“And if we moved to Paris?” Dianny asked, nervously.
It was a gray, rainy day in Seattle, typical March weather, and Dianny, my wife, and I were discussing the future. After 16 years abroad, we were debating whether to move back to Bogotá, Colombia, our home town. We had left in 1995 and after a few stops along the way, had ended all they way up in Seattle, where, after a successful tenure at Microsoft, I decided in 2011 to start working freelance. I could work from anywhere, and the possibility of leaving Seattle played a big part in that decision. After all those years away, we were getting tired of the long and expensive back-and-forth trips to Bogotá and Dianny was starting to feel a bit homesick. I guess we never expected to be away for so long. And now that we had children, we wondered if we should get back to our roots. After all, Colombia was where our entire extended family lived and was the place we'd always gone back to for Christmas and other important milestones throughout all those years.
But moving to Bogotá was not an easy decision for me. It was still a complicated place and I was realistic about the challenges we'd face and that, after so many years away, it would be hard to re-adapt. I was pushing back. Seeing that we were at an impasse, Dianny played the Paris card.
Although Dianny's question seemed to come out of the blue, I'm sure she had been pondering this option for a while, and it actually didn’t take me by surprise. We had fantasized about living in Paris before. Ever since we'd been to Paris together, in 1998, we'd fallen under the city's spell. To love Paris may be a cliché, but the truth is we loved everything about it: the monuments and the boulevards and the architecture and the bridges and the sidewalk cafés and the language and the atmosphere and the wine and the food. It was like we belonged there. We became incurable Francophiles and Paris became the place we always wanted to go back to.
But life got in the way and only until the summer of 2010 were we able to return. By then we had three kids, so we had to adapt the trip to suit them, but that was fine, all we wanted was to be in Paris. For the simple pleasure of being there. We had a great time. Although we tend to think of Paris as a city for adults, it's a child-friendly city and we found lots of things to do. Besides doing all the typical sightseeing, we climbed up to the top of the Arc de Triomphe; we visited places like the Metamorphosis, an old barge docked near Notre Dame that was converted into a restaurant and a magic theater down below; the Jardin d'Acclimatation, a mini amusement park for children; the Fête des Tuileries, a traditional funfair that takes place in the Tuileries Gardens every summer; discovered great playgrounds at both the Tuileries Gardens and the Luxembourg Gardens; and got on just about every merry-go-round they have in Paris.
  We were happy to see that the kids seemed to like it—although it's not clear if it was all the parks and playgrounds we visited, all the merry-go-rounds they got on or all the crêpes they had, or just hearing us say all day how great the place is. I remember telling them to enjoy it as much as possible because we didn't know when we'd be back. |
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So although we had just gotten our Paris fix, I think Dianny saw the opportunity we suddenly had. Because now that I was going to work on my own there was a lot of flexibility in terms of schedule and location. And the kids were young—Andrea, our older daughter, was 8, and Nicolás and Daniela, the twins, were 7—a great age to move anywhere, but old enough to participate in the adventure. Even I, the more practical one in the family, could see it wasn't that crazy. In fact, it sounded really cool. Besides, it was not like we were moving forever, it was just for a year.
It was already March, and when you have kids, a lot of things revolve around school, and I was already starting to see the challenges ahead. So if we wanted to do this, we'd have to move fast.
"We’d need to find a school for the kids right away," was all I could think of saying.
Dianny couldn't believe it. This was a big shift in plans, and I'm sure she expected me to shoot down the idea or at least put up some resistance. After all, moving to Paris is one of those things you usually dream about and talk about but end up dismissing as crazy. But not this time. Moving to Paris sounded like the best idea I’d ever heard.
It’s a bit risky and intimidating to just uproot your family and move to a foreign country, even if it's just for a year. And there’s always a good reason not to do this kind of thing or put it off for later. But this was one of those things that can't wait till you're retired, or till you get all your ducks in a row. It was something we really wanted to do, the timing was right, and we knew it would be a great opportunity for the whole family. We looked at each other and with a sense of purpose and determination, said, “Let’s do it!”
Paris is always a good idea.
