After her husband passed away last August, Mrs Lupin's Mom, 84-year-old Irene, bravely decided to expatriate herself and come and live with us in the South of France. Previous chapters include:
Mom is moving to France - Part I
Mom is moving to France – Part II
I am now pleased to report : Mission Accomplished! Granny Lupin has landed.
The details, as usual, below the fold...
We flew back to California for the second time within a month. The French Consulate had now sent Irene her Long-Term Visa, her Hemet house was in escrow, and the time for the actual move had come. In fact, the movers were scheduled to come on Monday, October 29.
We landed at LAX the previous Thursday. The fires were no longer raging but at or near sunset, the polluted sky was either beautiful or appalling, depending on your perspective. It sort of looked like landing in a heavily polluted third world country.
For some reason traffic was worse than it'd been the month before, even when traveling east on the 10 fwy at 4:30 a.m. We had breakfast in a small dinner in Hemet which opens at 5 a.m. and which we like. The patrons are salt of the Earth types, heartland folks; I don't know if their mood is representative of the boondocks, but with real estate tanking, concerns about the stock market, there wasn't a lot of cheers in the place. Again, I was reminded of previous visits to Russia or poorer countries.
That breakfast turned out to be costly, since I caught some stomach bug (Mrs Lupin later found out that other patrons had been similarly affected the previous week) which kept me vomiting and doing other unspeakable stuff for the next day and a half. Still, the indomitable Mrs Lupin got the house ready for the movers, and sorted out Irene's paperwork, canceling utilities, etc.
Monday, the movers came, as scheduled. Rinkens International, a firm specialized in international moves, that goes by volume, not weight, a cheaper option. All went well, but we were happy to leave Hemet and spend a relaxing one day-two nights in the La Quinta Inn hotel near LAX. (Recommended for outstanding service, esp. when you have an 84-year-old woman and lots of luggage in tow.)
The international flight (Air France, LA-Paris, then Paris-Toulouse) was long but uneventful and wheelchair service arranged in advance at every airport was efficient and courteous. Still, door to door, it meant a gruesome 24 hours of constant transit.
Irene had been understandably very stressed since her husband's death -- the prospect of the move and the entire uprooting of her life had also preyed on her mind. We had been quite worried about her health, physical and mental. Well, I'm glad to report that, after a week, she's been virtually regenerated. Clean air, good food, regular sleep and a comfortable routine have erased (at least in part) the impact of the last awful two months. And I think we can even improve on her medical treatment (or lack thereof).
She has enjoyed going shopping with Mrs Lupin/her daughter, buying new clothes, exploring the countryside, going to the market and studying French on her Rosetta Stone CD on the computer.
We have taken steps (we have two months to do so) to convert her long-term visa into a full-blown resident permit, which will be granted automatically once the paperwork is filed, since her daughter is a French citizen.
We should be completing the purchase of the new house we're planning to renovate and convert into apartments within the next month, and if all goes well, Granny Lupin will move into her own flat around March of next year. (State subsidies will pay for about 40% of the renovation costs.)
Mrs Lupin gives a more detailed , pertinent and colorful report on her blog as usual.
In conclusion, I have to say that, although we enjoyed revisiting our old California haunts and see our old friends (we left in January 05), we were struck by the vague but real smell of increasing entropy.
Areas which were up and coming are now a little bit more rundown; the mood is (unusually for California, as I recall) more somber; traffic is worse; people look more tired -- and that was before the Writers' strike began. Quite a few of our friends are now thinking of moving, too. More like escaping, really. The 24-hour TV News were almost a physical assault upon our minds and I guess we've grown unused to being surrounded by so many people. Sometimes it felt as if we were like hobbits suddenly transplanted out of the Shire.