It will be alright... or how to move a pink flamingo

After five years sitting tight enjoying a splendid view onto the Arc de Triomphe we are moving ... again! It is a weird move, at least for our family! We are used to crossing borders even continents, this time instead of travelling thousands of km we are moving 1000 meters down the road.

This still implies packing up the entire house and fitting your life into x amount of boxes. (I don't dare mention the number of boxes.) What I will say, however, is that it is scary to see your home - yes, that would be the one you spent days, months even years building and improving - being dismantled within hours ... by total strangers!

I usually avoid this part of the move. I will plan all the logistics, including insurance, parking spaces, freight elevator, labelling, wrapping personal items but just before the movers arrive I leave with tears streaming down my face. It is my hubby who takes over for a day in order for me to avoid seeing our home empty and desolate. I then pick up the other end rebuilding our family home for the umpteenth time!

This time around it is me instructing the movers to be careful, label correctly and answering their questions. I must admit it is easier knowing we won't be leaving our friends behind, we can still enjoy a scrumptious fois gras on a swanky Parisian terrace and stroll through Paris' lovely parks and museums knowing we are on home turf. We are NOT tourists! This is our home!

There I've said it out loud and written it down: Paris is our home. We have been living here for the past five years and will most probably remain for at least as many. That is VERY good going for perpetual expats such as ourselves.

But for now, I am listened to my kids playing hide-and-seek in between the many, many, many boxes and making make-shift goals to play soccer in a corridor stripped of family photos and emotional keepsakes.

Last week, a little token caught my fancy and on a whim I bought the transparent snow globe enclosing a miniaturized Tour Eiffel and a Pink Flamingo! I just could not resist and told myself it would help me to keep smiling should things get rough during the coming week.

I have looked at my little snow globe a few times this weekend while preparing our household for the movers to take over and my smile returned. An army of movers turned up at 8am this morning with their moving boxes and you'll never guess what was pictured on their cartons? A PINK FLAMINGO!

At that very moment I knew it would all be just fine!!!

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