As I sit here reading the final proof copy of Life on the Move, I can’t help but be brought back to my expat days. I can’t stop myself from reflecting on what has gone on over the past year.

Last winter we went on a bucket list vacation, spending a month exploring Russia. The cold weather seemed like an anomaly after spending the past three years living just off the equator (Ha, little did I know what was in store in the next year). At Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, my husband and daughters made their way to the terminal that would take them on another 8 hour airplane ride to the Congo, while I headed to domestics and would hop on a one hour flight to our home in Pau.

I spent the next two weeks selling our car and every electronic device in the house. Hours were lost on the Bon Coin, France’s Kijiji, crafting ads in French to quickly clear out our house of things we wouldn’t be packing. And since I was priced to sell, the next two weeks were a steady flow of French people taking all of our material belongings off our hands. I organised movers, had a sea container filled with our furniture from Indonesia and other items we wanted to keep, and I met with lawyers to sign mountains papers. And just like that, the chapter of our lives in France(once again) was closed. I handed over the keys of our fourth home in that country.

I flew back to Congo and a couple months later, I packed up our life there. Because we used our allotted shipment expense to send our things from France to Canada, we were leaving our home in Congo with whatever we could carry on the plane. Now, if you’ve followed me on social media over the years, you’ll know that this might actually be my super power.

However much I can carry, you say?

Well, on this particular occasion, I carried: 14 suitcases and Rubbermaid bins, three carry-on bags, two car seats, my two daughters, and one African drum; all in my wide-stretched, loving, and capable arms.

My tear stained face said good bye to Africa and the people who impacted our lives there. It wasn’t an easy good-bye, because unlike France, I would likely not be back to this sandy little Congolese town on the West Coast of Africa. This goodbye felt definite and it impacted me so much that my story in Life on the Move is about my time there, and the lovely girl in the picture below.

I arranged to have our bags collected and held for us by a company in Paris, because we were staying with my girlfriend who I met on my first expat experience in Paris a decade earlier, and nothing says would say regret like opening the door to your Parisian apartment to find your invited guest carrying 14 giant plastic bins. I would never.

The girls and I spent a blissful week enjoying the amenities of the modern world, and they relished in the feeling of being ‘home’, because that’s how France feels to them. They know their around a French market like Canadian kids can navigate Costco and when speaking with locals, the language rolls off their tongue with ease, knowledge and grace, which can’t always be said for their old mom, even after 10 years of studying the language.

Seven days later we checked into an airport hotel on the outskirts of Paris, where the baggage company delivered the contents of our Congolese home. I made arrangements for not one, but two taxi vans to pick us up at 4am and bring us to the airport. Myself and the kids in one van, and the contents of our past life in the other.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m going to take a picture of your license plate, because I’m sending you away with almost everything I own.” I told the taxi driver in my most polite French before I snapped a picture of his plate number and watched him drive away with my belongings, hoping in good faith that I would meet up with him again outside the International Departures Terminal for Air France.

He was there, and I parked my kids outside the airport door where I could see them, as I loaded those bins onto six, yes SIX luggage trollies. I proceeded to summon my inner strength, wiped the sweat from my brow, and little by little, one by one, slowly inched each trolly slightly forward; enough that I could still see the last, and my kids, and then I would go back and start the inching process over again. It took one hour to get from the front door of the airport to the check-in counter. But this was not my first rodeo and I allotted that time, as I had been here before, several times. Funny what can become a person’s ‘normal’.

At this point, I feel it’s important to say that my kids aren’t always well behaved. God knows they have their moments. But when they see their Mom in a giant Internatioanl airport, executing choreography of a train of luggage trollies that is CLEARLY turning strangers’ heads, they too recognize that they’ve been in this situation before and instinctively have that it’s go-time feeling. The whole family (well, the female whole female component of our family on this occasion) needs to be high functioning to pull this airport acrobats off. For my kids, ‘high functioning’ in an airport means best behavious-no exceptions. They know that anywhere from 8-30+ hours of non-stop iPad time and snacks are right around the corner, so they’re usually on board.

We get ourselves to Calgary where multiple vehicle picks are arranged to accommodate for all of our things. Days later we move ourselves into the house that my husband and I bought when we were dating. It’s not ideal for our family since the bedroom setup isn’t meant for small kids, but somehow, having our own home with a private backyard feels luxurious after living on the 4th floor, of a 1970’s Congolese apartment with no elevator for the past two years.

Luckily, my family is here to help on this end. The sea container arrives. Shopping is done. My Mom is cleaning, my brother is building the girls’ bunk beds. The kids’ brains are throbbing because without their Papa and the compound life full of French kids that they’re accustomed to, they’re operating in English 24/7 for the first time in their lives.

Kevin arrives.

We buy a new house. Our forever home.

I start work.

We pack up the old house that I just unpacked, and move into the new house. I swear we will never move again.

We readjust. We flounder. We find our balance. Life feels normal again.

I accept the fact that we no longer say ‘never’ and try to enjoy life as it comes…because my husband is now one year through a two year contract and I can’t help but wonder if I’ll look back on this moment in irony as I sit here in my ‘forever home’ editing a book called Life on the Move. Only time will tell.

If this all sounds crazy to you, you should read my latest book-baby, Life on the Move…it’s full of crazy stories similar to mine and it’s out on Amazon TODAY!

Or..

If this all sounds normal to you, you should read my latest book-baby, Life on the Move…it’s full of crazy stories similar to mine and it’s out on Amazon TODAY!

Either way, you should check it out, because I’m not alone in this topsy-turvy life abroad.

Although a touch emotionally exhausting, I enjoyed my reflection down memory lane because it reminds me that doing the hard, crazy things makes you stronger and I’ve seen it first hand in the character of the women I’ve met along the way.

Putting this book together was the perfect piece of literary therapy I needed to get myself through year one of repatriation. Thank you to the amazing women who came together to make this book happen. There’s nothing quite like the expat-sisterhood!

Author proceeds and royalties for the first two years of this book are being donated to Mwana Villages; a holistic orphanage in Pointe Noire, Congo which focuses helping vulnerable women, children and families. Find out more at www.mwanavillages.com.

You can get your copy of the book on your regional Amazon today!!