Why Packing For a Year Abroad (Almost) Sent Me Careening Over the Edge

A year’s worth?

The Paris Series, episode 1

by Pringle Pipkin Franklin

For the love of adventure, we decided to leave the United States for a year in Paris. How glamorous! How daring!

How overwhelming.

As our moving date of July 1 quickly approached, I slipped into a state of befuddlement. We’d launched ourselves into an insanely complicated campaign: three home swaps in two countries in six weeks. Come mid-August, we would march into Paris, pass through the Champs-Elysees, and claim our new home.

The challenge? To properly supply ourselves for the next four seasons without overburdening ourselves as nomads on summer holiday. What’s more, we’d need fleece jackets and jeans for our three weeks in Denmark and swim suits and sandals for our three weeks in Spain. Imagine lugging bloated suitcases while getting on trains, getting off trains; getting on busses, getting off busses; piling into eco-friendly Euro cars with trunks the size of a breadbox.

I declared that I needed a camel.

“Get real,” Sam said.

To assist, he established a ground rule: each family member could bring only one checked suitcase and one tote. For a year! Sure, the bikini and shorts would fit, but I would look ridiculous skiing in a summer sweater. There was no way to bring winter clothes and still follow my husband’s plan.

A few weeks before we left, I packed not one but two big suitcases. Sam begged me to reconsider. Until recently, I’d planned on dragging the 14-pound cat along on our summer

Myrtle Kitty

escapades, but the good Lord opened a door when my sympathetic friend Marnie offered to keep her until we were settled. Now that I had erased the cat and her boxy carrier from the equipment list, I felt I had room to hold my ground about the size of my second bag.

“You need to understand that I am not going to help you with those bags,” Sam said sternly, more than once. “I will have my own luggage to manage.”

He meant it.

ABANDONED AT THE TRAIN STATION

I imagined myself in tears on the quay, straining to heave two 50-pound bags onto the train before it efficiently pulled out of the station, sweat running down my back, hair falling over my eyes, heart pounding. My husband and three sons would be safely aboard when the train left the station while I had collapsed on the platform, overcome by my bags.

In a moment of prescience, I foresaw resentment swelling over the jumbo suitcase. I resigned myself to reality and shuffled over to the closet to select a carry-on. I snagged a backpack with lots of pockets, yet less than half the items would transfer from the suitcase. Would I get more use out of hiking boots or high heels? Running shoes or tennis shoes? A fur hat or a sun visor? My hot yoga mat or my ordinary yoga mat? I needed a crystal ball!

It pains me to admit this, but things became ludicrous in the final hours before we headed to the Charleston airport. My big suitcase lay open on the bedroom floor supporting a mountain of shoes, shorts, dresses, and fashion scarves (you aren’t acknowledged by the local butcher or baker unless you’re wearing a chic scarf in Paris).

“That suitcase will never close,” Sam said. “You’ve packed too much.”

“Don’t take anything out,” I demanded, hurling my body across the lid in a determined attempt to reunite the upper and lower zippers.

“You’re going to break the bag,” Sam said. The top and bottom weren’t even close to connecting. I rolled onto the floor and sat there, pondering, when Sam seized control. “What all do you have in here?” He reached inside and uncovered a shocking secret. “Books?!!!”

“Just a few,” I said, squirming. In truth it was more like 10, but most of them were paperbacks. Except for the two brain healthy cookbooks.

“You cannot take books! You can get books there at the library,” Sam said. While ransacking my suitcase, my husband discovered the hidden smuggler’s pouch bulging in the lining. Quickly, he unzipped it and pulled out three large baggies of Dr. Amen’s Healthy Brain vitamins. I take these every day, and I had stock-piled enough to last six months. These things are expensive, and there was no way I was leaving them behind to let my brain rot while I was abroad.

Sam shook his head. Without the vitamins, without the books, without my beloved purple sweater coat, my suitcase finally closed. He gave me a satisfied look.

But I was not down for the count. I grabbed the Ziplock baggies and popped them open, stuffing vitamin packets into all of the pockets of my trench coat.

Brain healthy vitamins

The cellophane squares of five pills each erupted from the orange raincoat, spilling out as I walked. I scrambled to collect them and find a vacancy in any pocket, seam, or flap.

It was hot wearing a trench coat in 90 degree July heat. Sadly, I eyed the long, beautiful purple coat with its frilly sleeves. This was my most whimsical article of clothing. In contrast, the practical raincoat would shield me from the damp and chill of Paris.

I could not choose! I would just wear two coats onto the plane. The airline watchdogs stand by the embarkation door and count your carry ons — but I had never

A fleece, the purple, and the trench

heard them limit how many coats a person could wear. Quickly I realized that layering could work for jewelry too and, in a flash, I was sporting a gold chain, a silver cross, a silver and turquoise cross, and a braided silver chain. What if all this metal set off an alarm during the preflight security screening? I wondered.

It had better not! Don’t mess with me, TSA officers. I am harmless but I am STRESSED. Who knows what I might do if forced to remove my jewelry by a bossy guard with blue rubber gloves? In my secret self, I have experienced shame. For the past three months, I have been taking French lessons and discovered how truly awful I am at pronunciation. What’s more, my brain is worn out from answering emails in French about renter’s insurance; utility services; schools; furniture; banking; and worst of all, residency permits.

WHY DIDN’T SOME APPLE GENIUS INVENT THE UNIVERSAL SHEET?

By this point, even little things contained the making of a nervous breakdown. Did you know that European beds are sized differently and thus none of my sheet sets would fit? What is the possible sense of that, I dare ask? Why hadn’t some genius at Apple invented the universal sheet?

European sheet sets for sale in sizes that are incomprehensible to me

My mind played out dark scenarios of arriving at the threshold of our new apartment without bedding.  I don’t yet know the names of the department stores that sell sheets, let alone how to get there by Metro, or how to speak with an accent that will make the haughty shop clerk stop wincing. What’s more, I don’t even know how to ask for the appropriate sheet size in English, let alone how to maul the phrasing in French. According to Google, the Europeans do not say “twin” and “queen” but something like standard and grander-than-standard. I imagined the raised eyebrows and pinched lips on the clerk’s face when I foolishly asked for “le roi” (king) sheets. “This is not Versailles,” she would retort.

Nothing can reduce one to a hapless buffoon like the disdainful French sneer!

In this nightmare, if and when I finally returned with sheets, I would be challenged to a duel by an alien washing machine where all the symbols are in arcane hieroglyphics and all the directions — you guessed it — are in French. I’ve played this game before and lost. My friend Marnie confessed to taking a hatchet to a French washer once in order to rescue her trapped clothing. And I do not even have room to pack a hatchet! After all the effort to procure the sheets, I would fail to wash them. We would probably toss and turn all night on stiff, scratchy bedding that smelled of chemical bug spray from some cockroach-infested warehouse. (And I do not mean the scuttling Palmetto bugs found in Charleston; I am talking about the small, stealthy German cockroaches that know how to march in and take apart your kitchen!)

FROM STAGE LEFT, OUR HERO ENTERS

But God never gives you more than you can handle. Just in time, my landlord emailed me out of the blue and offered, in French, to provide sheets and bath towels. How cute that he called the sheets “les drapes”. Indeed, how cute! At last I am beginning to warm up to the French language. It would have been nice if he had simply said les sheets instead of les drapes but still, one must be grateful…..unless…..

My word! Window treatments had not even crossed my mind until this moment. Perhaps I will be draping curtains on the bed that first night in lieu of sheets. Fools or no, we are plunging ahead with the rental despite many unanswered questions: does the flat have a dishwasher? A clothes dryer? A good knife, a cutting board, and a colander? How about pillows and light bulbs and coat hangers? How does one even say coat hangers in French?!!! I don’t really want to find out.

In the first few months, I refuse to waste precious time shlepping household goods to the apartment. Let’s face it, the dollar is weak and Paris is expensive, even for the French. Not only will I get hit with the currency exchange and the VAT, but I will be forced to pay prices that make Manhattan merchants seem kindly in comparison. In March, we paid $7 for coffee and $12 for take-away sandwiches from street vendors. Just imagine what bedding for a family of five would cost! If I am going to pay exorbitantly, it had better be for a fantastic pair of shoes. After all, that is the whole point of Paris. Perhaps there will even be a chic dress to create an ensemble.

That’s right, why worry? If I run out of funds, I can always wrap myself in les drapes. But first I must find a friendly Frenchwoman who can speak English well enough to tell me how to tie the sheets into a fashionable knot.

Safely arrived in Denmark and enjoying the purple coat