8 July 2020 – 22 July 2020

It is now 2 weeks since we pulled into our driveway for the first time in 12 months. 2 weeks of being ‘back to normal’ – whatever that means. Things are never the same after you ‘step out’ for a year, and things are certainly not ‘normal’ since we’ve come home. 

In the first instance, Australia’s high standing position as the COVID conqueror is wavering. We are counting our lucky stars that we returned when we did. Over the last 2 weeks, the Australian ‘welcome home’ now includes paying for quarantine – if you’re lucky enough to be able to get a ticket at all (inbound numbers have been restricted to around 750 per city per week, excluding Melbourne which has shut its airports) to help manage the quarantine system. You now pretty much require a business class ticket to get in the country… and then you can’t cross over borders once you arrive!

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For us, we are now adjusting to being at school, to being back at work whilst being at home. 

We have gone from long, warm provencale summer days to the cooler, darker Sydney winter.

From our adopted French family and friends to our Australian family and friends.

From being an expat, struggling joyfully through communicating in a language that isn’t our own, to being on a linguistically level playing field with everyone else. 

From flip flops to ugg boots (or even suits, on very rare occasions) and school polos for school uniforms. 

From wandering downstairs to the wonderful Aix markets, Hats boulangerie and Boucherie la Palais to driving to Harris Farm markets and Top Ryde (ouch). Food shopping is back to being a chore. 

From wonderful dinners, parties, lunches and apéros to wonderful dinners, parties, playdates and BBQs (we are spoilt on that front!) 

From weekends of ‘just us’ when we could choose to travel, to party or to chill to the relentless schedule of organised sport and activities (which we secretly love)

From tossing up between whether to go on that 3 hour bike ride or just settle in for a long lunch, to which Microsoft Teams call to join in our immediately frantic packed schedules. 

From spending hours analysing our travel plans and budgets to video calls, spreadsheets and shopping lists. 

From packing and unpacking to… well seemingly endless unpacking. 

These are all big adjustments, and it will take us time to adjust and adapt. 

Our period of time in the Wood between the Worlds has made that both easier and harder. Easier because it has made our whole French experience feel like a dream. Harder, because it has made our whole French experience feel like a dream.

It almost feels like something we read in a book, saw in a film, or heard in a story someone was telling. Well told and vivid, but still just a story. Something that happened to someone else. 

Our family and friends on this side of the Woods have been wonderful. We have been spoiled with BBQs, dinners and other random catch ups. It has been great to reconnect and start to integrate back into life over here. 

Weekly french classes continue unabated, with Nathalie beaming into our house each week. Her presence in our house (albeit digitally) feels odd and strangely out of place in this world. It takes my mind a minute to process both her presence and her language before it navigates to that part of my brain where it all makes sense. I can tell from the girls’ faces (and the degree of ‘motivation’ required to get them started on their French homework!) that they feel it too. Our brains are incredibly effective at compartmentalising. 

The kids are back at school. They are adjusting, finding their way through rediscovering friends, working out which are still friends, and who are not. There is excitement, periods of silence and occasional bouts of tears. This is expected but still hard to watch. 

Jessie is particularly impacted by this, missing the wonderful friends she made in France and seeking to fill a big, 4 girl hole in her heart. Regular video calls both help and make the problem worse. 

Ellie seems quicker to adapt and has jumped back into sport, activities and life with both feet, but her silence in quiet moments suggest that she too is busy processing. Anthony’s phone beeps constantly with messages from her friends (currently enjoying summer holidays) on WhatsApp.  

Sienna seems less impacted. Her life is still with us. She has her Mummy, her Jessie, and it’s sometimes nice to have the rest of us around too. She is excited to be going to big school with her sisters and life seems good. So long as Jessie is there to entertain her 24×7. 

For us, the ‘experienced ones’ it is about finding a routine. Life here has not exactly stopped still whilst we have been gone. On one hand, it is strange to just ‘slot in’ to our lives back here again as if we never left. Same jobs. Same house. Same school. Same cars. The ‘sameness’ can be disorienting and a little scary at times. A seemingly backward step. 

But there are changes too. 

We are back at work and adapting to working from home, finding new routines, working how to co-exist side by side in our new, enforced home office. Some days it gets to 2.30pm and we still haven’t showered or managed to move from our hastily erected desks scattered around the house, let alone carved out time for exercise. But at least we’re not heading to the airport for the 6am flight to Melbourne. We are yet to find our routine that will let us balance work, family and ourselves in this new world. That too will come with time. 

The kids, gaining a first time view of what it’s like when we are ‘at work’, are unimpressed by the amount of time we spend on calls and are less than understanding when we are not around to do their beck and call. Effectively, we are going through the same transition that the rest of the world did in April when they were asked to work from home for the first time. 

It doesn’t yet feel like we are back to ‘normal life’. We are still in transition, still feeling our way. We are working out how we want to live our lives here, what we want to be different from before and what we want to pick up again. We want to take the time to enjoy catching up with our friends and appreciate the goodness that Sydney and Australia have to offer. 

Our plans to rebuild our house have been put on hold as we take some time to work out what we want. The girls want to move back to France. Tomorrow. Or today if possible. This is expected – change is hard for kids (on the other hand, they are showing us yet again just how resilient they are). We want the freedom to have more experiences with the girls and as a family, whatever and wherever that may be. For now though, we want to keep things simple, give ourselves the time to readapt to life and reassess our priorities in a few months time. 

This year has taught us that the world is a pretty big place, replete with deserts, snow covered forests, azure blue seas, towering mountains, rolling hills blooming with wildflowers and incredible cities. We have taken a crash course in history from cro magnon man, through biblical times, Rome, the Moors, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, WWII and communism to the Great Pandemic of 2020. We have learned about languages, how to learn them and how to communicate without them. We have learned new skills. We have made friends from around the world. We have created memories. And we have done it together.

One thing is for certain. Our family ‘horizons’ have officially been broadened. Jessie, with an uncanny ability to express the facts of life with 8 year old simplicity, expressed it best: from ‘I don’t think I can be away for more than 3 weeks’ (November 2018) to ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to live in just one place anymore’ (June 2020). 

For us, this sums it up.