Nov 10, 2024

For the past few years, I’ve kept a list of places where I could envision living out my retirement. I kept up-to-date on the candidates. Every time I proposed an addition to or deletion from my list, my friends rolled their eyes. I’m not sure how many of them took my quest seriously. Now, of course I take for granted they will all come visit me.

I am grateful for having the frustrating, attention-demanding process of applying for a French visa as a distraction from the news. When I read the names that the next administration was nominating for Secretary of Defense and Attorney General, I decided that the application process for a French visa was less painful than scanning the New York Times headlines. But not by much.

Snow is falling in slow motion silently outside the window of my temporary residence in Montparnasse. It’s a good day to be indoors — except for the fact that indoors is where all the bureaucratic and financial consequences of my decision to move to France have also taken up residence. I say with false reassurance to my dog, Billie, who is sleeping in her bed, “We’re almost there.” She is oblivious.

The genial bank employee nodded his head. I pressed ‘submit’ on my phone. Two days late, my first month’s rent shot off toward its intended target, my new and understanding landlords. What feels like a heroic three-week battle came to a triumphant conclusion. Not only did I pay my rent, I also let an unfamiliar feeling sink in: I am solvent in France. Maybe other people would have handled with aplomb the endless process of linking three bank accounts and a currency converter, while contracting for an apartment and setting up utilities (with an agency’s help), but not me. I’ve been living on tenterhooks since November 12, when I arrived in Paris with the aim of staying.