The French house by the woods - Ludivine Massin

The three of us are sitting by the window, leaning on the round coffee table where my German passport is lying along with the notary contract. This is my favorite corner of the house. My grandmother would spend most of her time with her crossword puzzle book in the big emerald green armchair, raising her eyes occasionally to get a glimpse of what was happening in our tiny French village. Nothing was ever really happening, at least not in my lifetime. The most vivid memory I have of this window isn’t one, or rather it isn’t mine, but I heard the story so many times that it belongs to me too. When she was around five, German soldiers arrived in my grandmother’s village after Germany invaded France during World War II. They occupied every single house and integrated all the inhabitants’ families like exchange students with rifles. The day when they marched into our street, her dad was standing at that same window. “They’re here,” he noted, matter-of-factly. As they couldn’t decipher any sign of panic or fear inside her father’s voice, neither my grandmother nor her younger brother got scared. A few German soldiers lived with them for a couple of years. They were young and as uncomfortable as everyone else. She never mentioned anything bad that would have happened during that time, but my grandmother would never mention that anything bad would ever happen to her. Everything happens for a reason is what she’d say whenever anything happened, and in the twenty-seven years I’ve known her, I never heard her complain once. 
 
The notary is a middle-aged black woman who was gracious enough to stop by the house on her way to her summer break. She reads out loud the contract that will give me ownership of the house. Neither my mother nor I listen, we’ve both read it before. Daydreaming pulls me back in time, not only to those years of wars I’ve heard so much about but to my own childhood. Pets, heartbreaks, teenage journals, board games afternoons, long family meals, fights, stories by the fire. I can see my mother is also someplace else, in a time where her mother is still there to tell her everything happens for a reason. The contract will not impact us much in reality - it’s mostly tax-related paperwork and my parents will still take care of the house since I can’t make the journey from Germany too often - but sitting between those thick stone walls, we realize how temporary we are. They are just stones, but they’ve been standing strong long before we were born and will still be there when my mother, I or even my daughters will be gone. They are just stones, but they’ve seen wars and storms and soldiers and grief and I’m sitting here claiming their ownership like it matters. The notary is still reading, her words echoing against the light grey walls. My mother’s sadness is so heavy that it’s filling the room; it always has since my grandmother passed. I wish I could find the words to make it lighter but I never know what to say when people are hurting, it’s a skill I’ve never learned in a family where everything always has to be fine. 
 
The wind bends the massive fir trees surrounding the house, and leaves bang against the window as if they are trying to come in. The sky darkened and the rain grew so loud that it’s drowning the notary’s voice. I think about my daughters and all the memories they won’t make here. It’s simply too long a trip for a house at the edge of a wood. There are enough houses and enough woods edges where they are from. They might develop an interest in their French story as they grow up, but today they’re German and I have no strength to push something that I’ve tried so hard to run away from. When I moved to Berlin ten years ago, my grandfather who was suffering from dementia at the time - he passed shortly after - asked me why I would move to such a dangerous place. Germany never changed in my dying French village. What would my grandparents think today, hearing my daughters’ soft voices forming only German words? Would they be offended that I always select German as my nationality when prompted on forms and other questionnaires? Would they think me ungrateful when I answer “God no” when asked if I’ll ever move back? Germany is a harsh and difficult place sometimes, but behind the apparent lack of warmth, there’s the yoga teacher who hugs me when I cry, the stranger who makes me laugh with his dry humor, the mom friend who answers texts in the middle of the night, the doctors who saved my daughter, the therapist who saved me, and everyone who’s helped me pull myself back together. It doesn’t feel like home sometimes, when I don’t understand words coming out of my own children’s mouth, when I don’t know the songs they’re singing or the stories they’re referring to. It’s been depriving me from the natural authority that comes with knowledge, for I learn more from my kids than they’re learning from me. But it’s humbling, growing together with them, discovering life in German guided by their tiny hands. 
 
I wish I could have left more behind, but I moved with baggage and kept adding to it because I only knew how to thrive in chaos. If only I had healed when I stepped out of this house, leaving the hurt inside those timeless stones. I would shield my daughters from the darkness I’m carrying if I could just leave it lying there in the ceiling of this old, creaking house. The notary isn’t reading anymore and we’re signing the pages without a word. Silence has filled the house again and only the wind is screaming its way into the woods outside. A German is claiming the house again today, more than eighty years after German soldiers marched into a little girl’s life, but it doesn’t matter too much, for soon enough someone else will claim those walls.