.D. in French literature, and whether I would be even remotely employable after having completed that degree. What mattered to me is that I would bring in a modest stipend to help cover our living expenses, and that being a graduate student would give me ample time for caring for our small daughter.

But back to our decision to move closer to Pitt, both for convenience's sake, and for getting away from the neighbors from hell. I drove and drove around Shadyside and Squirrel Hill, and we did look at a few apartments and houses, but found nothing at first. Then, one day, I was driving along Shady Avenue, when I spotted a "for rent" sign on a house located close to the corner of Shady and Northumberland. We immediately contacted the realtor who was managing this property, looked at the place, which was old but in decent condition, and moved in within a month or so (if I recall, it was in May, 1991.) I do remember this move very well. I was ecstatic to finally live Monroeville. We re-hired the same movers who had moved us from Wilmington to Pittsburgh, and some of Rick's students and a few of my graduate school friends also helped us move, and I remember that we had pizza and beer for them. We settled nicely into that place about which, unfortunately, I only have very negative memories, because, hence, started the unhappiest years of my life. My husband became an absentee spouse and father (even when he was home, he was not really there in spirit - he was always glued to his computer and rather disengaged from my daughter and me), and being a graduate student and teaching assistant under those conditions was far from easy.

In early 1997, it was beyond clear that our marriage was well on the rocks and would not survive, and Rick and I decided that we would part the minute I would finish my degree and land a job allowing me to live on my own with Claire. This, however, happened in a rather precipitous fashion: During the 1998-99 academic year, I began assuming the duties of TA Coordinator for my department, a job that I had been offered for only one year. I was about half-way done with my doctoral dissertation, and had begun looking for a job, since I was out of funding at Pitt. Right before Thanksgiving, my supervisor told me that he had received a phone call from the language department of the school where I am now employed. They needed, and very urgently, a full-time, temporary French instructor to replace the department Chair, who had recently passed away. The position was guaranteed for at least a year and a half, with strong possibility of turning tenure-track.

My supervisor and department Chair at Pitt strongly encouraged me to apply for this position, which I did. I was interviewed soon after the Thanksgiving break, maybe in early December, and was offered the job around December 18 or so. The department Chair (who is still my Chair at this point in time) wanted me to accept the position on the spot, and acted a bit impatient when I told him that I needed about 48 hours to make a decision, but I ended up, after having discussed things with Rick, calling him back on the very next day to tell him that I would take the job. This meant that, by January 10, 1999 or so, I would have to find a place to live in that small Western PA university town, and to move there with my daughter, who probably had no damn clue of what was going on (Claire was now in the 7th grade, in a school that she, and both my husband and I hated with a passion.) I was terrified that this sudden move would traumatize my daughter forever.

I remember that Rick, Claire and I drove up to the town where I now live on a cold winter day around Christmas time. We saw two places, a two-bedroom apartment in a brand-new (but very flimsy) building, and a house that seemed to have been built for gnomes. We immediately decided that I should take the apartment. I remember that Claire cried for most of the day, after we had made that choice, and that I felt incredibly horrible about taking her away from her father, and from her life in Pittsburgh, but that I basically had no choice in the matter.

The move was traumatic, because it had to be delayed by two days, due to a major ice storm that had blanketed the northeastern United States. We ended up driving the U-Haul truck that we had rented, loaded with the very bare minimum of furniture (basically, just my bed, Claire's dresser, a couple of bookshelves, a TV set, and two folding tables that Claire and I used as desks, as well as some kitchen accessories - we bought a bed for Claire, a cheap dining-room table and chairs, and a futon at K-Mart) on the Saturday before school was supposed to start. I basically never got a chance to stress over this huge change in my life, because there was too much to attend to: Getting settled in a new place, getting my daughter registered at her new school (to which she immediately adjusted very well, and where she made friends very easily), and starting teaching four courses a semester - while trying to do my very best and dealing with finishing my dissertation so that I could be hired as a tenure-track faculty.

I have very fond memories of my first little apartment here, because, for the first time, I had my very own place, one that was entirely mine and that I decorated as I saw fit. However, that building, as I mentioned it before, seemed to be made out of cardboard. Right after I had been hired as a tenure-track faculty (in the spring of 2001), I felt that it would be nice to move to a better place, but had no clue how to go about doing this. Claire had a friend whose family lived in the dwelling that I now rent. I was familiar only with the building, which I had never entered, but Claire had told me that it was quite cool. One day, Claire came home and told me that those folks were moving to another house in town, and I immediately contacted them to ask them if they could tell their landlords that I was really interested in being their next tenant. Now, my landlords are very quirky - they are both retired professors from my school, who spend their summers in my town (my house is at the end of their fairly large backyard) and their winters on the west coast of Florida. When all of this was going on, they were in Florida, from which the wife called me to "interview" me as a potential tenant. I passed with flying colors, and Claire and I moved into this place in early July, 2001. This move, I do remember very well - I packed my stuff, and Claire hers, into boxes, and took lots of things from my old place to the new one in my car (they were literally just a few blocks away from one another.) On the day of the move, a dear colleague of mine, her husband and kids helped me move, loading up all of our furniture into a U-Haul truck that I had rented, We settled very nicely into our larger place (two bedrooms and a nice study, a garage, and also a large deck outside of our living room) which, for a number of reasons, I have promised my landlords I would never leave as long as they remain my landlords.

I sometimes consider the possibility of buying a house here - and may I will do it whenever my landlords pass away (both are past 85 years old, they are in decent health, but one never knows...). When Marty got his new job, he asked me if I wanted to take over his house, which he rents (his rent is the same as mine), and which is incredibly nice. I had to decline, because of that promise I made my landlords, and also because my house is very close to campus (his is not so close, I would have to drive to work, and that would be tough, because on-campus parking is very scarce these days), and I do not have to care for a yard, and Marty's place has a huge yard that I would just hate to have to care for.

I know that I will probably move again at some point in the future - if I do buy a house here, that's for sure. If I take that step, I want to be sure that I purchase a place that I will truly love. When I retire, I will also move, God only knows where at this point in time. I just know for sure that I will not stay where I am living now - it is not urban enough, and the climate is not great.

Moving is usually associated with turning points in our lives - a change in career, the arrival of a child that necessitates moving to a larger dwelling, the end of a relationship or of a marriage, etc. Some of those places where we have lived hold more meaning that others, some are filled with happy memories, some with sorrowful moments, many with a blend of both.

I will leave you with the lyrics of the first verse a song that came to my mind as I was trying to wrap up this very lengthy post - In My Life by the Beatles:

There are places I'll remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all.

Note - The Photos in this post:
1. The house where 1 was born - 41, rue Gabriel Péri, Marcq-en-Baroeul, France.
2. The café my parents bought in 1959 or 1960, I believe. It was on the main square in the town of Orchies, in northern France.
3. The shop my parents bought ca. 1962. It was located on rue du Général de Gaulle, in La Madeleine, a suburb of Lille. That building is no longer standing. As you can see, it was old and run down. My parents never invested in renovating that storefront.
4. Claire, about 2 years old, in front of the townhouse we rented from about 1981 to 1989 in North Wilmington. I cannot remember the name of the street, for the life of me.
5. The back of the house we rented for a little less than two years in Monroeville, an eastern suburb of Pittsburgh, from the end of August, 1989, to May, 1991.
6. My first apartment after I left Pittsburgh and took the job I now have.
7. The house in which I live now. I basically occupy the entire second floor (the first floor is a four-car garage.) There is also a large attic, which the people who lived in the house before me used as their master bedroom.
8. My living room.

Sorry, but I could not find any picture of the house my parents bought in 1968. I will have to dig in my mother's archives for that. I also did not find any decent picture of the house on Shady Avenue in Pittsburgh, where I lived from 1991 to the end of 1998.