You’ve been here how long?!

This week marks an anniversary. Six years since I came to France. Six years that I arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport to meet up with a boy who was sort of my boyfriend and is now my husband. And of course now there is a chat and a bébé in the picture.

Six years ago I knew just enough French to get me by (barely) and the three-year old in the host family knew way more than me. Now I can pretty much understand an inane French slapstick comedy (and there are too many of them), but I still get stumped on words like “curtain rod”. Six years ago everything about this country was exciting and novel. Now a lot of that initial euphoria has worn off and I grumble about France’s flaws and am sometimes tempted to go on strike like those train workers.

But more than all that retrospection, this anniversary shows me how fast time goes by. I’m really starting to sound like an adult when I say, wow, it’s already been six years. Where did the time go? It’s like when you see other people’s kids and say, my, you’ve grown. It’s not so much that the kid has reached our height that bugs us, but that time is going so quickly. And we didn’t even notice, and worse, haven’t perhaps been using our time wisely.

So I don’t know what the next six years will bring. Of course, this little one I’m propping up in my lap to write this post will be high on stories from her first grade class. I just hope I won’t be regretting missed opportunities, but I know I’m the only one who can fix that…