In the first few days of living in our stone farmhouse in Normandy, I got up in the night to go to the bathroom and I hit my head so hard on the door frame between the sections of our house that it nearly knocked me out. Gabriel was behind me, as we’d descended from our “west wing” mezzanine bedroom together, bound to the only light we had at the time: my cell phone. That was before we had located essential things like hidden flashlights in the (borderline hoarder) cupboards that we’d inherited with the house.

The house’s main section was built in the 1700’s but the western side was built about a century later, and seemingly by hobbits, because my Gandalf forehead hit the doorframe so hard I was like one of the county fair Whack-a-Moles in an instant, hammered down to the floor in a squat position, silenced by the pain.

Gab nearly tripped over me and then, bless his heart, said nothing and just rubbed my back. His own (taller Gandalf) forehead had already hit this doorframe more than once during the daylight hours followed by a showering of many a Quebecois swear word. A sensation of bruised empathy seeped from the flat warmth of his palm circling my shoulder blades.

Two days in and I was exhausted, the floor I was squatting on was filthy and my shoes were only half on my feet as we had stupidly “slow shipped” the slippers and the cargo boxes weren’t to arrive for weeks yet. We were also freezing and damp from a welcome first week filled with rain, rain and more rain. We could only get one wood stove in the kitchen to work properly.

I had mostly breathed through the shock of the impact, but the sound of more rain outside in the black countryside night made me want to start loud, ugly sobbing right then and there into my crunched up double-layer of pajama knees. I managed not to, though, got back up, whispered hoarsely that I would be fine and from then on, I have pretty much approached that doorway like it’s designed for a bunch of kindergarten kids, ducking ridiculously low to pass through that it’ll probably make me into a hunchback in a few decades.

The floor has been cleaned now too. All the floors have been scrubbed with brushes on our hands and knees. The heating situation is being sorted out ~ fixed one other wood stove and we just got our hands on enough wood to last the winter. We’ve even scouted another wood stove second-hand for the west wing of the house (where we sleep) and it will be installed this week ~ Hurray!

I like to say “wing” even though this is a modest farmhouse. It makes me feel like we’ve got a castle here.

Our castle.

Maybe I also like the idea of living in a wing because it conjurs up living “under someone’s wing.” There are times in one’s life when we all need a parent and this is one of those times I wish that my dad were still alive and could be here, directing traffic, remarking on the wonders of history in the stones and ceiling beams, and reminding me that we’ve got this. I’ve thought of him so much since arriving.

We have also purged the contents left behind by the previous owners but kept the things we need, cleaning every surface and separating the worthy items from the ones better suited for the second hand store (and really, who needs 100 plates?). The process was ruthless but I kept reminding myself that we were lucky to get a fully furnished and equipped home ~ the cost of things like chairs and tables, forks and spoons, beds and sheets (I found a cupboard full of neatly folded, freshly washed ones) would have been extreme. They even left the washing machine, the lawn mower, the vacuum, the fridge and the freezer ~ so far all in working order. And yes, we found some flashlights. Two weeks later, we had also installed fancy motion-detector nightlights.

But to say that coming here and starting again has been a dreamy transition would be a social-media-friendly lie. It took three weeks to get internet installed and it cost a total of about 1300CAD after all was said and done ~ for installation through ancient stone walls and the set up of the satellite kit and all the necessary gear. That doesn’t include the monthly bills, of course.

Then there’s the two weeks it took to get the bank to open accounts for us, since we have a profile that makes their computer system nearly explode with our Canadian passports alongside visas procured in Beijing. Apparently, Canada is a “code green” country while China is a “code orange” according to the security network of the French banking system. She kept saying that their system didn’t know what to do with information from “both colour codes” on the same profile. After two hours of this, the whole thing felt so ludicrous to me that I had to swallow down a giggle fit. These are actually my two favourite colours, not to mention the fact that Halloween had just passed, a festival featuring said colours, not that I could point those things out to the woman at the bank as positive signs for our legitimacy. She just kept her lips pursed in a thin, straight line and stared harder at the computer that was rejecting our info, as if this would make it cooperate. I guess we can’t disguise international fiscal relations in a colourful Halloween costume!

Nor should we omit the confusions we encountered with SIM cards and hidden costs compared to“bundles,” the recycling and waste management program (it’s extensive!) or the school transport system, all three of which were nearly impossible to register for without internet access. But again, we figured it out.

The ladies at the free WiFi spots in the nearest towns (library, tourist center, even the MacDonald’s) began to recognize our family with nods and polite knowing ~ the kind where they look up and recognize you but then look away politely, as though pretending you haven’t become a feature in their days, the four of us traipsing in with phones outstretched in our hands, intent on getting tiny screens to work.

Especially us! Our presence often included a loud mixture of English and Mandarin with video calls to worried family members in Canada and China, which warranted a “shush” or two in the library.

Oh, and I did I mention that there’s no almost no cell signal at the house… like at all? Maybe if we stood on the roof…

Then we added a string of gigs to the mix with four shows that I had pre-scheduled, two in France and two in Switzerland, and only then did I finally think we had truly bitten off more than anyone with any jaw strength could possibly chew. I couldn’t even think about them until they were almost upon us.

A few days after we arrived, Gab’s uncle Dan announced that he was coming from Quebec to help us “s’installer” (get settled). I was so moved by this news that in a rare, quiet moment alone, I put my head on the kitchen table and cried silently into my elbow for about two minutes. A father figure was coming! He would stay with the kids during our Swiss shows so they wouldn’t have to miss school to come with us. He would help us resolve many house problems. He was bringing with him decades of renovation experience.

Cue the choir of angels!

Nevertheless, I ordered the train tickets for the shows too late and paid way too much for them. We hadn’t even opened the guitar cases until two days before the first gig, each of us marking a record two weeks between playing an instrument after so many years of gigging two to three times weekly. Our fingers and nails had been banged up and sliced by all the physical labour we’d been doing. I wondered if I would even remember how to sing.

But I did. The gig in Rennes was like a homecoming, to the bar we’d finished our May tour in, and the bar in which we’d truly decided to make this move, to Normandy, to our hobbit castle, to this new adventure. The songs lifted us up out of the chaos and we returned back to the house after the first of four shows, exhausted but reassured. It was going to be okay, I could say to myself. We were going to find a path here. Music will always lead us. It always has.

The following week, as we sat waiting for a bus in Switzerland, I suddenly felt a longing for the orphanage kids in Beijing for whom I’d given volunteer music classes to on a weekly basis for the past year. I was siting beside Gabriel on a bus stop bench in the crisp autumn sunshine. Our guitars and suitcases and pedal board were splayed out around us throwing awkward shadows onto the sunny sidewalk. The air smelled like the cow pastures we’d left behind in France, which made us both smile. But maybe this is what made me think of Xuan Xuan ~ the sunny smiling, I mean.

Xuan Xuan, a little hyperactive kid at the orphanage around 9 years old with learning disabilities that have affected his speech, was the most rhythmically gifted of them all. He would hoot pleasure with every musical exercise, sometimes jumping up and dancing when the spirit took him over, his face lit up with the pure joy of music like sunshine dripping honey into my heart.

After and before class, he liked to spring up into my arms and then wrap his limbs around me, sloth-like, clinging on for cuddles so tightly that sometimes the other teachers had to peel him off of me limb-by-limb. He loved to be touched. And oh, to be hugged that way…

I missed Xuan Xuan so much in that moment that I almost cried right there on that pristine Swiss bus bench beside Gabriel. The feeling was so acute that I said the fact of it out loud:

“I miss the kids at the orphanage.”

As the words left my mouth, a large bird of prey suddenly took flight off a hidden rooftop in the distance and I watched its blackness move against the blue sky with perfect grace. Gab took a moment to respond, saying I would find other kids who needed music in France and he’s right, I know, but they won’t be Xuan Xuan, who might not even remember me next year if I go back to Beijing to visit. And I guess, the truth is, it’s hitting me that I’m not on tour right now and heading back to China in a week or so; no, I’m just one country over. I’m living in Europe now. France!

Musically, we’ve been told that this market will wrap us up, and I hope they mean it in the same way that Xuan Xuan did it, because I don’t want to hit my head against the wall, or the doorframe, of this decision. It’s too major. The stakes are too high. I want this to work, tightly and securely and safely. The kids are re-enrolled in school and happily making new friends. We’ve taken this leap. There’s no going back.

The weather has cleared up now and uncle Dan is here for a few more days to help us tackle a few more problems before he heads back to Canada. It seems to be coming together.

And, the true breathless gift came the night after we’d come back from Switzerland. I looked up as the dog leaped around in the grasses for her nightly pee. I was nearly knocked over the sheer quantity of winking stars, the sky just teeming with them.

And there it was: my dad, and Xuan Xuan and every wing I’ve ever wanted to be hugged under, and every wish I ever made for our future, like a hobbit mission involving a million rings, just hanging there in a sea of brilliance. This Normandy night sky laughed down at me, saying:

“Welcome home.”