Nothing by Chance

How many times do we ask ourselves how we got to where we are today? As a 2010 Minnesota college graduate spending her first year of liberation working as an au pair in Marseille, France, I have personally pondered this question quite often the past few months. Incredibly, my query has led me to a discovery.

Today started in the moments leading up to my birth twenty-two years ago, when my parents turned the radio on while driving to the hospital and happened upon a station playing The Beatles’ hit, “Michelle.” Later on that day, when it came time to choose a name for their newborn daughter, they decided upon Michelle, remembering the song they’d heard but hours before. As I grew up, they often reminded me how they had found a name for me, and I was always terribly proud of my connection with the greatest musical group this world has ever known. Years later, when I chose my classes during my first semester of high school, it was the origin of my name and the language used within this celebrated song that persuaded me to start learning French.

Finding success and passion in studying the French language, I chose this as one of my majors in college. I subsequently spent the fall semester of my junior year studying abroad in Cannes, where I became very close with the director of our program. Last January, she emailed our group to see if anybody would be interested in spending the 2010-2011 school year in Marseille as an au pair for her friend’s sister’s friend…and eight months later, I stepped off the plane in Paris to take the train south to the city of resistance.

So that’s my answer: that’s how I got here, living the most beautiful dream of my life with a wonderful family who makes me feel so at home, a club ice hockey team that has welcomed me from the very first practice, a volunteer organization that is eager for my help as well as my opinion, and a community that has accepted me as a person and not a stereotype. I am unsuccessfully searching for the words to describe how my life has been changed by my experiences in Marseille, so ‘until I find a way, I will say the only words I know that you’ll understand’: it’s a miracle.