Catching Up With the Valos

It has been just past a year since Finnish rocker and front man of HIM Ville Valo married and settled down in the town of Sipoo, Finland with his family. You guys asked what the rocker was up to now that he’s a family man and we delivered…

I arrive at the Valo household prepared to meet the ever private Ville Valo at his new place of residence in Sipoo, Finland, as he’s graciously allowed us a look into his and his family’s new home. The first thing I notice is a bright pink bicycle with multi-colored streamers coming out from the handle bars lying in front of a large black iron gate that surrounds the even larger house.

It’s not the pink bike that throws me off; it’s the pitch black basket that hangs in front of it with the different pins scattered on it. Band pins like KISS and The Ramones- there’s even one with a Heartagram, as well as another with the very familiar tattered ankh that belongs to The 69 Eyes.

I take a look around, and notice the large iron Heartagram that is on the center of the gate, and then the intercom that sits on the stone pillars that frame either side of it. I push the button only for it to buzz back seconds later, and a soft feminine voice comes out of the speaker.

“You’re here for the interview?”

“I am,” I respond.

“No offense, but do you mind if I see some credentials before I open the gate? I’ve been tricked before.”

I pull out my magazine credentials, and she tells me to point it at the camera that’s mounted right above me. I do it, and apparently she approves, since a few seconds later the gates start prying open.

“Come on in,” she says kindly over the intercom. I walk up the driveway, the gate closing behind me. I notice that lawn spreads from the front of the house to the back. On either side of the driveway, tulips line both sides, and the upkeep of the place is immaculate. I make it up to the double front doors, surprised to see that the front doors are a frosty window pane framed by wood. I would think the Valo family-who tend to crave privacy- would have a full on door and not a see-through one.

I don’t knock; the door opens slowly, showing a young woman on the other side. I recognize her instantly from the pictures I’ve seen, as Ville’s wife, Soya.

“Hi,” she says, greeting me with a kind smile, motioning me inside. “I’m Soya, Ville’s wife,” she says, closing the door behind me and shaking my hand. “Unfortunately, Ville isn’t here right now; he’s running a bit late, but he’s on his way. I’m making myself some tea if you want some.”

I agree and follow her through the house. My face must have shown shock at the sheer size of the entry way as she looked back at me with a large smile. “I swear it’s not as large as it looks,” she assures me as she leads the way into the kitchen.

“Have a seat at the counter,” she says, pointing to the breakfast counter in the middle of the kitchen as she fiddles with the kettle that’s whistling on the stove burner.

I can honestly say it is the most lived in kitchen I have ever stepped foot in. The kitchen counter holds a blue Macbook, along with note books and folders that cover its surrounding surface. Right next to the work space is a spilled box of Cheerios. In front of that box is a high chair that is attached to the counter with crushed cereal bits, an empty baby food container and a spoon. There are dirty dishes in the sink- pots and pans mostly; allowing me to deduct that the Valo family had eggs, bagels, muffins and orange juice for breakfast.

The refrigerator proudly displays colorful magnets, school drawings, and high scored tests; mixed in are family pictures and multi-colored post-it notes with reminders of doctors appointments and meetings. Behind me is a large bay window with a boothed-in table, the surface scattered with art supplies and different colored glitter that also reaches down to the floor, where crayons, markers, scissors and glue are also laying.

Soya turns and offers me a cup, and I happily accept it. “I haven’t been feeling well,” she admits as she hands me the warm mug and stands on the other side of the counter, cupping her own. “I was getting ready to go curl up in the living room and watch a bit of television when you buzzed. I’m also sorry about the mess; it’s Ville’s turn to clean, and he’s holding off to see if I cave and do it myself. We’ve had a glitter-stained floor for about a week now.”

She grins in amusement as she says it, and it’s painfully obvious as to why Ville fell in love with his wife, if a person were to go by looks alone. She’s pale in complexion, her dark brown hair is pulled into a messy bun, and her grey eyes scan the kitchen eyeing each piece of the mess, filling with annoyance and amusement. She’s dressed casually- a blue light weight long sleeve shirt and a pair of tattered black jeans. Her feet are bare, but her toe nails are painted black, as are her fingernails. Soya Valo is a very beautiful woman and she’s also nervous.

Her fingers are tapping against her mug, her wedding ring clinking with each tap. She’s avoiding my eyes as she returns her gaze out the bay window. When I point this out, she laughs.

“I am nervous, I absolutely hate interviews! I always fear I’m going to say the wrong thing. It’s what’s nice about being a dancer; you only promote the ballet, and for the most part my dance partner did the talking. I just sat there and nodded in agreement.”

I assure her that I’m not there to intimidate or make her nervous, literally just there to observe the Valo’s in their day-to-day life, as the fans were interested in what Ville did with his days now that he was married and had a child. I also point out that according to Ville she was the one that encouraged the interview.

“I did.” She laughs, taking a sip of her tea. “He came to me the night you e-mailed him, and told me ‘Soya, people want to know what I do day-to- day.’ He seemed so confused by it; truthfully I was too and asked ‘why,’ as he’s a very boring person day-to-day.” She laughs teasingly. “We talked about it, and I told him that I didn’t mind if you came and watched, but I’m still always surprised that Ville’s fans take such an interest in his day to day life.”

“What made you agree to let me come?” I ask.

“Ultimately when it comes to this type of stuff, I leave it up to Ville to decide. He doesn’t mind people taking pictures of him, and I don’t mind pictures getting taken of me or even when we’re together; but when it comes to my little sister and our son, Ville tends to be a bit more protective. So when it comes to this, Ville decided. I didn’t mind it either way; it’s his fans who are interested.” She laughs with a shrug. “And if he wants to share this part of his life with them, then all right.”

“You recently just moved didn’t you?”

“We did, about two months ago. You’ll notice if Ville takes you around the house that we’re remodeling; I inherited the house after my father passed and we emptied it out. I was contemplating selling for the longest time as I really did love living in the tower, but after I got pregnant, selling the house got pushed onto the backburner. After Poe was born, the tower got too crowded and we were thinking of moving to a place in Helsinki. Then Ville pointed out that I just had this house sitting here, so we moved in, but we’re remodeling parts of it to accommodate us a bit better.”

“A lot of fans feel like you made Ville move from his tower.” I ask lightly, not wanting to sound as if I were accusing Soya for the move.

Soya laughed. “If anything Ville forced us to move; Aida, my sister, was in Ville’s makeshift studio, and was using that as her room, and Poe slept in the room with us. It got very crowded fast.” She shrugged. “I didn’t make Ville do anything; he still has the tower and he goes there when he needs to be alone and work.” She runs a hand through her short hair, loosening the bun that’s in place, and pushes back her bangs.

“When you date, get engaged, or marry any type of person who has a following, you get scrutinized. People forget that we also have our own lives, our own careers. I’ve had HIM fans come up to me and ask me what the guys are up to. Trust me when I say I’m just as much in the dark as they are; just because I married him doesn’t mean I get the inside scoop!” she laughs. “Ville’s very private when it comes to his music; he only shares it with his band mates, and I respect that.”

“How do you deal with your relationship being under a microscope?”

Soya shrugs. “The nice thing about living up here is that most of the speculations and rumors don’t reach us. I don’t live my life waiting to hear what people think of our relationship. I know what people assume and it doesn’t bother me.”

“And what do you think people assume?”

Soya runs a hand through her hair before taking a sip of her tea. “Ville and I weren’t together very long before we got married, and if those very smart fans did the math, they would know that I was very much pregnant when Ville and I got married. They assume I’ve trapped him into a marriage he didn’t want. That I’m with him for the perks of his career, for his success, and as long as he know that’s not true, then I’m fine with them assuming what they want. His career, his success, my pregnancy- none of those was even on the list of reasons as to why I married him.”

Just as I’m about to ask what was on that list, we hear a door slam causing us to look towards the kitchen entryway, where a little girl comes storming in, dropping a gym bag as she goes straight for Soya.

“Ville’s being a butt!” she says, hugging Soya’s waist and burying her face in Soya’s stomach.

Soya snorts and rubs the girls back, looking at the door and grinning when Ville comes in, holding their wide awake nine month old son.

“I wasn’t done talking to you Aida,” he says as he kicks the gym bag that’s lying in the middle of the kitchen floor to the side so he doesn’t trip on it.

“I don’t care.”

“What happened?” Soya laughs, leaning down to kiss the top of the little girls head.

“Aida decided that it was a wise choice to say a bad word during her ballet lesson after she fell. She also got in trouble for leaving her bike outside the gate; Nathan nearly ran it over when we were coming up the drive.” Ville says with a wry grin as he adjusts his son in his arms, who is obviously squirming to get to his mother.

Soya shakes her head and kisses the top of her sister’s head. “Come on Aida, grab your bag and come to my room. I have to change Poe, anyway.”

“Can I change Poe?” Aida asks as Soya leaves her mug on the counter and walks towards her husband, taking her squirming son.

“Sure.” She laughs, kissing Ville’s cheek. “Water’s warm if you want tea,” she says gently before ushering her sister out of the kitchen, leaving me alone with Ville.

“It’s complete mayhem in this house,” he says with a grin as he scrounges through the cupboards for a mug. “Did you find the house all right?”

I tell him I did, and that it was hard to miss with the large Heartagram on the gate. He laughs as he makes his tea. “Bam [Margera] gave that to us as a wedding present. It used to be on the wall of the tower, but when we moved into the house I had it put onto the gate. Soya hates it; she thinks it’s a bright neon sign for HIM fans. Which it sort of is, but they tend to respect the gate. When we were at the tower, nothing stopped them from coming up to the door.”

“Is that why you moved?” I ask.

“I haven’t moved out of the tower, all my shit is still there,” Ville says as he leans against the counter. “I just spend my day-to-day life here with my family, and work at my tower when I need my solitude, but it’s part of why we moved here, yes. But we’ll get to all that later.” Ville grins. “I’ll show you the house first, and then you can ask all the questions you want.”

He gestures me to follow him. I look down at my empty mug only for him to wave his hand at it. “Leave it, I’ll get it when I get around to cleaning the kitchen; I’ve been putting it off for a week now.” He drinks the rest his tea and then balances the empty mug precariously on top of a plate in the sink.

“It’s been like a game of Jenga in the sink between Aida and myself,” Ville smirks. “And we’re trying to see how far the glitter on the floor can spread before it annoys Soya, though I’m pretty sure she’s at her breaking point; she didn’t even bother to eat breakfast in here with us today.” Ville laughs as he makes sure the mug is balanced and not going to fall before turning back to me. “She took one step inside, looked in and turned right back around.”

He motions me to follow and I do. We leave the kitchen through another doorway that leads to what I assume is the dining room, though nearly every inch of the wall is covered by unpacked boxes and a table that is covered by a white protective tarp with even more boxes on the surface. While looking at the boxes it’s clear that two people marked them; one boxed filled with kitchen pots and utensils is marked ‘Shit for the Kitchen,’ while another, filled with bed sheets and pillows, is simply marked ‘Aida/Bedroom’.

“Soya got a kick out of my labels,” Ville says with a laugh. “We’re still deciding what we want to do with this room, we doubt we’ll ever eat here except for special occasions, and it seems like such a waste for the room. So we’re brainstorming things to do to make this room a bit more…every-day, I guess.” Ville shrugs as if he really doesn’t care what happens.

“A lot of the house is still a work in progress,” he says. “So for now we’ve just been using this room for boxes we have yet to unpack. When we moved, we sorted through most of our furniture and for the most part bought new stuff, but a lot of what we have in here use to be in Soya’s flat in Helsinki, like the table,” he points out, running his fingers over the tarp.

“We’re really not a formal family so we don’t really have a need for a formal dining room. We usually have breakfast in the kitchen, or if we’re rushed, in the car. We usually fend for ourselves for lunch since we’re out doing different things, and dinner is either in the kitchen or upstairs in the play room, since it mixes in with getting Poe down to sleep and Aida finishing up her homework.” Ville laughs. “Even with our friends and family, it’s rarely formal; so far we’ve all crammed inside of the kitchen to eat, or we eat out here in the living room.”

He leads me out of the ‘dining room’ through a door that leads into the living room. It’s definitely inviting, but unfinished. A black L-couch sits in front of a fireplace, a flat screen TV mounted above it. The room’s walls are bright white and unblemished, as no pictures hang on the wall, but filled frames are leaning up against various points of the wall waiting to be put up.

“We’re waiting to paint in here,” Ville says starting towards the French doors, pausing in front of them as he looks around the room. “There’s been talk of taking out the doors from the dining room into here and making the entrance wider, that way it’s much more like one open room. We also want to do that with the dining room and the kitchen, just get rid of the doors all together. So before we paint we want to decide if we’re going to remodel in here or not.”

“For the most part our plan for this room is to have pictures, we just haven’t decided if we wanted to do art or family pictures. We both have ideas, so it’s just the matter of sitting down and actually deciding what to do. I keep telling Soya I could give a shit what’s on the walls, but she really wants us to do it together.” Ville rolls his eyes in amusement. “She insists that this is our home now, which means, I have to have an active voice in the decorating.”

“Was the tower not home?” I asked him.

Ville nods as if expecting the question. “For both of us, it was, for a time. When I was single and just focusing on my work, it was very much home. When Soya and I were dating, it was home, even when we took care of her sister for a while. But once we got married and had Poe, even a bit before that, it didn’t quite have that feeling anymore. Even though both our names are on our bank statements, and my name is on Soya’s properties, just as her name is on the tower, it’s still thought of as my tower or her flat.”

“But this is her family home isn’t it?” I ask with a frown, remembering Soya having said she’d inherited the house.

“True.” Ville nods. “But we’re doing so much remodeling to the house it doesn’t even look like the house she grew up in. We emptied it out, then when we decided to move in, we spent four months remodeling, and we’re still not quite done. It’s much more ours, since we’ve spent the better part of six months hunched over the layout of this house trying to figure out ways to fix it up so it better fits us as a family.

“It’s why this -even though it’s Soya’s family house- feels very much like home, because Soya and I, and even Aida, have taken the steps to making this home.”

Ville stops and rolls his eyes as something slams against the glass door behind him. “Damn dog,” he mutters, looking behind him. I look as well and see a small white dog (though there was a patch of black fur around one of the dog’s ears, as well as around its tail) looking up at Ville with large eyes, its tongue out, panting.

“We’ve got pets too,” Ville says gesturing me closer as he opens the door, gently shooing the dog away with his foot as we walk out to the backyard.

“This was one of the first things we wanted to fix when we first walked through the empty house,” Ville says, walking further into the large yard. The dog follows and paws at the back of Ville’s Converse, causing him to bend down and scoop the dog up and tuck him under his arm.

“The yard use to be small, but there was so much empty land behind us and to the sides, so we bought it and fenced it in so we could let the dogs run around without worrying about them running away.”

He gave a whistle, and it seems out of nowhere another small white dog comes running. The dog in Ville’s arm squirms and jumps out of his arms, tumbling onto the grass to meet the other. And that’s not even the most amusing part; the most amusing part has got to be the small teacup pig that comes waddling up to the playing dogs.

“Yeah, we got a pig,” Ville says, though he doesn’t seem to be amused by this. “Her name is ‘Pig’ and she belongs to Aida; an early birthday present from HP, of the Dudesons. Soya’s good friends with him. HP assures us she’s a teacup pig, but I have my suspicions she’s going to grow and weigh 70 kilos, and Aida’s going to be too damn attached for us to do anything about it.” He gives a shake of his head before gesturing to the dogs.

“The dog that’s all white, her name is Austen. I gave her to Soya for our first Christmas together. The other is Huey-well, Hubert- but we call him Huey and he belongs to Aida. Soya and I got him for her that same Christmas…well, Santa did anyway.” He grins at the dogs before crouching down to rub the small pigs head.

Grass covers the entire back of the property. There’s a swing set with a slide set up a few feet away. Outdoor toys, such as trucks and wagons are littering the ground. The bike that was sitting out front the gate is now lying on the grass next to three dog bowls that are set next to the French door.

“Do you have any plans for constructing out here?” I ask, wondering if the Valo’s remodeling project extended to their landscaping.

“Lots,” Ville laughs. “You’ll have to come back next year when we’re finally done to see the finished product. We want to get a porch out here, most likely get it to wrap around to the front of the house. Or at least to the kitchen, as Soya and I both like having breakfast outside when the weather permits. We want to get a sauna out here as well, and Soya wants to take up gardening. I’m expecting to learn a lot more about decorative landscaping in the coming months, as Soya is really excited about that.”

It all seems so…normal, I think, as I stare at Ville, who’s crouching down again this time rubbing Huey behind his ears. Austen nips at his hand, obviously wanting the same attention. No more staying up past dawn and sleeping till dusk for Ville Valo. It doesn’t even seem like Ville has a worry in the world out here; he doesn’t seem to be worrying about writers block or finding a place or time to practice with the band, or even the time to write in general.

“Diaper rash is such a bitch,” he laughs as I ask what he worries about now days. He opens the French doors, letting the dogs and pig run into the house. We walk back inside and Ville leads me out of the living room and back into the foyer.

“No, I don’t worry about band things here at home. I make it a point to give all of my attention to my family while I’m here, especially now that we’re starting to talk about a possible tour; I want all of my attention at home while I’m here.” Ville grins as he picks Pig up while the dogs rush up the dark wood staircase.

“That’s not to say I still don’t sleep with a notebook within reach, or fiddle with instruments when I have down time here at home,” he adds. “Let me run Pig upstairs with the girls and I’ll show you the rest of the house.”

I nod and watch as Ville takes the steps two at a time with the pig tucked under his arm. It looks like the foyer just got redone as I take a better look around; there are still small pieces of blue tape on the wall and stairs. By the door there’s an entry way table, and two back packs- one black and one pink- sit underneath it, along with a diaper bag. The surface of the table is filled with pictures of the couple, along with the kids. I pick one up and look at the image.

It was taken at Disneyland; at the center of the picture is Winnie the Pooh, to the left is a smiling Ville, his arms loosely wrapped around his grinning nine year old sister-in-law, while in the right reveals a smiling Soya and her laughing son.

“That was taken a couple of months ago, Valentine’s Day actually. Soya’s former dance partner was doing his last performance in L.A.” Ville explains. “He took us to Disneyland; it was Aida and Poe’s first time.”

I put the picture back as Ville leads me down the hall. “This is one of Soya’s favorite rooms,” Ville says, opening the door. “It’s one of the reasons why we moved in here instead of finding a new place. We really don’t plan on changing it other than sorting through our books and putting them on the shelves.”

The room is a library of sorts. While the walls are made up of built-in bookshelves that are obviously slowly-but-surely being filled in, the center of the room holds a dark wooded desk, and a large window lies behind it. Of all the rooms I’ve seen so far, this one seems to be the most formal.

“Soya’s father used this as his office, from what Soya’s told me, so it was one room she doesn’t want to change too much. We’re putting a lot of the books we don’t read frequently and more…valuable ones in here. We keep our favorites in our room or in the upstairs game room.”

Books are scattered in piles all over the room, and I wonder out loud what they’re doing with the piles.

“Some are doubles of books that Soya and I both have so we’re donating one and keeping the other. Some are books that we’ve never read nor do we plan to; some are moving to our room, while others are staying here. It’s been a slow process, but we’re not in much of a rush to get everything unpacked. We’ve unpacked the important rooms, so rooms like this are going to be a work in progress for a while.”

It certainly seems to be that way, I think, as he leads me out of the room and towards the other side of the foyer.

“Our bedroom was the first thing we remodeled,” Ville says as we walk down a short hall way. Ville stops in front of the door. “It’s a mess!” he warns with a grin, “Soya and I are both shit when it comes to cleaning the bedroom, but she likes keeping shared areas like the kitchen or living room clean; our bedroom tends to go to shit,” he laughs as he opens the door.

It is a mess, not horrible, but still considered a mess. Clothes are in small piles around the room, and the bed is unmade; a burgundy-colored comforter lies on the floor at the foot of the bed while blankets and dark purple sheets are a tangled mass at the center of the bed. There’s a black dresser to my left, its top scattered with rings and necklaces along with guitar picks and unused baby bottle nipples.

Further into the room I notice that there’s a doorway that one would think leads into a walk-in closet. Instead, it’s a nursery.

“The rest of the rooms are upstairs,” Ville explains as he sits at the foot of the bed, pulling the comforter off the floor and throwing it onto the mattress behind him. “Poe’s a good sleeper, but he doesn’t sleep all the way through the night quite yet. We didn’t want to keep going up the stairs when he cried, so we got rid of the walk-in closet that was in here, extended it a bit, and made it into Poe’s nursery.”

“Who painted the walls?” I ask as I look at the design that makes up the entirety of their room.

“Funny story actually,” Ville laughs looking around the room. “We didn’t want to paint the walls one solid color but we wanted the room to be our own; something that we could look at and be happy with. We really didn’t talk about what we wanted on the walls. We came in one day to see how the new stairs looked, as well as to check in to see the progress of the nursery. There was a tarp, separating the room in half.”

“A tarp?”

Ville nods with a grin. “Just a tarp, strung up separating the room in two, Soya and I…we can work a paintbrush when we want, so she said that we each had our side to paint, whatever we wanted on it, and that we couldn’t bitch about the side that wasn’t ours. Soya could have been painting daisies and roses on her side, and I wouldn’t be able to say anything because those were the rules.”

“How long did you guys paint for?”

“About a week,” Ville says looking at the walls with a grin. “We would come in go to our sides and just start painting. If we were feeling quiet, we’d put in our own iPods and earphones and work silently. If we were in a more talkative mood, we’d set up our portable dock and just listen to music in the background while we talked. After about a week, we both decided we were done and pulled down the tarp. Imagine our surprise when we saw what we’d done.”

I can definitely see where they would be shocked over what the other had done. Both sides are waves of swirls curling into each other like branches from a tree having just shed the last of their leaves. Soya’s lines are burgundy in color. They are also thinner and much more feminine, whereas Ville’s are black in color, thicker and more masculine in the way the lines are painted. The lines start from the edges of the door, making their way out until they seem to meet in the center of the back wall right above the head board in a splash of color.

“The back wall we worked on together, there was about five inches of space that we left free because of the tarp, but when we saw that we’d pretty much down the same thing, we merged the two and then added our own touches to each other’s wall.”

I nod as I see the bits of burgundy that outline Ville’s design, while black outlines Soya. It mesh’s perfectly, even with the mismatching lines. It works. I look back at the merging swirls above the headboard, and see two black gothic style frames hanging from the wall. One holds the portrait of Edgar Allen Poe; the other is a portrait of his wife, Virginia Clemm.

“Engagement presents, from Bam and Kat Von D,” Ville explains. “Soya and I…we’re somewhat of a set. I have Poe’s eyes on my back, she has Virginia’s. Kat and Bam thought it was fitting to get us the portraits on the night that Soya got her eyes done.”

“It fits,” I say, causing Ville to nod.

“It does. Anyway, our room is one of the few that’s completely unpacked, along with Poe’s nursery.” Ville gets off the bed and leads me through the doorway into the light blue nursery that’s considerably more organized than the bedroom.

“It’s simple,” Ville says. He gestures to the black crib, with blue and brown bedding that has guitars and drums on the pattern, along with the matching mobile that hangs from the edge of the crib. There’s a black changing table against the wall. A black raven made up of the word ‘Nevermore’ is painted on the wall right about the changing table, making it look like the large black bird is actually perched on top of the table.

There’s a large wet bag for diapers hanging from the edge of the changing table with an owl print on it. A grey federal style rocking chair with a used bottle sits on the ground next to it. A bookcase takes up a good portion of the back wall filled with books. Above the bookcase around the top edge of the wall is the quote “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn the more places you’ll go” – Dr. Seuss. I walk over to the bookshelf and scan the titles.

“We dug out Aida’s old Moomin books,” Ville grins. “She actually wanted to give them to Poe as a welcome home present, so she dug them out of the attic of the tower where we had stored them. The rest of the shelves are filled with books that Poe’s godfather sent us- Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, Roald Dahl…we keep some of our Edgar Allen Poe collection in here, too.”

“Isn’t’ he a bit young for Dahl, Silverstein or Poe?”

Ville shrugs as he perches himself on the rocker, “He is, but we started reading Poe to him while he was still in the womb. We’d read in one of the books that babies while in the womb start recognizing voices and playing the baby music seems to stimulate it, so we’d recorded some of our more favorite poems and stories and put them on our iPods, and then put the earphones on Soya’s belly. Aida even recorded her reading some of her favorite Moomin stories and her favorite books. At night we’d play him a story and during the day we’d play him music. It’s how he got the nickname ‘Poe.’” Ville laughs

“Our friends found out what we were playing on the earphones and said that with the amount of Poe we play, he’d end up reciting it the minute he was born. We got tired of calling him ‘it’ as we didn’t know the sex then, so we started calling him ‘baby Poe’, and it stuck.”

“So that’s not his legal name?” I ask.

“No,” Ville laughs. “Though he may grow up thinking it is, as we very rarely call him by his legal name. Poe’s name is Nikolaos Kari Valo; ‘Poe’ is strictly a family and friend name.”

“You named him after your father?”

“Soya’s idea actually. My father was honored.” Ville grins. “Nikolaos means ‘Victor of the people,’ no other special meaning other then we liked the name. We were actually settling for Poe when Soya changed her mind last minute and pulled out the baby name books.”

“Is the nursery done or…”

“Yeah, it’s finished,” Ville nods. “We wanted something a bit simpler for the nursery since all Poe does in here is sleep, and we change and feed him here. We have a portable crib that we keep upstairs along with his toys. We only use this room for his naps so that nothing going on around the house bothers him or when it’s time for bed. What’s great is that our crib actually turns into a toddler bed when he’s grows out of the crib, and also into a full-sized bed when he’s ready for it.”

“So if this is the nursery, where’s the closet?”

Ville laughs and gets off his perch, towards where the crib is. That’s when I notice the Winnie the Pooh cartoon hanging over Poe’s crib. Or well, Winnie the Poe. It’s a cartoon of a Winnie the Pooh parody of The Tell-Tale Heart; Pooh is dressed up as Edgar Allen Poe, while Piglet is asking if Pooh/Poe has seen Eeyore. Behind Pooh/Poe are the words ‘thumpa, thumpa, thumpa’ and Eeyore’s tail is nailed to the wall.

“A bit morbid,” Ville laughs. “But it was a baby shower present from Linde and Mige. Soya and I loved it so much that we had to hang it up here.”

It doesn’t seem morbid at all, actually. It seems to fit the family dynamic pretty damn well. I follow Ville through the door that I failed to notice is a couple of feet away from the crib.

“This entire room was actually a bathroom and a walk-in closet. But there’s a bathroom right down the hall that we made ours, so we turned the bathroom into a smaller walk-in closet, and the walk-in closet into the nursery. It’s a good size,” Ville says as he flips on the light and leans against the wall as I peek in. “I mean it holds all of Soya’s shoes, and that in-and-of-itself is a miracle.”

I laugh as there are about a hundred pairs of shoes, all sitting on shoe racks along the bottom base boards of the closet; heels, boots, Converse, Vans, TOMS, snow shoes, flats, sandals… designer and non-designer, all sitting there in different colors and shapes.

“Soya has a thing for shoes,” Ville says with a grin, “and I really can’t be upset about it, as she finds a way to wear them all…and I really love her shoes.”

Other than the shoes being separated- Soya’s on the left side of the closet and Ville’s on the right- there is no rhyme of reason to the closet. Soya’s dresses and sweaters are mixed in with Ville’s band shirts. The only thing that stands out is one section of the closet closest to the door is dedicated to baby onesies and baby outfits.

“I found it pointless to separate our clothes when for one, my wife has about ten times more clothes then I do, and for two, she ends up stealing my shit anyway.”

“You share clothes?” I ask with a laugh.

“We do! Well, Soya steals my shirts…when she’s annoyed at me, she finds a way to shrink down my favorites so they don’t fit me anymore, and they turn into her shirts. As for jeans, she’s shorter than me, but the waist and length of our legs are the same. She’s just a bit shorter in the torso, so we get away with wearing each other’s jeans, which as you saw were all scattered on the floor of our room. Her jeans tend to be just a bit tighter though.” He laughs. “It takes me a minute to figure out why the hell my jeans are tighter in the crotch area, and then I figure out it’s because I’m wearing Soya’s jeans.”

I laugh as Ville leads me out of the closet and back out of the bedroom.

“There’s one more room down here, but I’ll show you that a bit later. Let’s head upstairs and you can see where we spend more of our time.”

I follow Ville as he starts explaining why the family spends most of the time upstairs. “Really, when we lived in the tower, we spent most of our time in the living room when we weren’t working. Aida would do her homework, while Soya and I either worked or watched TV. When we moved in here, we didn’t want to stop that family time we had, so we have a game room that we tend to spend most of our time in when we’re all here together.”

He leads me past two doors that are on the left side of the landing, towards the right and down the hall where I can hear a little girl laugh and the low sounds of a television. The door is half way closed, but he pushes it open prompting Soya, who is sitting on a dark brown L-shaped entertainment couch, to turn and smile at us.

“There you guys are! Aida and I were just talking about her birthday party.”

“Can I really invite my entire class!?” Aida asks, obviously excited about the prospect.

“If you want.” Ville chuckles, and heads for the small kitchenette area to the right of the room. It’s equipped with a well-stocked mini-fridge; Ville grabs a Coke for himself and his sister-in-law, and a Ginger Ale for Soya. I decline when he gestures if I want anything. The small kitchenette also has a small sink, and microwave.

“We mostly keep popcorn, sodas and Aida’s juice boxes up here.” Ville explains showing me the inside of the cabinets. They’re nearly bare, but one of them holds snacks- a box of microwave popcorn, a bag of chips and a few bags of cookies. Obviously the makings of a movie night. “Paper plates and plastic forks are here as well, as we tend to forget when we bring up dishes.”

We sit on the couch, and I look around from my spot, definitely seeing why they call this the ‘game room.’ There’s a pool table in one corner; pool cues lean against the wall while the balls are scattered on the green felt surface. I find out later that it actually doubles as an air hockey table and they store that part in the closet in the back of the room. There are toys scattered all around the room- from stuffed animals and teething rings, to Barbie and her coordinating Dream House and Dream Car.

In the corner of the room is a round dog house with a sliding door, both dogs are curled inside sleeping while Pig is sleeping in Aida’s lap on the floor.

There’s a 60 inch flat screen TV mounted to the wall, currently showing cartoons. A Blu-ray player is sitting on a low, black entertainment center, where movie cases are scattered on the surface. There’s a new XBOX 360 sitting on one of the shelves, and next to it is an old school Nintendo 64 with the controllers out on the ground-obviously recently played with. A portable play pen is set up on the side of the couch closest to Ville and Soya, with Poe sitting inside quietly staring up at the screen.

“He likes the colors,” Soya laughs, seeing me stare at her son. “We rarely use the TV as a babysitter, but when we do, he tends to sit there and just stare at the colors quiet as can be. It’s why we leave it on cartoons; colors tend to be more vivid.”

“He likes Danny Phantom.” Aida grins. “And Moomin.”

“You like Moomin,” Soya says with a laugh.

“Poe likes it too!” Aida argues.

Soya rolls her eyes good-naturedly, but nods. “He does like Moomin. Now, what kind of cake do you want at your party?! You have to decide so I can put the order in.”

The game room is very obviously lived in, and the thing that strikes me the most is the white walls that have been written on. It’s not just covered in childish writing or drawings, but by the looks of the different colored writing that’s all over the walls, Ville and Soya have written on the surface as well.

“White board paint,” Ville grins. “Paper is so over-rated, and knowing how Soya and I are- always writing on something, we know Poe will grow to go through a phase of writing on walls. We want to encourage that…just on the right walls.” He laughs.

“One of my best friends and Poe’s godfather actually suggested it,” Soya adds in. “He has an office in the dance studio he works in, and because he always needs a bigger surface to write on, he repainted his walls with the white board paint. He loves it and suggested it to us. Aida loves it; she’s always scribbling on the walls. I figure Poe will enjoy it when he grows a bit older.”

“It’s an awesome idea,” I say, looking at the walls.

Ville nods with a smile, looking around the walls, before looking down at his fussing son. He reaches into the play pen, pulling Poe out and settling him on his lap. Poe seems content in his father’s lap, but the boy’s eyes are still on the colors of the TV.

“So you said the fans wanted to know what I did with my day-to-day?” Ville says, causing me to nod.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I can tell you that today was uneventful.” Ville laughs. “It was my turn to take Aida to her classes. She had piano with Burton today and ballet at Soya’s studio. I took Poe over to my parents so he could spend time with them before coming back here.”

“If I weren’t here, what would you do?” I ask.

“Um…this,” Ville says. “Aida’s birthday party is in a couple of weeks, so we’ve been planning it.”

“Ville says I can invite my entire class!” Aida explains excitedly. “Which is awesome, because he didn’t like it when my friends came over when we were in the tower.”

“It wasn’t that I didn’t like it,” Ville quickly amends. “But can you imagine! It’s crowded with the four of us- add in six screaming nine year-olds running all over the place…”

“Ville would hide and leave me to deal with them,” Soya teases.

“I wouldn’t hide,” Ville mutters.

“You hid!” Aida giggles, before turning back to me. “But now that we’re here, we have a lot more space, so I can invite my whole class.”

“Aida, sweetheart, did you teacher send you the class roster?” Soya asks.

Aida nods. “I’ll go get it, it’s in my backpack.” She runs out of the room, causing Soya to smile after her.

“My parents weren’t big on birthdays,” Soya explains. “It was just another day, so Aida and I grew up not really having birthday parties.”

“That, and Christmas tends to over-shadow Soya’s birthday,” Ville adds, causing Soya to roll her eyes.

“That it does. I’m a Christmas baby so people tend to forget it’s my birthday, but Aida- her’s lands in April, and this is really the first party she’s ever really gotten. I’m trying to get her to think big, but she’s just so excited about having more than a couple of friends over that it’s all she’s focusing on.”

“There’s been talk of a petting zoo,” Ville groans.

“Ville worries about his allergies,” Soya says, “But I think he’s just using it as an excuse to hide from all the kids that will be here that day.”

“There’s also been talk of a giant slumber party,” Ville adds.

“Ville is not partial to this idea.” Soya laughs and pats her husband’s leg. “He really doesn’t like being responsible for kids that aren’t his.”

I’m about to ask a question when Aida runs back into the room, holding a piece of paper and handing it to Soya. “Those are all the kids in my class.”

At that point the small family starts talking about the party, asking Aida what colors she wants in streamers that they plan to hang around the house. They ask her who else outside of her class she wants to invite, and what type of entertainment she wants.

It surprises me how humble the nine year old is; the only people she wants to come outside of local family and friends (which include Ville’s band mates and their families, The 69 Eyes and their families, and The Dudesons and their families) is her uncle Josef -who apparently lives in New York-, and her Aunt Rosalind, who lives in Spain. Soya assures her sister that they’ve already booked their flights to come to her party, as they wouldn’t miss her turning ten.

Aida says she doesn’t want streamers and she doesn’t care about the cake or the food, but Soya and Ville pull it out of her with a lot of teasing. She admits she wants chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, and pink streamers, but not light pink; she wants bright pink. “Like on the cover of the CD that Ville’s on….you know! The one where he’s wearing make-up!” is what she says when they ask her what shade of pink, Ville laughs loudly while Soya slips onto the floor to hug her sister. “Hot pink it is,” she assures.

As for the entertainment, Aida says she doesn’t want any. She shrugs at the suggestion of the petting zoo, much to Ville’s relief, and says ‘maybe’ to the giant sleepover. Ville points out that she has to have some type of game or activity or else her guests would just be sitting in the living room watching movies the entire time. He points out that their yard is large enough for all her guests plus some, so if she wants the petting zoo they can get her the petting zoo.

It’s amazing not to see the nine year old jump at the chance of a petting zoo, or call out ideas for what type of fun thing she’d want at her party. Instead she shrugs and says “Can’t Uncle HP do something?”

Soya and Ville look at each other, and Soya seems to hesitate before nodding slowly. “I can call him and see if he and the guys can put together a kid-friendly show. I’m sure he’d love to do that for you.”

Even as Ville and Soya try to spoil the young girl, it’s obvious that she’s not quite use to the aspect, and is unsure whether or not she can ask for the things she wants. They finally settle on asking HP and the rest of The Dudesons if they’d be able to pull off a kid-friendly show, getting a bounce house and the petting zoo stays a ‘maybe.’

The conversation turns to presents, and what the nearly ten year old wants for her birthday. Another dog gets called, out causing Ville to groan and cast a glance at the pig that is still sleeping on Aida’s lap, while Soya says that she and Ville will talk about it.

“With two dogs, a pig and a chinchilla, I don’t think I can handle another pet. It’s one of the reasons I moved out of my parents’ house at eighteen; all the pets they would take in was hell on my asthma. The dogs we have, for the most part are hypo-allergenic. They barely shed, so it works for both Aida and myself,” Ville explains. “But knowing Soya and myself, we’ll find ourselves at the pet store, swearing we’re only going to look and leaving with another damn dog.”

The rest of the early evening is spent in the game room. The family orders-in; apparently Saturdays and Sundays are the day they call for take-out. Tonight, it’s Chinese. Aida spends it working on the homework she has due on Monday, while Soya and Ville help her when needed, encouraging her to write out math problems that she’s having problems with on the wall so she can see the problem in a bigger space.

Poe gets fed homemade mashed carrots that he seems to be excited to be eating, causing Ville to chuckle. He doesn’t even get bothered when the orange substance ends up on his Led Zeppelin shirt. “He’s a weird one; he likes the vegetables over the fruits, gets excited every time he sees the carrots get mashed up or the peas.”

“Oh God he loves the peas,” Soya laughs. “Hates banana’s though.”

After the carrots, Soya feeds him a bottle, before burping him and handing the baby back to Ville. He sets his son on his chest, rubbing the child’s back, soothing him to sleep. Half-an-hour later, Aida is yawning, causing Soya to laugh and suggest bed time to the young girl.

“Can I show you my room before I go to sleep?” Aida asks me.

“Sure,” I say standing, ready to follow the young girl out.

“I’ll be down in the kitchen,” Ville says as he and Soya stand.

I nod and follow down the hall while Ville goes down the stairs. Soya is behind her sister, following her into her room.

“What classes do you have tomorrow Aida?” Soya asks.

“I have my acting class. Are you taking me?” Aida asks as she climbs up onto her bed.

“No, Ville will. I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, and your grandma Anita is going to pick you up. You’ll spend some time over there like you usually do on Sundays, okay?”

“All right,” Aida says, as Soya kisses the top of her sister’s head.

“Sleep well. Ville will be up a bit later to say good night, all right?”

“Okay,” Aida grins as Soya starts out the door, before pausing and smiling at me.

“You remember how to get to the kitchen right?”

“I do.” I laugh.

“All right, we’ll be down there when Aida’s done with you,” Soya laughs as she leaves the room.

The room definitely belongs to a little girl. It’s painted a pale pink with large prints of different locations- like Paris, New York and London-on the walls. There’s a large world map next to the full sized canopy bed. On the map are five pins. Looking closer there are pins in LA, New York, Barcelona, Spain, and Stockholm, Sweden.

“Ville let me paint my room any color I wanted, and he gave me this map,” she explains with a grin. “Because he says that when he starts traveling again and I’m not in school I get to go too so I get to put more pins.”

“Do you want to go to all these places?” I ask with a smile.

“Yeah!” Aida says. “The last place I went was L.A. with Soya, Ville and Poe, because my uncle Josef was dancing, but he took us to Disneyland.”

“I saw the pictures.” I nod.

Aida grinned as she took me around her room. She has a small princess TV set up in the corner of her room, with a Disney butterfly chair sitting in front of it. The TV isn’t hooked up to the cable, but Aida assures me that she’s allowed to watch one movie before going to bed; two on the weekends if she can stay up.

Built-in bookcases (filled with books) flank a bay window with a built-in bench where stuffed animals make their home. There’s a plastic table set up next to the window with a ceramic tea set sitting on top of it. It’s a set that while most children would be told is solely for decoration, it’s obvious that Ville and Soya don’t mind that Aida’s using and playing with it. The probably even encourage it, which is confirmed when Aida says the Ville is a frequent guest at her tea parties.

“How do you like living with your sister and brother in law?” I ask causing Aida to grin.

“It’s awesome! I love Soya, and Ville is really nice to me. He plays with me a lot. My friends told me that once the baby was born things would change, but they haven’t…and I like Poe. Soya and Ville let me feed him, and change him, and Ville still takes me out for our Saturday adventures, and Soya spends alone time with me on Sunday.”

I chat with Aida for another ten minutes. She talks about school and her friends, and her after school activities- which she assures me she’s chosen all by herself- before shooing me away so she can change into her pajamas and watch her movie before bed.

Laughing at the tenacious nine year old, I make my way back downstairs towards the kitchen, when I hear Ville and Soya talking. I’m about to walk through the door, when there’s a loud crash coming from behind the door, making me pause. I’m even more hesitant when I hear Ville groan, followed by Soya.

“That’s it! I’m done! You fucking win!”

“No! I obviously lost! I can’t believe I lost!”

“I am so sick of this stupid game! Dish Jenga, Ville?! Really! I’m so tired of replacing the fucking dishes every time you or Aida lose, just because both of you refuse to clean the god-damn kitchen! I’m done!”

“I can’t believe I lost! That cup should have fit! You saw it!”

“Ville are you even listening to me? I’m officially banning Dish Jenga from this house! Do you hear me! Done!”

“Oh come on it’s all in good fun.” Ville laughs.

“No! Not all in good fun! I’m tired of having to replace perfectly good, new dishes because you and Aida prefer to balance them in the damn sink! I cut the bottom of my foot last time…”

“I know, and I apologized!”

“…Because you forgot to clean up one of the plates that had broken!”

“Soya, I’ll clean it up.”

“No more Dish Jenga Ville, I’m serious. Find another way for you and Aida to get your kicks.”

“You know, we wouldn’t play if you just picked up the dishes.”

Obviously this is the wrong this to say as I hear a frustrated growl, and the slapping of hands against chest. “Me!? Me! I clean up the rest of the fucking house, Ville! You can at least help me clean up the kitchen! You’re the one the wanted to move to the larger space, so now you have to help me clean up the larger space!”

“Okay, okay,” Ville laughs. “I’ll clean up the kitchen.”

“Do I have to remind you every day to do it?”

“No, I’ll do it on my own.”

“That easy?”

Ville laughs. “I heard you use the word ‘fuck’ at least three times while you yelled at me. Once you say it more than once I know you’re serious.”

“I shouldn’t have to say ‘fuck’ to get my point across, Ville.”

“You’re so fun to rile up.”

“You’re a jackass.”

“No, but I’m friends with one,” Ville teases. The fight has obviously died down, but I knock on the kitchen door, just in case. Ville says come in, and I enter, seeing the broken plates on the floor and Ville hugging Soya to him in the middle of the disaster.

“I lost Dish Jenga.” Ville laughs and kisses the top of Soya’s head before leaving the shelter of her arms to go to the pantry on the other side of the room. He grabs a broom and dust pan. Soya carefully makes her way out of the mess and starts making room on the counter, gesturing me to sit.

“He was trying to put his glass on top of a tea cup.”

“I thought it would balance,” Ville mutters, sweeping up the floor. “But hey, less dishes to wash now.”

I admit that I overheard the argument, causing Soya to laugh. “Trust me, not one of our worst ones.”

“Not even close,” Ville chuckles, throwing away the first batch of swept up broken plates. “We’re not perfect.”

“Far from it,” Soya agrees, as she settles on the seat next to me. “We argue. I don’t think we’d work half as well if we didn’t.”

“We both have faults,” Ville says. “And because we acknowledge those faults instead of glossing over them, it makes us stronger. We don’t argue often, but when we do it’s more cathartic then it is damaging.”

“How so?” I ask.

“One of my faults is I tend to keep things to myself, especially things that bothers me,” Soya explains. “It’s a fault I’ve been working hard on.”

“And she’s a lot better than when we first got together,” Ville says, dumping the last batch of broken dishes into the bin.

“I am,” Soya nods. “But I still like to work out my issues by myself before I talk to Ville about it. So when it comes out in an argument, getting it out makes me feel better, even if it means yelling at him. But we get over our fights after about five minutes; they’re very rarely serious.”

“Can I ask when the last serious fight was?”

Ville chuckles. “Last week.”

“Seriously?” I ask with a laugh.

“It was my fault,” Ville admits with a wry grin as he leans on the other side of the counter. “When it comes to the weekdays, we don’t have a set schedule as to who takes the kids and who doesn’t. We usually sit down on Sundays nights and go over the days we both have meetings. I have rehearsals, Soya has dance classes she teaches, and we try to work out drop offs and exchanges.”

“We don’t like relying on his parents, though they’re more than happy to take Poe or Aida; or my childhood nanny, who was also Aida’s nanny before she started living with us. We try and work it out so that Aida and Poe is always with one of us.” Soya explains.

“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Its trial and error, but for the most part we each get a day to ourselves where we’re kid free. We either arrange it so we have a date, or arrange it so we get a day to ourselves.”

“Last week, we each got a day to ourselves. Ville’s day was first, so he left early morning and went to his tower,” Soya said, her voice holding the tiniest bit of annoyance, obviously still not over what happened. “When he goes to his tower to work, it’s normal for him to disappear for 24 hours.”

“I disappeared for 72,” Ville said with a sheepish grin. “I lost track of time; my phone had died and I don’t have a landline at the tower anymore, so Soya couldn’t get a hold of me.”

“I’m guessing you were angry,” I say to Soya.

“Livid.” Soya said with a shake of her head. “Worried out of my mind as well! Finally one of the guys went to check on him when I was getting ready to call the police.”

“I’ve been sleeping on the couch for the last week,” Ville admits. “I finally was able to get back into the bed last night.”

“Are you still upset about it Soya?” I ask.

“Annoyed,” Soya says with a small laugh. “But Ville tends to make up for his lapses in big ways. He’s stayed home all this week to help with Aida and Poe, organized a girl day for me and some of my friends so I could get out of the house, and he’s pushing rehearsals back tomorrow so I can make it to a doctor’s appointment.”

“Aida told me Sunday’s are usually the days you two hang out,” I say, causing Soya to nod.

“Amazingly, Aida was really excited when we told her she was going to be an aunt. She didn’t seem to have any jealously issues; that, I was afraid she’d have.”

“With Aida, it’s tricky,” Ville said slowly. “She went from getting little attention, to nearly all of our attention, then back to getting little. Then when she officially moved in with us, she got the attention again. We were afraid that with us shifting our focus to the baby, she’d feel forgotten.”

“So we decided early on that Aida would get Poe free days with us. She nearly idolizes Ville.”

“She’s an amazing kid,” Ville puts in.

“After my father passed away, I took her for a couple of months and she and Ville got to bond. So on Saturday’s, Ville takes her to her classes, and after her classes they go on what they call their ‘adventures.’”

“What do these adventures entail Ville?” I ask, causing the man to grin.

“We’ve been to the Zoo a few times; we’ll go to the museums and parks. She likes going to record stores, and learning about some of the bands I love.”

“Ville’s hoping he never hears the words, ‘I want to go see Justin Bieber live,’ leave my sister’s mouth,” Soya, teased causing Ville to laugh.

“I think I’m teaching her well.” Ville laughs.

“There’s a rumor going around, Ville, that you’ve actually adopted Aida.”

“Ah, not a rumor, it’s actually true.” Ville says with a nod. “We filed the paper work a couple of months ago.”

“You must really love her,” I say.

“I do.” Ville nodded.

“It’s not the main reason we filed though,” Soya admits, looking over at Ville who nods and starts to speak.

“Soya was about…seven months pregnant,” Ville says. “I had Aida for the day, as Soya had a meeting, so I took her to the park. She climbed a tree and fell out breaking her arm, so I took her to the hospital.”

“Because Ville wasn’t on the list for emergency contacts, they took my sister but wouldn’t let Ville in. I had to drive across town to talk to the doctors, assure them that Ville was in fact my husband and could go into Aida’s room. It was a mess.”

“It was a mess that I didn’t want to repeat,” Ville admits. “I talked to Soya about it a few days after the accident and brought up the idea.”

“I loved it!” Soya says with a smile. “It says a lot about Ville that he’s willing to adopt my sister when he doesn’t have to.”

Ville shrugs. “I love the kid; it seemed right. Anyway, I wanted to make sure that it would be all right with Aida if we filed the papers.”

“And what did she say?”

Soya laughs. “She asked if she could think about it, though I honestly thought she’d forgotten about it until she brought it up a few months ago.”

“She told me it was okay if I adopted her, but if I didn’t mind she wanted to keep her last name, at least for now, which I really don’t mind.”

I laugh. “You guys seem to have this parenting thing down.”

“Do we?” Soya asks. “I feel like we have no idea what we’re doing half the time.”

“We just know that ultimately we want Aida and Poe to grow up happy,” Ville says.

“I grew up in an environment where my career -as much as I loved it- was pushed on me,” Soya puts in. “The moment my parents saw that I was adequate at dance, that became what my life revolved around twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It’s tiring, and it doesn’t lead to a very happy or fulfilling life.”

“And you’re happy now?”

“Extremely,” Soya nods. “I own my studios; I’m working on creating my own dance company. I’m very happily married to an extremely handsome man who has given me an even better looking son. How could I not be happy?” Soya says, grinning over at Ville before looking back at me. “I want that for my sister and our son; for them to ultimately think back and know that we loved them, and that they grow up to be happy.”

“And you?” I ask turning to Ville. “You want the same?”

“I do.” Ville nods. “My parents supported me and my brother in everything we did and still do. I want to be the same. Aida right now, has decided she doesn’t want to go to college, she wants to pursue an acting career and we’re doing nothing to discourage her from doing that.”

“We can’t force her to go to college,” Soya says. “I didn’t actually go to a university, and really never wanted to. I went to Julliard during high school, and then a few years later went to night school and got my associates degree in business, just so I could get a bit of background before I started my studio.”

“I lasted a year-and-a-half in high school before quitting,” Ville says with a shrug. “I don’t want to force Aida, or even Poe, in the future to go to school when I didn’t go. If college or school, in general, isn’t in their plans, then we’re not going to force them.”

“And you’re on the same page?” I ask, knowing that Soya did graduate from high school, even if her husband didn’t.

“I know what it’s like to be forced into something. While I enjoyed dancing professionally, I don’t think I would have chosen to do it; at least not straight out of high school. So I’m very much on the same page when it comes to letting Aida and Poe choose what they want to do when it comes to school and careers.”

Both Soya and Ville turn when a soft cry comes out of the baby monitor that sits next to Soya’s elbow. I watch as Soya starts to get up, only for Ville to grab her arm before she gets completely off the chair.

“He’s fine, Soya.” Ville sighs.

“He’s crying, Ville.” Soya mocks.

“Barely a whimper, let it go. He’ll fall back asleep on his own; we have the music playing in the room.”

“But-”

Ville shakes his head. “He’s not even making a sound, he’s fine.” Ville turns to me with a smile. “We’re trying to wean Poe off of Soya.”

“He’s torturing me is what he’s doing,” Soya mutters.

Ville rolls his eyes. “We’ll show you the last room.”

We leave the kitchen. Soya holds onto the baby monitor as Ville explains why his wife can’t go to her son. “For one, Soya tends to go to him for every whimper he lets out. He’s at the point where he’ll go back to sleep himself; he’s not a fussy baby, so if you let him alone he’ll be fine. Secondly, he’s getting a bit too attached to Soya. Not that it’s a bad thing, but when we leave him at my parents or Soya leaves him in general, he cries for an hour before calming, so we’re not letting Soya go to him when he cries or whimpers. Either Aida or I will get him, and then once he’s calm, we’ll take him to Soya.”

“You know, I wouldn’t be so upset about it,” Soya slowly admits, “If it was just Ville or Aida going to him, but Ville’s got all our friends in on it, so when we’re over at their houses and Poe starts crying, all our friends will get up before I’m able to and go get him. It’s annoying.”

“It’s necessary!” Ville says with a roll of his eyes. “Night-time is the only time I let Soya get him, during the day, it’s off limits.”

“I’m not sure whether that’s genius or just plain evil,” I laugh.

Ville laughs as we come to the door next to what I remember is the door to the library. “It’s not like I’m keeping him from her. We just want to let him get use to other people caring for him.” I turn to Soya who’s rolling her eyes only to look down at the monitor. This time a full fledge cry comes out and Soya rushes away before Ville can stop her.

“It’s a work in progress,” Ville laughs before opening the door and flipping a light switch. revealing a set of wooden stairs. We start heading down. “When we moved in, I wanted Soya to have a place to go to work. She doesn’t like using her studios, as she leaves those for her students and teachers to use whenever they want,” Ville explains. Once we reach the bottom step, he moves away, running his hand along the wall, until he finds a switch and flips it. Half the room drowns in light.

“It’s not finished,” he says, causing me to laugh. It’s very obvious that it’s not; half the room is filled with florescent light while the other half -the half I’m standing in- remains dark, the flooring still in its grey concrete form. The half with the light however, has polished wood flooring; the far wall is filled with ceiling-to-floor mirrors. Two portable dancing exercise bars are sitting against the right wall.

“I have my place to escape when I need my solitude to work; Soya deserved her own,” Ville says. “She loved dancing professionally. Don’t let what she said upstairs fool you -she really did love it. But she fucked up her ankle a few years ago, and left the company she was with. It just so happened that her leaving just ended up working out with us getting married and starting a family,” He laughs before shaking his head.

“Now though, she has her studio in Helsinki and another in New York. She’s starting her company, and her best friend and old dance partner is coming up here in a month. He is going to be spending the next six months traveling between, here to help Soya build her company, the Czech Republic, to visit his family, and New York, to keep the last of his obligations with the company he’s still with.”

Ville turns to me with a grin. “I wanted a place where they could spend hours talking about the things they talk about. Soya, career-wise, is happiest when she’s dancing, and she’s…fucking amazing. When it comes to me and my music, she understands that sometimes the band tends to come first, and while I’m trying to get better at equalizing everything, I’m still shit at it and Soya very rarely bitches about it.

“She rarely nags me to come up from my notebook, doesn’t call me while I’m at the tower unless it’s an emergency, and yet she didn’t have a place to call her own like I do. Even Aida has her places to go to spend time to herself, which is usually at a friend’s house on Friday nights.”

“So you built your wife a dance studio,” I say.

Ville nods. “She could dance for hours if her ankle lets her. It’s amazing to watch, especially now that no one’s pushing her to do it. I could spend all night defending my marriage,” Ville says changing the subject “And defending my family, but it’s pointless isn’t it?” Ville asks gesturing me up the stairs again and turning the lights off.

“No matter what I say, there’s always going to be people twisting it so that it makes it seem like I’m not happy with my life,” he finishes.

We make it to the top landing and we stand in the middle of the foyer surrounded by family photographs that show just how happy Ville really is. “Fans wanted to know what I do with my day-to-day life. Truthfully, I’m quite the bore now. If I’m not working- which you’ll see tomorrow- I’m here, changing diapers and feeding my son, helping my little sister with math homework and art projects, and watching mindless TV with my wife while we talk about our days. I’m happy,” Ville says with a small smile.

And he is, I think, as he walks me out the door and down the stone path. He tells me that the rest of the night will be spent in the living room with Soya, spending the little alone time they have watching old reality show reruns on TV and talking. He laughs, however, when he says that Soya will most likely remind him to pick up a new set of dishes to replace the ones he broke earlier in the morning.

He reminds me to meet him at his tower tomorrow morning, and wishes me a good night before turning and walking back up the drive. Ville said he was a bore, but I don’t think it’s quite the right word for him. Now that I’ve seen him with his family, I can say that Ville seems normal, and it’s not odd to see the rock star in this position. In fact it seems to fit him and his family very well.