The Unstoppable Pull of Elsewhere

Claire
Jul 2
4 min read

Note: I’m posting this as I prepare to cross the Atlantic for my next adventure, only a day before I officially touch down in my new home: New York City. This is the story of how I became a person who could never stay put.

If fairies danced over my crib, they must have sprinkled me with wanderlust. Then again, they may have visited my father first. He knew from childhood that he wanted to spend his life at sea. He joined the navy and returned home every few months with stories from distant ports and places whose names sounded like magic to me: America, Djibouti, Spain, Japan, the Persian Gulf, Ivory Coast, Panama, Venezuela.

Long before I knew what a passport was, I knew I would leave our tiny French village to explore the world. I couldn't wait.

That fascination spilled into everyday life. At five, I was spellbound by our Spanish neighbor Carmen, admiring her long hair while listening to the musical cadence of her accent. When a Polish family moved in across the street, I became fast friends with their daughter Nadine and stoically endured her mother’s enthusiastic cheek-pinches on every visit. I spent my early summers at a beach club, utterly captivated by my swimming instructor as I heard him speak English to his British wife.

The world kept opening small windows into other lives, and I couldn’t get enough.

By seven, I had found one of my father’s Assimil books and decided to teach myself English, with little success beyond “my tailor is rich”. Whenever I met multilingual families, I burned with envy. One mother must have pitied me and gave me Dutch magazines; I couldn’t read a word, but I stared at them like coded treasure.

When school finally brought English into my life, pen pals became my obsession. Before long, I was writing to more than twenty girls around the world. I was on a global adventure, one envelope at a time, and I cursed the postman every time he dared to show up empty-handed.

At fourteen, my father decided to reconnect with his sister living in the U.S. and took us along. It was my first international trip—and my first time on a plane. What was meant to be a summer visit turned into a full year. I stayed with my aunt and cousin, spending my sophomore year in an American high school that felt like a miniature United Nations; I loved every second of it and did not miss my French life one bit.

Returning to France was devastating. In Atlanta, while changing planes, I was tempted to accept an invitation from a warm Greek family I had befriended. I must have looked heartbroken as they invited me to spend the summer in Athens, postponing my return to France and the troubled family life that awaited. I knew it was an impossible thought, but I did consider it for a brief moment, anything to delay going back after having tasted another life. I never fully reintegrated. My American year had confirmed that a wider world existed - and that it could be mine. But patience was not my gift.

I already missed everything: my friends, the mix of cultures, the exposure to new places, the feeling of movement, the unfamiliar holidays, and the constant hum of other languages. I had tasted freedom, and returning home felt like shrinking into a life that no longer fit, shaped by a family dynamic that made it even harder to return to. I knew something in me had already shifted and wouldn’t shift back.

But logic eventually overrode my heart; I was only fifteen, and I had little choice but to return. That restlessness didn't fade away, instead it grew stronger. Not long after graduating high school, I set off again, this time to Germany.

While studying at university back in France, I met an Israeli of Tunisian descent who shared the same travel bug. We moved in together and got married (details of that event are in the memoir ;) ).

Our first chapter together took us to Israel. Under the smooth maneuvering of his warm and traditional family, I was gradually nudged toward a Jewish conversion. I had no idea how long we would be there, so agreeing to convert was about the practicalities of building a life there, of fitting in and becoming part of the family. They were kind, which ultimately shaped my decision.

Judaism is an ethno-religion, so it’s no surprise that I connected far more to the "ethno" - the peoplehood and the traditions - than to the religious life I pretended to adopt.

That experience taught me something none of my earlier travels had: living somewhere is easy. Fitting in requires some work, but nothing Herculean. Belonging, however, especially when you don’t share a common faith, is another matter entirely.

That pattern has been the thread through every chapter of my life. And now, I am stepping into the newest one: back in the U.S., a dream set in motion at fifteen, finally realized forty years later under different circumstances.

As I type this, I'm trading the familiar streets of London for the unknown avenues of New York, and by the time you read this I'll be starting over once again. It has taken forty years to return to this dream, and I'm curious to see what this new chapter has in store. Life has a way of circling back like that, carrying the little girl who still longs for elsewhere.

Photos of The Year That Changed My Life Forever- 1982/1983