I: The first day

This root beer float represents a great moment in time. I will tell you why. But first…

Looking back on a hard experience always feels strange. Were you imagining the difficulty? Was it all a matter of context? Which feelings were really there and which are you imposing from your current vantage point? Reflecting on the thing while it's ongoing is even trickier. I feel like some of my experiences will take years to really understand…and by then I might have forgotten all the details about them! It's the tension I've been aware of since I was a teenager. Live life or think about it? 

We stumble along doing both, of course. But I give that preface partly as explanation, partly apology—because it's always hard to know which parts of life to share. Not even with the world at large, but with my own children and my future self—the people I try to write this blog for. Do I tell them only the best parts and risk "whitewashing" a complex reality? Do I tell them the hard parts and risk mistaking motes for beams? Do I wait to write until my perspective is more full and less susceptible to hasty error? I want the pillars of faith and testimony I feel to be the pillars those future others see in me. But I don't want to do it at the cost of them seeing the struggle and sacrifice jumbled into the mix.

Read this, then, Future Self, with a dash of generosity toward your past-self sister, who was weak and changeable and too often affected by silly things. Remember she had never lived any of this before—whereas YOU, O Future one, have lived all of it—and learned the lessons from it besides. We can hope so, at least!

I was the moving force behind this Sabbatical trip, you know. I had to be. Sam did the initial paperwork, of course, and listened patiently to each new iteration of my ideas and plans during the months before we left, but I did the research, I sought the vision, I chose the place. Even when the time drew near, Sam was buried neck-deep in freelance work and trying to tie up all the loose ends at BYU before leaving, and there were so many decisions I just had to use my best judgement on and then pray I hadn't overlooked something. It was exciting because I had a lot of freedom to choose what I wanted. It was overwhelming because I felt the weight of the whole family's comfort and happiness for the foreseeable future on my shoulders.

At the end of our wonderful church history trip and visit to Maine, I felt that weight start to descend like a mountain on top of me. I was "excited and nervous" as I told everyone before we left—but to be honest, the nervousness was edging closer and closer to pure terror. I'm the one in our family who knows French best, but I'm not good at French. We knew no one in Quebec. The Branch President hadn't responded to my three emails. We didn't even have a place to park the van, for crying out loud! On and off for weeks prior to the trip and then relentlessly on the day we left Maine, there was a voice in my head saying "You have made a terrible mistake. You can't do this. You will let down everyone who is counting on you. Who did you think you were?"

The border crossing itself was unexpectedly easy. We hadn't forgotten any passports or birth certificates (a great fear of mine). Ziggy made friends with the French border guard—an enormous black man with a beautiful African-French accent—by telling him charmingly, "You're like a policeman, and I love policemen. I want to be one when I grow up." And then Clementine piped up, unprompted, "I want to be one too!" We couldn't have planned it better. The man beamed at Ziggy, learned everyone's names, wished us bonne chance in Quebec, shook all the kids' hands, told them there would be a job waiting for them at the border when they were of age, and sent us off with a friendly wave. We drove away smiling.

Quebec was beautiful and green right away. We were thwarted temporarily by this miles-long train carrying windmill parts (kind of interesting to watch at first, but annoying after twenty minutes of waiting) but then we were on a peaceful quiet highway with unbroken fields and farms all around. It didn't really look like Maine at all, surprisingly. Maybe it was just in my head, but it felt different and "foreign" almost immediately—the signs, the traffic lights, the way the little towns were laid out. Everything felt new.

We stopped for gas and I managed to say a few self-conscious French words to the clerk there. We marveled at the cute little village church nearby, then drove on through countryside toward Quebec City.

We drove by a lot of rivers, and the kids kept asking "Is this the Saint Lawrence?" Finally we came to this bridge and could say "Yes!" The roads had gotten suddenly busy and full of construction and we were having to follow sudden turns on the GPS instead of long highway stretches. Sam was asking me what the  signs said and I was frantically trying to translate them and make sure he didn't miss his exits.

Finally we pulled up on our street. Daisy and I had "walked" it many times in Google Street View and we knew when we were getting close. We pulled up to the house (there was a parking spot right in front, which was a blessing but also gave us a false idea of how easy it would be to park later…) and amidst much disappointment and impatience from the kids, everyone stayed in the car while I went to check out the house alone. I wanted to see where everything was and make decisions on bedroom assignments, etc. without the kids feeling like they got to weigh in and have opinions about everything!

The house was familiar in a dreamlike way. I had seen pictures, of course, but had constructed imaginary context around them that didn't resemble the real place at all. Walking in was strange right away, because there were two front doors and then a little antechamber and a dark narrow stairway before I was even in the house. It smelled like stale smoke and the whole time I was praying, "please let it be okay. Please let me like it. How I respond is how everyone else will respond!"

It was quiet in the house, and hot—so hot. The air was close and unmoving, in spite of a fan turning wanly from side to side in the kitchen. I kept forgetting where I had already been, turning corners and opening doors in that clumsy way you do when you don't really know where you're going.

The kitchen looked good, big and full of light, but I turned the corner by the pantry and saw the fridge and my heart sank. THIS tiny thing? Maybe it was somehow bigger than it looked? I pressed on.

Up another set of stairs. So steep, almost like climbing a ladder! The air got hotter.

Okay, okay, looking good. Bedrooms.

They weren't big, but they were cute. Nice big windows! I was trying to allocate the spaces, picture who would fit where, all the time my heart pounding like I was about to give a speech or run a race! There were unexpected lofts in two of the bedrooms (actual ladders to get to these) which I poked my head into but couldn't bear the heat for long. Were they extra, or had these been counted in the bedrooms on the house's website? They certainly weren't inhabitable at the moment…but once we got the air conditioning on…

I kept exploring.

I recognized this room as my favorite from the pictures. The vaulted ceiling, that charming brick wall—

and another wall full of bookshelves. I loved it. It made more sense for Sam's and my room than any of the others, because it had a little extra space he could work in if he needed to, and a dresser for our clothes. But there were two beds and Sam and I only needed one, which meant we might need to put four kids there instead. I decided to put our suitcase in the room anyway and hope for the best.

And there was a little balcony…

I stepped outside. My clothes were sticking to me and even the sweltering, humid heat of the outside air felt marginally better than being inside. I took a deep breath as I looked out over the city. It reminded me of London. "I will grow to love this view," I said out loud, half to myself, half in prayer. And I went down to tell the rest of the family to come in.

The next few hours were a blur of unpacking the car, carrying things up and downstairs, opening windows, taking stock of what was in the house. Only two rooms had closets, but there were no hangers. There were a couple dressers. I gave the kids room assignments, praying they'd be happy with them, and they immediately started scavenging things from around the house to put in their rooms—desks, chairs, plants. I fiddled with the thermostats, without success, until I was almost in tears. Sam came to look at them. "There is no air conditioning in here. Only heat." He was angry, indignant. "What kind of person doesn't disclose that their house has no AC? Don't they think people might need to know that?" Malachi was looking tight-lipped and sweaty. The little kids were running around, already rosy with the heat. I had a nagging memory of saying to myself, "The hot weather in Quebec will only last a few weeks, after all."

"I think he did disclose it," I said, heart sinking again. "Most places here don't have AC. I thought it would be okay." No one said anything.

We were all drenched in sweat by this time. I kept opening windows—no easy task, actually, as they were all double windows with strange opening mechanisms. They were all shuttered, for one thing, with an interesting folding action to the shutters, and a little recessed compartment next to the window into which the folded shutter could be tucked. Some had a long unlocking rod that slid up and down as you turned a knob, and others had to be unlatched and wrenched open. Most were double-hung and swung inward, with a little square opening pane in each layer that could theoretically let in air without opening the whole of both windows. In practice, these panes were just offset enough that you had to open the first one and wiggle it around a little to allow the second one to swing through. Some of the outer windows were held on with screws or pivots and apparently nothing else, so we had to give dire warnings to all the kids that no one should try to open a window without an adult present.

While Sam toiled up and down the stairs grimly unloading the car, I wandered through the house trying to make lists of what we would need right away. Laundry detergent. Hangers or hooks for clothes. An outlet splitter. And people kept coming in and telling me more things. "There aren't enough chairs by the table." "The fan upstairs barely works." "The closet has no hanging rod in it." "There's no soap in the bathroom."

Especially fans, we would have to have more fans. I knew there was a Costco and a Walmart fifteen minutes' drive from the house, and the parking on the street outside was only allowed for an hour, so we left the big kids unpacking and the little kids happily exploring and went to try and find our way out of the tiny one-way streets of our neighborhood.

The Costco parking lot was completely packed and we could barely navigate the van through the hoards of people, who all seemed to be looking at us with annoyance. I was terrified someone would say something to me and I wouldn't understand. I grabbed groceries hurriedly, trying to predict what I'd need, frantically attempting to make mental meal plans for the next few days without buying a bunch of stuff that wouldn't fit in the fridge. How much WOULD fit in the fridge? I had no idea. Oh, and the milk was in bags. ?!?! I knew this phenomenon existed but had hoped to never experience it for myself. How many "bags" of milk is a gallon? You buy them as three bags-within-a-bag, each holding some baffling amount in litres. 

The whole store looked the same, and yet somehow not at all the same, as the one at home. There was an enormous wine section, a disorienting number of cheeses, and two full display cases of what appeared to be liver paté. People seemed to be going every wrong way possible—or were we the ones going the wrong way? I felt like everyone was glaring at me. I murmured excusez-moi in a constant undertone, trying to blend in, wishing I could stop Sam from speaking in English and giving us away.

There were inexplicably long lines for the check-out counters, as if it were almost closing time on a Saturday that was also the last shopping day before Christmas. When we got the front of the line I deployed my careful French greetings, counting on the familiarity of the interaction (say hi, show my card, say no to ice and stamps) to carry me through my complete inability to comprehend the actual words being spoken. I tapped my debit card and the cashier furrowed his brow. "Non, non, seulement débit." I smiled encouragingly at him and waved my card. "Oui, débit!" I'd used this card at Costco a million times. I tried it in the machine again, and again. It kept beeping that awful impatient beep of disapproval. The cashier, giving up on me, called over a manager who spoke to me in English as if I were a four-year-old. "We-do-not-take-Visa. See? No Visa." She pointed at the machine. "Mastercard only." The line behind us was shifting its collective feet, sighing, checking watches.

In despair I pulled out my Apple Card, which I knew wouldn't work because it's a credit card. I tried it once and then again. The machine gave a grudging blink. "Transaction approuvée." I tried not to cry with relief as we thanked the cashiers (in English—I had shamefacedly abandoned my French) and left.

Van full (but hopefully not too full!) of groceries, we stopped at Walmart where Sam immediately bought their entire stock of fans. It still wasn't enough for one in every room, but we thought we'd try them out and see which worked best before looking for more fans at another store. I tried not to think about how much everything was costing. We drove back to the house, trying along the way to figure out how to turn right without crossing the bus lane (impossible), what a blinking green light meant (prioritized left turn, like an arrow—discovered with some hasty googling), and which parking garages might be within walking distance and also tall enough to fit our van (none of them).

When we came home, kids were leaning out the windows watching for us, eager to show us what they'd done while we were gone. The good parking spot was gone, of course, but emboldened by some other cars we'd seen, we turned on our emergency lights and parked right in the street so we could unload all our stuff. Then Sam went sadly off to find parking and I went in to unload groceries and attempt to ooh and ahh at the kids' little efforts to make this place home.

They had done a good job, really. Daisy and Malachi had both found schoolwork desks for their rooms. Daisy had her and Clementine's clothes hanging neatly on a rack.

Goldie had hers and Gus's stuffed animals already out and snuggled on the bed.

Junie had claimed one of the little sleeping lofts and had already made it so cute, with a little table and a lamp and a mat and an artificial plant. I was afraid she would die of the heat, but she claimed to not mind it, so I gave her a fan and hoped it would cool off by evening.

I hadn't known what to expect of the little shared backyard, but I went down with the little boys down to explore it anyway. It seemed like a fun, jungle-y place to play, and no one came out to accost us for being there at the wrong time or something, so I was cautiously optimistic about it. Ziggy really is so much happier when he has space to go outside, so I was hoping none of the neighbors would already have the whole thing staked out as their own territory.

After we opened the fans and got them all set up, we found that some barely moved the air at all, so we boxed them up and I rehearsed my French "return item to store" script all the way back to another Walmart. This time the familiar script carried me through—do you have the receipt, is there anything wrong with it, do you want that back on the card—but there were no more fans in the store, so we wound our way back through the tiny streets again; unloaded again; Sam went off to find parking again. I was so hot and discouraged and tired, but it was getting late and everyone was sitting wanly in front of the whatever fan was closest, working on more unpacking and getting settled, and everyone seemed to expect that dinner would be forthcoming as always. So I made salad and a very strange improvised dressing, and put a Costco pot pie in the oven, and set our new plastic Walmart picnicware plates out on the little dining table (the house did have dishes, but they were all ceramic and I wasn't sure if I could deal with any breakage at the moment), and repeated over and over in my head, "Your attitude will set the tone, your attitude will set the tone." 

I could hardly talk during dinner for fear I would start crying and never stop, but somehow we cleaned up and got kids in pajamas and dear Daisy read them stories in her bed.

And then everyone, including Sam who had done SO much driving and then lifting and climbing stairs and moving boxes, fell into an exhausted sleep.

Everyone except me. I went out onto the balcony and cried until my throat was raw and my chest and stomach ached and my face was stiff with salt. And when I couldn't cry anymore, I sat and looked out at the unfamiliar city lights, all faint and blurry with the humidity, and listened to the strange police sirens, and prayed, "What are we doing here? Why are we here? Why am I here?"

And then I went in and lay awake in the darkness on the hot, uncomfortable bed with my thoughts going around and around until I finally fell asleep.

The End

Only not the real end at all, of course! And I haven't forgotten about that root beer float! But this post has taken up too much time, so I'm sorry, but you will have to wait for Part II. (Please don't skip Part II!)