French was my mother’s first language, but it was never mine.
She grew up speaking it. I grew up knowing it belonged to our family story, but somehow the language itself never became part of mine.
For years, I have tried to learn French on my own. A little vocabulary here. An app there. Enough to recognize some words and convince myself I was making progress…until I ran headfirst into masculine and feminine nouns, verb conjugation, and all the little rules that seemed designed to remind me how much I still had to learn.
More than once, I got frustrated and stopped.
But next week, something changes.
I begin my first formal French classes.
And for the first time, this no longer feels like a language I missed. It feels like one I am finally choosing.
Maybe that is one of the gifts of getting older; realizing that ‘too late’ is often just a story we have been telling ourselves.
There are so many things we assume have an expiration date.
Languages. New careers. New hobbies. Travel adventures. Creativity. Reinvention.
We imagine there was a proper time to begin, and if we missed it, the opportunity somehow closed.
I am beginning to believe the opposite.
Sometimes the right Time arrives much later than we expected.
My mother turns 93 next week. For her Birthday, I gave her a membership to our local Alliance Frainçaise chapter and told her I would pay for any activities she wants to join for the year.
There is something wonderfully circular about that gift.
She spent the early part of her life speaking French. I spent much of minhe wishing I knew how. Now we are going to French speaking gatherings together so I can learn and she can remember.
I am a student.
She is, in some ways, returning home.
I love that.
There is also something tender about learning this language while my mom is still here to share it with me.
Studying French at home with French textbooks and an Alliance Française lesson.
At 93, time feels different.
I am much more aware that the ordinary moments are not ordinary at all. Sitting together. Hearing a familiar phrase. Watching her search for a word she once knew effortlessly. Laughing when I pronounce something terribly.
There are not simply language lessons.
These are pieces of our family story begin paused back and forth between us.
And then there is France itself.
Every time I go, something in me shifts.
France does not feel like a place I am visiting. Somehow, it feels like home.
I have found myself brought to tears simply walking around, hearing the language around me, sitting in a cafe, or taking in the streets and buildings. It is difficult to explain because it is not nostalgia for a life I personally lived. It feels more like recognition.
Michelle and Doug in front of the Louvre pyramid in Paris, France.
When I researched my ancestry, I learned that before my family immigrated to Canada, our roots traced back to the Paris Basin and the southern Pays de la Loire.
Perhaps that explains it a little of it.
Or perhaps some places simply speak to us in ways we cannot fully explain.
Either way, France has never felt foreign to me. It feels, in some quiet way, like coming back.
And I am not stopping with a weekly class.
Next spring, I am going to spend two weeks in a French immersion program, living with a host family and speaking French every day.
The idea both thrills and intimidates me.
There will undoubtedly be moments when I cannot find the right word, misunderstood and a question, or stare blankly while someone waits for me to answer.
But that may be part of why I want to do it.
At this stage of life, I do not want to spend all of my time doing things I already know how to do.
There is something energizing about being a beginner.
Being a beginner requires humility. It requires curiosity. It requires being willing to look a little foolish.
And perhaps most importantly, it requires believing that growth is still available to us.
I think that matters.
Aging can quietly tempt us toward smaller lives. We become comfortable with what we know and stay close to what feels familiar. We begin editing possibilities before we even explore them.
But, I do not want the next decades of my life to be defined by what I have already done.
I want there to be things I am still learning.
Places I have not yet seen.
Conversations I cannot yet have.
Versions of myself I have not yet met.
Learning French has become about much more than grammar or vocabulary.
It is about heritage.
It is about my mother.
It is about travel and curiosity and courage.
And it is about reminding myself that the future can still contain firsts.
My first formal French class.
My first immersion program.
My first conversation in French with my mom that lasts longer than I thought I was capable of.
Maybe someday, my first moment realizing I am no longer translating every sentence in my head.
I do not know how fluent I will become.
But, I know this: I am not learning French because I think I should have mastered it years ago.
I am learning it because I still can.
And perhaps that is one of the great privileges of this season of life.
We do not have to spend our time trying to recover everything we missed.
We can simply choose what we still want to carry forward.
For me, one of those things is French.
A language that belonged to my mother.
A language that belonged to my family.
A place that somehow feels like home.
And now, finally, a language I am making my own.
Is there something you once thought you had missed your chance to learn, try, or become? Maybe it is not too late after all.
Street scene in France at dusk with bicycles and historic buildings.