I was filling out some forms last week and had to write a little blurb about the semester I studied in France.  Old memories began to flood back.

Sounds so romantic, doesn’t it?  Well, let me tell you about how the adventure began. 

Ten of us from the school of architecture were selected to participate in this program.  Of course, the other nine were young people with no children or other cares in the world.  They were going to live in a dorm and were complaining about how much preparation there was and the amount of stuff they were going to have to take.  Pshhaw.

I, on the other hand, was going to be taking my four children and my mother, and we were going to live in a 300-year old house about twenty minutes from school.  We had to bring all our linens, towels, and bedspreads, not to mention favorite toys, games, books, and clothes for all the kids.

We ended up with twenty-one pieces of luggage, several of which were huge duffel bags the size of army trunks.

The school had arranged for our flights, and I assumed a lot of things I shouldn’t have.  First of all, I assumed I would sleep on the flight.  Wrong.  Secondly, I assumed the airport was relatively close to the town we were going to.  Wrong again.  It was five hours away.

So, how do you get six people and twenty-one pieces of luggage into a rental car?  The answer is “you don’t.”  We were forced into Plan B.

I loaded three kids and all the luggage I could into the rental car; my mother and my oldest son took the other thirteen suitcases and headed for the train.  The plan was that I would drive the five hours to our town, go get a key to our house, unload everything, and by then the train would be there.  Then I would go pick up the train travelers and everything would be fine.  We could do this, I assured myself.

Again, I assumed a lot of things I shouldn’t have.  Everything took longer than we thought it would; the office where I was going to pick up the key was closed; I didn’t know how to find the house; I didn’t know how to find the train station; I hadn’t slept in twenty-three hours; I had just spent $70 filling up the car with gas and was panicked because the French gas pump rejected my American credit card and I had to use all the francs I had to pay for it. 

But I was the parent and was supposed to hold it all together.  What I wanted to do was sit on the curb and cry.

I finally got to the town where we would be living and stopped at the equivalent of a convenience store.  In French, I asked for directions to the train station, but I had spent five minutes translating in my head before I said it.  Since I could say this much in French, the clerk assumed I really spoke French and answered with a five-minute dialogue full of arm waves and finger pointing.  I was too tired to think, much less try to interpret what he had said.  I stared blankly.

Some nice man was looking on and offered to lead me there, thank goodness.  Omigosh, I wouldn’t have ever found it.  We turned left, then right, then left, under one bridge and over another, then five more turns, and we were finally there.  We camped out at a table in the bar, which was the only heated room in the station.  Oh, did I mention it was snowing and about 25 degrees outside?  A woman with three children in a smoky bar with all sorts of sleazy types staring, trying to figure us out.  What a scene.

My mom, son and the other thirteen pieces of luggage finally arrived, with their own wild stories of almost missing the connecting train and running through the station with all these bags.  Then we called Bernard, the only person I knew by name in this town.

“Don’t worry!” he told us.  “I will come get you and take you to get your key and find your house,” he added in broken English.

“I have twenty-one suitcases,” I warned him.  “And six people.”

“Don’t worry!” he said again.  I assumed he would bring some friends with cars to help.

He pulled up in a minivan, which in France is considered a huge vehicle.  I looked at the van and looked at the pile of luggage and just sighed.  No way was this going to work.  But he was the eternal optimist.

How do you get seven people and twenty-one pieces of luggage into a minivan? 

I don’t know, but somehow, we did it.