Running Away From Home

Are you ready to get on with your life? Boomers generally are. And that includes boomer Rosanne Knorr. And we mean, your life; not your friends’, not your kids’. She writes about it in this excerpt from the introduction to her book, The Grown-up’s Guide to Running Away from Home.

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
—Helen Keller

Long, long ago—before career ladders and children and homes with mortgages to be paid on a regular basis—I dreamed of sipping wine at a French café with a view of the Eiffel Tower or waking to the day in a whitewashed cottage on a Greek island. You can fill in your own dreams. We all have them.

But for most of us, the travel through life follows a practical path. As we reach middle age, it’s our children—the students in high school or college—who participate in a year abroad. We see them and say, “I wish I could have done that.” Then, one day, my husband and I asked, “Why can’t we do it now?”

Midlife is an ideal time for adventure overseas. The empty nest provides the opportunity to “run away” from the humdrum habits of several decades and create a fulfilling second life. As my husband commented: “I’ve done this life. I want to have another.”

We ended up living in a French village where we discovered new tastes in food and wine. We met fascinating people and explored different cultures. We learned a new language, studied art, and biked vineyards. And our French home served as a European base, the jumping-off point for driving trips to Italy, Spain, Portugal, and beyond—each trip a new adventure in itself. Best of all, we saw it all for ourselves, with a freshness and spirit of adventure that put new sparkle into our life. After spending years raising our kids, we became the kids we wanted to be. You can take that literally.

One wonderful result of our adventure was the realization that gaining knowledge of the world is the true fountain of youth. Like children, we discovered the world again, after all these old years of living. We didn’t worry or wonder just what it was we’d do with the rest of our lives. We were certainly not bored. No, we were too busy comparing the latest wines with our neighbors, exploring medieval churches and museums, participating fully in town life here, while planning the trips to nearby regions and countries. Our life was full and, as the French say, agréable. We did what we wanted when we wanted—a dream that we had never thought could become a reality but proved to be amazingly easy to accomplish.

You too can achieve this freedom. Enjoy a year, or more, of life overseas. Relish that feeling of discovery. It’s not just for the young. And when you return to your old life—if you choose to return—you’ll bring new interests and an intriguing mystique home. If you return to work, you’ll add an international perspective to your career.

Running away from home as an adult does take more planning than it does for a younger person. When we were younger we had nothing to lose if we took off for a year or more. We didn’t have jobs, or at least not ones that paid enough to matter at that point. No children or elderly parents to be concerned about. No home with a mortgage, filled with stuff. Any belongings we did have could be stashed at our parents’ house until our return.

But we are the parents now. We have the houses packed with the accumulation of a lifetime. The mere thought of arranging a year off is intimidating enough to make anyone want to plop back in front of the TV with an old movie and a beer.

In our case, though, the itch for adventure was still there at ages fifty and sixty-one. We needed to scratch the itch while we were still young enough to negotiate old-world cobblestone streets, or we would forever regret not doing it.

So we searched libraries and bookstores. We made idiots of ourselves asking people if they’d ever lived overseas. Many people answered in the affirmative, and we grilled them on how they had arranged the countless details. Their input helped make this book possible. (Some of their attitudes and comments are reflected in quotes scattered throughout this book.) We discovered a range of attitudes toward living this type of adventure. The brave souls simply up and went. The not-so-brave (or less foolhardy), like us, talked it over and over. But they still dreamed.

Most of all, the number of midlifers who had successfully achieved an extended leave encouraged us. I started studying what they did to achieve their dreams. For five years before our departure, I looked for others who had done what we planned. I interviewed them, found out where they went and why, asked how they planned their adventures, and determined what worked and what didn’t. We found the areas we were interested in and took our vacations in those places, watching for the resident Americans of San Miguel or Ajijic or Aix-en-Provence. (If a person spoke English but didn’t carry a camera, it was a clue they weren’t the average tourist!) They proved to be friendly, informative, and, most important, inspiring.

Finally, we narrowed down our destination and studied up on the country we wanted as our overseas base—France. We joined Alliance Française, the worldwide group that promotes French culture and language. We practiced our “Bonjour.” But were we brave enough to follow our dream?

Gradually, we uncovered the details that would make our adventure overseas possible. We discovered the best means of divesting ourselves of our home and belongings, staying in touch with our family, friends, and financial advisors—and we even planned how to take our only “child” still at home: a pound puppy named Folly. The details we needed weren’t found in any book, so we were left to either seek out others who had taken the road we wanted to follow or invent the solutions for ourselves.

We found far more adult adventurers than I had thought possible. The reasons they gave for “escaping” overseas were varied, but boiled down to a few basics: They’d had the long hours at work. They’d had the pressures of conformity. They’d had the so-called “good life” of stateside suburbia. Now they wanted to experience more of the world and a different lifestyle before the rocking chair became their mode of transportation.

Our plans were both frightening and exhilarating. The suburban life we had lived for decades was about to be turned topsy-turvy. But that was the point. Escaping must be an adventure, or it’s simply more of the same. The true joy of living somewhere entirely new on a long-term sabbatical or retirement is that you become alive to a host of possibilities that would otherwise be lost in the routine of a life you already know, perhaps too well.

If the thought of new discoveries after forty intrigues you, then read on. If you decide on such an adventure, I hope this book helps you, too, to plan, prepare, and gain confidence that such an experience is not only possible, but the experience of a lifetime.

As you hoist your backpack (well, OK, roll-on luggage), just tell the kids who look on enviously that, after all these years, it’s your turn for adventure.

Category: Baby Boomers, Rosanne Knorr