Janice Macdonald grew up on England’s south coast, fascinated by the foreign country just a few dozen miles away. Even when she made a life for herself in the US, it continued to cast its spell
As a child, growing up on the Kent coast, Janice Macdonald had a fascination with France that seemed “almost mystical”, she says, with a laugh. She had never been there, but it loomed large in her imagination. Supposedly, you could see Calais from Ramsgate on a clear day, but she never did. “It was right across the English Channel; I was always aware of France.” It took decades to achieve her dream of living there, but she finally did it at the age of 68.
Macdonald had been living in the US since she was 17, having emigrated with her mother. She spent most of her life in California, where she raised two children (she is soon to be a great-grandmother). She lived in Washington state in her early 60s, then went back to California for a couple of years to care for her mother. A few months after her 100th birthday, her mother died and “it seemed like now or never” to move to France.
Tell us: has your life taken a new direction after the age of 60?
