So I’m back in the US. And just ended my second week of the semester, teaching classes I love to students I am already very impressed by and growing fond of. I miss Walter, Mia the cat, Andrée, our house and garden, and France. I miss being on (almost) the same time zone as my family. And cheese of course. But it is wonderful to see my friends and colleagues, catch up with students, and generally return to the familiar. I have already eaten more Thai food, sushi, and restaurant and diner food than I did in the last eight months in France. I’ve already hung out at the shore (well, Long Island, where they call it the beach). And it is good to be in the same time-zone as my writing and research partners — especially Becky with whom I FaceTime-write from 9am-11am EST, which when I’m in France is 3pm-5pm for me, right in the middle of apéritif when we are constantly interrupted and I have little brain left anyway. I slipped into my US life much more seamlessly than I expected (in spite of returning to two cars with dead batteries and a broken fridge/freezer–still broken!)
But Sunday morning I woke up to the sound of rain, and there is no covered space for me to sit under to listen to it as I drink my morning coffee — a ritual I love, especially after a summer wishing for rain every day! Our flat looks out over Drew’s Zuck Arboretum away from the rest of the apartments and townhouses, and overlooking nothing but trees, a pond, herons, and the occasional students doing what students do. It is a lovely location, and an easy walk to Drew, so I know how lucky I am to live here. There are very public outside areas where I can sit in the daytime (if I have adequate mosquito protection) but I am sad that there is no porch or patio, and at my end of the complex, nowhere to sit once it gets dark.
And all this makes me miss the house in France even more than I thought I could! I’m reading wonderful response papers written by my first-year students, but would love to be doing so somewhere other than my desk looking out the window at the rain, or at least I’d love to have Mia supervising my work or complaining that I’m ignoring her. A bad start to the day.
Then again, I’m teaching some of my favorite classes. The class on diaries, a first-year seminar that doubles as first-year writing, is new and I have 16 great students who have not objected to hand writing daily entries in a 5-year diary (which I do not collect, but which they use to generate weekly reflections). I am also teaching the class on blogs and other public digital writing that got me started on this blog — which was initially just a test blog so I could trouble-shoot their WordPress problems. The blend of digital humanities, creative nonfiction (the blogs), and advanced writing takes me to all of my happy places. Finally, I’m teaching a theory/practice class to our course-embedded Writing Fellows, which is a chance to work with students who care about writing and about helping other writers (and do not care for LLMs). I am learning as much as I am teaching, which is why I do this. But . . .
So what about the future ?
People in France ask me when I’ll be back and when I’ll be there full time; folks here ask me when I will retire, which is the same question. And the answer has been that there are too many variables. The main one was my university and it’s sabbatical/ retirement policy in particular, but also plans to reshape the curriculum; then there’s the US stock market and how much my retirement will give us, meaning whether I can afford to retire before social security kicks in; Andrée’s health and continued need for Walter to be there is a large part of the consideration; as is how much I miss the place and, of course, how much I miss Walter. Up to now, my answer has been “probably 2028.” And until then I planned to live in transit between the two places, just like “La Femme Pressée.”
As much as I had a plan, it was this:
- France, mid-December 2025 to mid-August 2026 on an unpaid leave;
- US, August 2026-December 2026, teaching Fall semester classes at Drew University;
- France, mid-December 2026 to mid-August 2027 on a fully-funded sabbatical;
- US, until I retire from teaching, officially per our sabbatical policy, no earlier than May 2029, but maybe December 2028.
But then,
Last week Drew announced another retirement incentive packet that included a suspension of the rule that you have to return and teach for three years after a sabbatical (negotiated to two in my case because my sabbatical was not granted for Spring 2026 — hence the unpaid leave). So, under this new policy I could head to France in December 2026 and never return except to attend the May 2027 graduation and pack up my stuff (and visit my friends of course). If I did that, this would be my last semester teaching.
I would be a full-time expat by January 1, 2027.
There are financial issues to consider if that were to be a reality — we have to sell the flat in Madison and our cars and ship our stuff , and we have to work out health insurance (eventually I’ll get French healthcare, and medicare in the US so I can keep my fabulous cardiologist, at least until my French gets better), and it will require a lot of belt-tightening to live on my retirement until I start collecting Social Security. Walter says we can probably do it if the apartment sells for what we paid for it or more.
Yikes! So soon?
But beyond all that, I’m not sure I’m ready for this to be my last semester teaching. I didn’t prepare for that. I love the classes I teach in the fall semester, and look/ed forward to teaching my First-Year Seminar on diaries again next year and perfecting what I am still piloting. Also in my Fall 2027 rotation is an Authorship course that counts for all three tracks of our major (literature, creative writing, and writing and communication studies) that I designed and love to teach. And that would be rounded out by my beloved Writing Fellows class/program. I think I want *that* to be my last semester teaching. Also, I do not really want to spend my sabbatical packing up my flat and office and dealing with clean up and sale. I want another spring in France to build on what I did last spring and (I hope) spend time with Andrée and Mia..
I feel like Dr. Dolittle’s Pushmi-Pullyu, the Llama with a head at each end. I think copyright prevents me from including a still from the movie, but if the image did not just jump into your mind, the book cover to the left gives you an idea (although that is not a llama) or you can check it out on YouTube. As you can probably tell from the above, I am leaning to a December 2027 retirement giving me one last Fall semester teaching and giving us time to pack up and sell the place. But being in France for the last of the garden and orchard bounty in the Fall is awfully tempting . . .
If I want to change my mind and retire in May 2027 it looks as if Drew will be happy to recoup my salary . . . and I fear I will go back and forth about what I want all semester, especially after I am in France for Fall break.
So I end singing the Pushmi-Pullyu song and leaping into the dance:
“Ladies and Gentlemen,
The one — the only — The phenomenal,
Two-headed, performing Pushmi-Pullyu
It lives! It breathes! It moves! It dances!
While going in two directions at once!“