Melissa Dalton-Bradford - Global Mom: A Memoir: Eight Countries, Sixteen Addresses, Five Languages, One Family

For Luc William, Dalton Haakon, Claire, Randall James, and Parker Fairbournemy Bradfords.

Acknowledgments

As would be expected, a book called Global Mom has been a global undertaking requiring multiple moms, not just the one on the cover. Producing this manuscript has drawn on the gifts and graciousness of a worldwide circle of friends, some of whom Ive already mentioned in these pages. Others, I wish to thank here.

Sharlee Mullins Glenn, mentor and wordsmith warrior, has been compassionate, visionary, persistent, and charitable. Her influence has sustained me and fueled not only this book, but also virtually all my writing. In my many moments of reticence, hers has been the firm hand on my shoulder pushing me onward. I thank her, ad infinitum.

Those affiliated with the womens literary journal Segullah aided in the development of my voice and the telling of this story. Angela S. Hallstrom, Michelle Lehnardt, Lisa Garfield, and Kathryn Lynard Soper offered invaluable writerly feedback, hashing out and mulling through my prose, peeling it down to its core and then to its seeds. They brought me onboard their vessel as a poetry editor and also helped me cut my blogging teeth. Michelle filmed, edited, and produced the video trailer for this books release.

Jacque A. White, Kristiina H. Sorensen, Bonnie Jean Beesley, Maja Busche Wensel, Sharon Leigh, and Elaine S. Dalton, my mes-surs, or soul sisters, were at my side in pivotal life moments described in these pages. Astrid Tuminez, Mary Bingham Lee, Kimberly Carlile, and Sharon Eubank aided by reading early copy, to which they gave skillful editorial suggestions. Maggie Wickes and Amy Stewart, this books official editors, picked through the manuscript like seasoned archaeologists pick through sand with a microscope and tweezers. Crystal Patriarche and Kim Cecere of BookSparks Public Relations put turbo boosters on my back and sent me sailing, book in my sweaty clutch.

Some of this books moms have been men. Christopher Robbins, indefatigable CEO of Familius, embodied the kind of wise guidance and accessibility most writers can only dream of finding in a publisher. While building a company, recovering from a severe ski accident concussion, and while living for months in a different time zone from his family, Christopher kept his sense of humor and never forfeited his cool, keen judgment. Above all, he honored my voice as it retold my familys story.

Christian Karlsson, the epitome of modesty and excellence, was my Norwegian correspondent. Jim Richards, Rick Walton, Jack Harrell, Kirk Lovell Shaw, and Tyler Chadwick each championed my writing and promoted it to others. Kirby Bivans, gentle sound master of La Forge studios in Versonnex, France, oversaw my recording of the audio version of this book. Robb White and Aaron Hubbard demonstrated the best of the human spirit in supporting our family throughout months and years of living with enormous loss.

My brother Aaron Dalton has been a valued constant in this peripatetic life we live, as well as my go-to guy for everything from pop culture to Proust quotes. He has not only read many of these chapters and offered sparkling insights, but has lived them right along with us. We are forever indebted.

My beloved parents, David J. and Donna G. Dalton, were my first, middle, and last readers. Some of my sweetest healing hours have been spent listening to them recite aloud to each other the first drafts of every single chapter. In more ways than I can describe, I owe them my life.

Finally: my Bradfords, without whom there is neither story to tell nor life to live. Claire Bradford, awe-inspiring daughter, gave her trademark sharp-eyed organizational help and cheered me sweetly on through every step of living and chronicling this life. Dalton Bradfordon-site tech support, camera crew, film editor, blog curator, current events commentatorgave his precocious and precious insights. Luc Bradford, our Luminous One, whose tech savvy at age ten outstripped mine at forty-something, got me quickly up to speed, and shared (too many) hours sitting at my elbow, both of us on our laptops. Parker Bradford, whose enormous and resounding mortal absence matches his echoing and infinite ongoingness. Par C ur is the very heart of this book.

And Randall: my part, not merely my partner. He has with constant and astounding generosity of spirit literally and figuratively given our family the world. While the demands of his profession might have made him seem absent in many of these pages, he is in fact the books silent main character. His loving presence made this life and book possible, and makes any and all places for me home.

Prangins, Switzerland, June 2013

Introduction

Le Chef, Le Garon, Le Guy, and Yosemite Sam

Hanging out the windows of our apartment that sits in an upper floor of a corner building one block south of the Seine are two men. In the narrow street below stand two more. All four are bellowing at each other. Part of me could join in, I guess, but Ive decided to save my energy. Ill need it.

This morning Im managing the shipwreck rescue of my life: theres this massive plank of timber bobbing like Moby Dick on dental floss outside my window, so many ropes taut and creaking, sweat drizzling in rivulets down my back, four Frenchmen sodden with perspiration in this summers round-the-clock sauna, all of us hoping for a breeze to cool us off. Just a puff of air, Im thinking, and that would do it. We could pull this leviathan through the double window and into the middle of our living room, the only spot where this piece will fit in our new place.

Our new place: A part of Paris called the rive gauche which refers to the left (or south) bank of the Seine which was once fishable water. But today? Today the catch weve pulled out of a moving truck isnt fish but pine, and a whale of a piece at that. Its our ten-foot long, three-foot wide, four-inch thick Norwegian table, our monument to five years spent living there in an island idyll.

We move nowhere without it. Not when we moved from that Norwegian island to the le de France (Frances Island, the term used for the suburban periphery of Paris) and took up residence in Versailles, a comfortable jog from the chteau. And not now, either, when weve decided were done with island hopping and are instead jumping feet first into blue blood. Weve found an apartment in a skinny one-way parallel to the Rue de lUniversit in the distressingly tony seventh arrondissement of a city, which is, at least for the coarseness of this moment, way too genteel.

Look lively, maties, I coax inwardly like the longshoreman Im seeing I need to be in order to get my table up a couple of floors and through this window. Quit your quarggeling and lets heave-ho. No question Im feeling more Norwegian than Parisian this morning, more hard-boiled than high-heeled, more rogue than vogue, sure of my sea legs and fit in a flash to shiver anyones timbers. Parisian delicatesse I dropped a while ago when the movers nearly dropped the table the first time.

You couldnt have left this thing in storage? the guy with a red handlebar moustache, the one who reminds me of Yosemite Sam, says in French, heaving cables with raw, freckled hands. Hes slimy with sweat, his bulbous belly spilling over the window ledge were sharing. Hes about five feet tall and five inches to my left. I can smell him well.