Sit down for this one, grab a coffee, glass of wine or a piece of cake. You'll need it.
I text my son. “I’m sorry the internet people are taking forever. I’m a few minutes late.”
“Sorry, they’re still drilling a hole in the wall. Maybe 10 minutes more.”
“OK. I’m on my way.”
I race across Périgueux, this 2,000-year-old medieval French town where I just bought an apartment.
My son is waiting outside his school, phone in hand. I honk. He hops in.
He’s quiet.
“What’s the problem?” I ask.
“I’m gonna miss seeing my friends at dinner.”
“No, you’re not. I’ll get you back by seven.”
“But it’s 6:20 already.”
“Yeah, it will be fine.”
“But they might start without me.”
“You told me seven. I’ll get you there by then.”
He’s in boarding school. They eat from 7–8. I asked him to help me carry the new wash machine up the tiny winding staircase.
“It’s not my fault I’m 30 minutes late. I’ve been hustling all day, all week, and you’re worried about missing five minutes of dinner with your friends.
I’m busting my ass, changing toilets, sinks, lugging all our stuff off of the land, up the stairs. Dealing with leaky plumbing, electricians, plumbers, the gas company, the painter, rushing to the hardware store, laying wood flooring, caulking the shower, buying parts, and driving back and forth two hours a day.
For OUR apartment. This apartment is for us. And you’re bitching about being five minutes late to see your friends.”
I completely flip out.
We’re driving next to an outdoor café, next to the heralded cathedral, and I am screaming at the top of my lungs.
“You are a spoiled brat. Everything I do for you. I’m sick and tired of it. I’ve had enough. And all you give a shit about is being five minutes late!”
He rolls up the windows.
We get to the apartment and lug up the wash machine. I drive him back to school. He gets there at 6:48.
“Maman. Are you even gonna give me a kiss on the cheek goodbye?”
I’m still fuming.
“Yeah.”
He gets out. I drive away.
I drive back to my tiny house and land an hour away. I’m here for three weeks to move off my land. Find a tractor and a tow truck to move my gypsy caravan tiny house to his dad’s house. Move all my things off my land, push them in a wheelbarrow up a half-acre hill, load them into my cargo car, drive an hour, carry them up a winding stairway to my apartment that was supposed to be finished by the time I was here.
Everything had barely started.
They can’t figure out the water. I’m climbing around on my hands and knees under the apartment trying to figure out the plumbing.
The electric and gas companies accidentally turned on the wrong meter and have to send technicians out. The old owner accidentally hooked up the water in my laundry room to another studio and expects me to pay to change it.
Ah, vive la France!
France, the thorn in my side. The wrinkled brow, holding a glass of wine, that says, “C’est compliqué.” It’s complicated. With absolutely everything.
The French who love to “tourner autour du pot.” Turn around the pot. Basically, take the absolute longest road to get anywhere that may not actually get you there.
No wonder we drink wine nonstop and eat until midnight. The only respite.
No wonder the artists are so good, baring the heart-wrenching agony of existence into a golden crack on a blank white canvas.
No wonder everyone has wrinkles, yellowing teeth, and is protesting at every roundabout.
People are pissed here.
The high schoolers are rioting. I get it. My son is exhausted. Starts high school at 8 AM. Has a two-hour break from 6–8 and has to do homework from 8–9:30.
The teachers are underpaid. They go on strike for weeks.
At every roundabout, the farmers have posted signs. “We are dying of your taxes.”
Stuffed puppets looking like humans hanging by a rope on my daily commute.
I think of this apartment I bought. Selling my land. For a real house with no tree in sight from my windows. No garden.
Thank God the river through town is a two-minute walk, and I can go pray in the cathedral up the road. Pray to keep my sanity in this country.
I had just left Hawaii, feeling the warmth of aloha—love towards all of life, people. And then I arrive in France.
I pray. Please. Tell me I’ve actually changed.
Shortly after arriving, before the blowup with my son, I had another experience.
I walk into a local gathering. My friends and acquaintances I’ve known for 10 years. They are gathered in the garden behind the town hall. About 100 people. A theatrical band plays. People dancing. Wine, cheeses, and sausage at every table.
I drift in. Feeling hot and sexy with my new muscles now that I’ve been lifting weights. But I also walk in with that new thing I’ve been cultivating. Aloha.
I can feel my energy in the space. I can feel people turning to look.
When I say hello, I can feel myself there. My feet. The ground. Something in me is fully showing up.
I wait for the genuine responses to come up. The genuine conversations. I take my time. I notice my smile comes naturally. My words don’t adapt. They just reveal themselves.
My son is there with his friends. The first time I’ve ever seen him just hanging with his teen buddies.
I think how special this is. All generations enjoying the same garden. This is his world. These people are all his world. He knows everybody.
His father is there too. We’re friendly. All the bitterness, the contraction, the fear of his pointing finger of guilt are gone.
I’m the mother who left. But I won’t take your judgment.
I don’t feel it anymore.
The day after our blowup with my son, I ask to have a talk. He says OK, in the car on our way to go climbing.
I apologize for the blowup. I tell him that I’m also feeling bitter because last weekend, instead of staying with me, he preferred to stay at his girlfriend’s house. They were having a big family lunch, and he wanted to go and stay the night.
Of course, I’m thinking. $1,500 to fly here. 25 hours of travel. I only see you on the weekends and half a day on Wednesdays, and you choose them instead.
I bring it up.
“Mom, I don’t know how to say this. But I think subconsciously I’m looking for a family structure. I mean, her mom bakes cakes and folds my laundry.”
He hesitates.
“I don’t think you have that maternal instinct.”
Basile continues.
“I’m sorry. I mean, we do really cool things, but it’s not like you’re being a mom like all the other moms.”
I can feel his words hit me in the heart.
A million images come up. Eight years of going back and forth from America. Seeing him five times a year. Taking him on trips to Spain, to the Alps, to Hawaii, Italy, snowboarding, mountain climbing, freediving, spearfishing.
All the gourmet lunches, all the activities we’ve done. But now, it’s not enough because I don’t bake fucking cakes.
I take a breath and remember my Imago communication training.
“It sounds like you’re missing a family structure, and even though we do lots of cool things, it might have been nice to just have your mom around to do simple things like laundry and bake a cake and not make it all about having to be me and you doing some adventure together.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I do love our adventures. But I like to be around lots of people, you don't”
I think to myself.
It’s true. I get exhausted from all those social outings. I would be bored at a big family gathering that he wanted to go to.
I like alone time and quiet.
He continues.
“I like just having all her family around me. It feels good. When it’s just me and you… it’s good, but…”
He trails off.
“Yeah. I get it, Basile.”
I let it sink in another day, at morning I wake as it hangs over my head.
Carly, you tried so hard to make sure he came out of this unscathed. You left France because you had to. You couldn’t be happy, you couldn’t fulfill yourself with the mom routine, you were looking for something inside you that you couldn’t find out there.
You thought that by giving him the world to make up for your absence, he would be fine. And he’s not.
He wanted a family.
He was hurt.
I hurt him.
I could feel my heart squeeze as the tears rolled. Ouch.
Of course. How could I imagine that he wouldn’t be hurt?
All the times I asked him, “Are you OK? Do you miss me?”
He’d laugh and say, “No, Mom, I’m fine. I love coming on adventures and traveling with you.”
He had his dad. His dad was married, and he had a stepsister. Until two years ago, when it all fell apart and they split abruptly.
And now it’s all coming to the surface.
We’re in the car again.
“Do you mind if we talk one more time about that thing from the other day?”
“OK,” he says.
“Do you think you said you were fine all these years that maybe subconsciously you didn’t want me to feel bad about being gone?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“What is it like when I blow up at you like that?”
“I hate it. It makes me think you’re just gonna give up and leave for real.”
God. What have I done?
He’s defining me, the person who always left. Who always had one foot in one world and one foot gone.
Oh God. My son.
I feel the tears well, but I hold back. He hates it when I get all sensitive and emotional.
“Listen. I know I say these things about you being a spoiled brat. That I’m tired of all the things I do for you. I know I’ve said, ‘Why do I even do all this when you complain about bringing up a wash machine?’
“But I want you to know. I will never, ever, in a billion years abandon you. I have always come back. And I always will.
“I wanted to be your mom. But I couldn’t find my own peace. It wasn’t you. It was the hardest decision I made in my entire life. I missed you so much at times I’d crumble to the ground weeping.
“But I wanted you to see a mother who was happy.
“I’m so sorry I hurt you. I’m so sorry.”
He pauses to take it in.
“Thanks for telling me, Mom. I didn’t know.”
A few days later, I had lunch with a friend of mine, a massage therapist and psychoanalyst.
He looks at me.
“You know, we’ve known each other now for what, nine years?
“All that time I knew you, it’s like you were here. But you weren’t.
“Does that make sense?
“Now when I see you, it feels like all of you is here.”
I let that sink in.
“Yeah. I think all of me is finally here.”
I go for a jog later around the lake. The light is hitting the water, the clouds are a voluptuous display of curves and forms. Birds fly in acrobatic feats across the blue.
I think, how did I not see how beautiful this place was before?
Where was I all those years?
I think of my relationship to France and how it has shifted. All these complications. All these roundabout ways. They are just part of it. And I’m not fighting it.
France hasn’t changed. I did.
I think of my son and our relationship. It’s OK if I don’t make cakes.
But I don’t have to do everything under the sun to make him happy. Sometimes we will never know what may hurt someone or what they actually needed.
I have to sit with that, and it hurts. But at least now I can show up with all of me.
The last day before my departure back to Hawaii, we go to the river and cast out lines. He has a new obsession with fly fishing. The old me would have gotten bored.
This me decided to just be here, with him. Sitting with a fishing line, catching nothing.
