CNN
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She first traveled to Paris when she was 21, and nearly six decades later, Mary Jane Wilkie decided that it was finally time to move to the French capital for good.
In December 2021, Mary Jane, who was 79 at the time, relocated from New York to Paris to start afresh. She’s been living, and working, in the City of Love ever since and has no intention of returning to the US.
“Ultimately, I knew that I didn’t want to say on my deathbed, ‘I always wanted to move to France but didn’t’,’” Mary Jane tells CNN Travel.
“Once you know what you don’t want to say on your deathbed, you know what to do with your life.”
No regrets
While she grew up in Texas, Mary Jane, who works as an independent contractor, was eager to leave at a young age.
“I have a loving family and all that,” says Mary Jane. “But there were just other horizons beckoning.”
She traveled to France in 1963, spending a year studying at the Sorbonne University in Paris.
“I was confident that I could get a job, and study French,” Mary Jane explains. “And so I did that.”
When she “found an opportunity in South America,” a destination she’d be been keen to visit for a while, Mary Jane traveled from Lisbon, Portugal to Buenos Aires, Argentina by boat.
She went on to live in various Latin American countries, including Bolivia and Paraguay, developing a “near-native proficiency in Spanish.”
Mary Jane eventually ended up in New York, where she began shape note singing, a form of American choral music developed in the early 19th century.
“There are no rehearsals, no performances,” Mary Jane explains. “We simply meet and sing, and everyone is welcome.
“The sound is not refined, but it’s strong, and people either hate it or love it. I’m one of the latter.”
Mary Jane was drawn back to Paris around a decade ago after traveling to France for singing opportunities and making many friends there.
“New York City is great,” she says. “But at different stages of your life you want different things.
“So the fantasy kind of took shape, and I thought, ‘Well, I think I’d like to move to France.’”
She would travel to France at least twice a year, and spent a lot of time getting to know the European country with her “singing buddies.”
“I thought, ‘Oh my, I kind of like it here,’” she says, adding that she “wanted more quiet” and felt that New York was “getting louder.” “I made friends, and I liked the food.”
After returning from an extended trip to the city, Mary Jane decided to bite the bullet and begin the process of relocating from New York to Paris.
“I sold my apartment for a very nice price,” she says. “Not enough to buy an apartment in Paris. But here we are.”
Settling in
Rather than retiring, Mary Jane chose to continue working remotely from the French capital, explaining that she enjoys her job as an independent contractor, which involves interviewing job candidates, immensely and has no plans to stop working.
“I’ve been doing this the longest I’ve ever done anything,” she says. “Because I’ve never been bored…
“Candidates are interesting. They tell me stories, and maybe I’m just nosy. But it’s a window into America.”
In December 2021, Mary Jane flew to Paris to start a new life.
Her family and friends were hugely supportive of her decision.
“I am fortunate to have a family whose members like it when each of us is doing what makes us happy,” she says.
However, Mary Jane suffered a setback early on, as her age made renting an apartment much harder.
“There’s a law in France that (states that) a landlord cannot evict a tenant aged 80 or over,” she explains.
“So if you’re 75 or over, they start to hesitate. That’s why I was having a problem… And I couldn’t have known that (before).”
Thankfully, she was able to rent a one-bedroom apartment.
Although her move to Paris happened to coincide with the Covid-19 pandemic, which brought about international border closures and lockdowns across the globe, Mary Jane points out that this didn’t impact her experience in a negative way.
“That (the pandemic) gave me time to explore even more and work on my French,” she says, describing how she would watch old French movies and songs. “Not only the language, but the associations. That’s what really makes your life rich.”
But Mary Jane’s first few months in Paris proved to be tougher than she expected, as although she’d spent a lot of time in the city previously, she found shifting from being a visitor to a resident something of a challenge.
“My metaphor is finding the right laundry detergent,” she adds. “Because friends would say, ‘Are you going to a lot of museums?’
“And I would say, ‘No, I’m trying to find the right laundry detergent.’ Because when you’re a tourist, you don’t have to do all those things.”
Mary Jane goes on to explain that it took her a little while to figure out where to get many of the food and products that she liked.
“Things aren’t where you expect them to be,” she adds.
Eventually, she was able to find almost everything she needed, including the right laundry detergent. But there’s been at least one thing that she’s had to live without — kale.
“I’m very disappointed about that,” she says, explaining that she’s only been able to find the leafy green vegetable in Paris a couple of times. “I love kale, but I found a substitute.”
Forming connections
Once she had an internet connection and computer set up for work and found a church to her liking, and, Mary Jane says she felt ready to take on Paris.
She found it relatively easy to meet people as she’s a “pretty chatty person.”
However, Mary Jane says she realized early on that she’d have to adjust her approach slightly when starting conversations with locals.
“I learned if you’re going to interact with someone, the first words out of your mouth are ‘Bonjour,’” she says, noting that she’s found that people in France prefer to exchange pleasantries before being asked a specific question.
“A soldier taught me that when I was in a train station in Lyon and needed the toilet.”
While she notes that there are many cultural differences between the US and France, Mary Jane stresses that she hasn’t had much trouble adapting.
However, she concedes that she finds the customer service in France to be lacking somewhat.
“I have many negative things I can say about America,” she adds. “But Americans understand customer service.
“The French are a little bit behind. So I just learned to change my expectations.
“They’re not going to change for me, so I just realized that they’re not going to be as efficient in responding to me as a customer. But that’s the way it is.
Mary Jane also feels that people in France have different spatial boundaries than those she was accustomed to in New York.
“People looking for something at the supermarket here, would stand more closely than they would in the US,” she says, noting that she experienced this in Latin America also.
“So I just had to adjust my expectations and realize that they weren’t creeps. They were just being French people.”
Mary Jane loves the Parisian lifestyle and says she’s still amazed by how “pretty” the city is.
“They have their new ugly buildings as well,” she says. “But they’re still nice.”
Now 82, Mary Jane notes that many of her new friends in Paris are significantly younger than her, but this hasn’t proved to be an issue at all.
“Some of the people I know are my age,” she adds. “My cheesemonger is about 50, and he’s going to introduce me to his grandmother, who is my age.
“And I have some of my other singing buddies who are about 10 years younger than I am. Some of the other singing people are 20 years younger. There’s a whole variety.”
‘Simple needs’
While she hasn’t really noticed much of a difference in the cost of living in France, Mary Jane, who lives in Issy-les-Moulineaux, in southwestern Paris, points out that she initially wanted to buy an apartment there, but ultimately couldn’t afford it.
“At least not in a neighborhood where I would live,” she adds. “That was a surprise to me. “Although apartment ownership is another kind of bureaucratic nightmare.
“So maybe I’ll just be a renter… I have simple needs at this point in my life. That’s one of the advantages. I have simple needs, and I know what I want.”
Mary Jane has a Carte Vitale ID card, which covers most of her medical costs, but admits that she “avoids doctors like the plague,” unless it’s “for injury or things like that.”
She explains that she’s been practicing yoga daily for around 30 years and feels that this has helped her physical health tremendously.
“I do it so that I don’t end up, like a lot of people my age,” she adds. “Unable to do anything except sit in front of the television with the remote… And so far, touch wood, I can move. And I can see.”
Mary Jane has published a book, “Bodies Speak Truth: So listen up!” which details the practices she’s developed for her health care and physical wellbeing.
“I’m an educator at heart and believe that what I’ve learned will be useful to others,” she says. “The book traces how I came to value my own intuition.”
When it comes to the language, Mary Jane admits that, while she’s still “stronger in Spanish,” her French has improved, and her confidence has grown over time.
Mary Jane tries to practice her French as much as possible, stressing, “I don’t have decades ahead of me to master” the language.
“The phrase, ‘She speaks French,’ is meaningless, because it says nothing about level,” she says.
“There’s reading comprehension. There’s listening comprehension. There’s talking. There’s all these different categories.
“The fact that you can order in a restaurant, do your shopping and take public transportation doesn’t mean you can address the Assemblée nationale (one of the houses of the Parliament of France).”
Although she still enjoys her job considerably, Mary Jane doesn’t work full time anymore, and feels that she has a good work/life balance.
“I get my social security (payments). I worked hard for it,” she says. “I mean, I’m 82 years old, if I hadn’t learned how to balance that by now. I mean, God help me…
“I was telling my client the other day, ‘As long as we have our sight and our hearing, we can do this until we drop dead.’ So that’s the plan.”
After nearly four years in France, Mary Jane, who currently has a renewable Carte de Séjour residence permit, feels at home in the European country and plans to apply for French citizenship in a few years time.
“I don’t tend to go back to the States,” she says. “Except, God forbid, (if there’s) a death in the family.
“People say, ‘Oh, so are you going home for the holidays?’ No, home is where I am. I’m here.”
Looking back on her decision to move to Paris at the age of 79, Mary Jane says that she doesn’t necessarily think of this as a brave move, but a necessary one.
“People say, ‘Oh, at your age, it’s very courageous to move to France,’” she says.
“But it’s not courageous. Courage means that you have fear. You’re afraid, but you’re able to act anyway. I wasn’t afraid.”