Wishing her a happy birthday

Today, my youngest brother and youngest sister are celebrating their birthday. I am nine years older than they are, so I remember when they were born – how snowy and sunny it was, how excited we were that it was a boy AND a girl, how I got to tell people at school that I was a big sister again. My mother was kind of overwhelmed with two little babies – the youngest of six children – and so my sister and I, as oldest and second-oldest, were each assigned care of one of the babies. She got the boy, and I got the girl.

My new little sister was the most beautiful infant girl you could imagine. She was perfectly proportioned, and she had big brown eyes and the sweetest little smile. And while her twin was curmudgeonly, plump and unsmiling, she more than made up for it with her cute little cries of “Ba! Ba!” and her happy, bouncy movements.

I won’t go into what happened during the intervening years. Partly it would take too long, partly it’s too sad, and partly I don’t want to talk about it here. But my sweet little sister is now an adult who has made too many poor choices, and she’s fallen under the yoke of several addictions.

What do you do with that? Clearly I have no clue. I used to think – naively – that you could “fix” people like her through unconditional love, tough love, providing a safe and calm space, sending them into rehab, sheer force of will, prayer or some combination of those things. I’ve tried them all, and they didn’t work. 

She lived with me for five months while I gave her room and board and she went to community college, her first experience there. I saw her making progress, doing well, having setbacks, overcoming them, eventually turning on me unexpectedly with shocking venom and hatred. She would apologize, promise to do better. She went to AA meetings, and I went with her. But behind my back she was emptying my liquor cabinet and lying about it. Eventually she called me horrible names, told my family what an awful person I was, and made me feel unsafe in my own home. I had reached my limit, and I was forced to turn her out.

I still love her, but I can’t have her near me, and this makes my heart ache. No, it’s more than an ache. She broke my heart, and my heart hasn’t been the same since. I no longer believe that love can conquer all.

I’ve learned that addicts won’t get help until they’re good and ready. It doesn’t matter if they have beautiful, deserving children who need them. It doesn’t matter if they have a loving spouse. It doesn’t matter if their family gives them a choice: either you go into rehab or we will not allow you into our homes again. It doesn’t matter if they have an elderly mother in frail health who’s worried sick about them.

They can’t hear anything except the siren call of whatever drug they crave. And that drug changes their personality, and their health, permanently.

I had a dream last night about my sister. She looked dreadful, like those ads warning you about the dangers of meth. But she was calm and listened to me as I told her about my worries for her, how I loved her, how I wanted my little sister back, the one with the sunny smile and the mischievous giggle. She listened carefully (the way she never does now) and said, “I know, Kathy. I know I’m going to die. But I just can’t help it. Thanks for loving me anyway.”

I hear little snippets about where she is and what she’s doing. None of it is good. And I’m so far away – not that it matters since I’m powerless anyway. But I can still pray for her, and I do. And that’s probably all. 

Happy Birthday, my troubled, beloved sister. Please come back someday.

Pushing through

When I was thinking about what to write about next, it occurred to me that I’m halfway through my (first) year here, since I’m planning on going back to Oregon in June. So a logical title would have been “Over the Hump”. But I’m not ‘over the hump’ in many ways. That title would have implied that ‘the rest is downhill’, ‘everything’s easy from here on out’, etc. etc. Life is much more complicated than that metaphor. Some things got easy for me right away – figuring out public transportation, for example. Other things feel more like I’m tapping around in a dark room, sometimes finding a chair but then realizing no, that’s a table … not a great metaphor, but a more apt one. In particular, I feel this way about Finnish university culture, which is still a great mystery in many ways. And a great epiphany of comprehension of the Finnish language has eluded me so far – which may be one reason why academic culture here still seems  so opaque to me.

So ‘pushing through’ doesn’t imply success or failure, difficulty or ease – just movement forward, sometimes impeded by what’s surrounding me. At least I hope it’s forward. And it is in terms of time, in any case.

One of the biggest personal ‘push-through’s’ was Christmas. I stressed about it so much I almost made myself sick. Would I have enough money to get my daughter over to Switzerland? Would I then have enough money to get myself there? And to feed us while there? Would my son be OK with having us so close in for several days? What about tree/decorations/gifts? Thanks to some serious austerity, I was able to buy the plane tickets and to have enough money for us to have one nice lunch at a fondue restaurant (although as a kind of cosmic joke, the waiter came running after us after we left – he had mixed up our bills and ours was higher than the one I had just paid – so I had to worry about the card going through twice!). My son’s friends allowed us to stay in their apartment as long as we took care of their little kitten, so there was no hotel expense. We did mega-shopping for our meals, and my son paid for it all. He also cooked an elegant Christmas dinner and my daughter did a lot of the baking. My suggestion that we devote ourselves to no stress was welcomed, and we did just that. We walked around Zurich and saw the Chagall stained glass in the Fraumuenster Cathedral, went to the opera (Erik performed in ‘Tosca’), attended midnight service at the Schlieren church, exchanged gifts and sipped coffee, had martinis in the bar atop the tallest building in Zurich, took the tram to the Uetliberg and hiked up to the top for amazing sunset views of the Alps and bad hot cocoa afterwards. I can’t remember hurrying anywhere at any time. Christmas was delightful; it simply flew by too quickly. And it definitely didn’t feel like a ‘push-through’ while I was there. In retrospect, I really didn't need to stress about it quite as much as I did.

Not remembering that I am no longer in my 20s, I planned too much traveling after Christmas. I loved seeing my friends, but didn’t like how tired I felt. I visited a friend I hadn’t seen for ages who now lives on an island in Denmark. It took about three and a half hours to get to her beautiful thatched-roof cottage from Copenhagen. 

We had a terrific, low-key visit, complete with delicious Danish food, marathons of television watching (a Ken Follett movie and “Casino Royale”) and talking about the intervening years, her work as an elections observer in the Ukraine, why the educational system in the US  is in trouble. After that I went to Lund, Sweden, to see dear friends I had missed during my last Swedish sojourn. They too are terrific cooks and made delicious, elaborate meals every evening, including New Year’s Eve. We took a walk through Lund and I reminisced about my student days there. We got to see the official standard measurement for ‘lagom’, just right, which stands on the university property. 

On my way to and from the Helsinki Airport, I visited my friend Nina, and we got to have a longer visit this time. She took me to the National Opera to see ‘La Traviata’. She too is a great cook. It’s a wonder I can wear anything I used to wear last year. Talk about ‘pushing through’!

By the time I got home, I had one day to get ready for the new term’s classes. Probably because I had travelled so much and was so tired, I had a bad case of not wanting to go back to school. And included in that was a deep-seated feeling that I am a charlatan. It’s true, on the eve of every new semester, no matter where I am or what I’m teaching, an inner voice will start sounding in my ear: “I am the world's biggest charlatan. I know nothing. The students will have heard everything I have to say and will stay seated only out of politeness or pity.” But this time it was more pronounced. I had severe trouble sitting down and putting together the next day’s classes. And I felt petulant, a little like a small friend of mine, Frans, who did not feel like saying “thank you” at the dinner table when I was visiting. I knew I had to do it, and I knew I was losing precious time by procrastinating, but I was angry. Angry! Finally I pushed through the anger and petulance and procrastination and put together two imperfect but acceptable first classes. And I didn’t feel the students were staying there out of pity or politeness.

The last ‘push-through’ I’ll talk about is the sun. There is more of it every day. I’m now noticing it, seeing how the dusk lingers longer (past 4 p.m. now) and how the sunlight seems stronger, coming from higher up. So light has pushed through the darkness, and I’m told that by April, I will need to wear a blindfold to be able to sleep. In just two months, the day will be six hours longer. I’m looking forward to it, but I have to say that living through a winter here has shown me how exquisitely beautiful snow and ice can be, and how different nature looks at different times. 

 I no longer think it’s odd that the Inuit have so many words for snow. That being said, I have to admit that I sometimes fantasize about walking through a forest in Oregon taking in that sweet smell of heated fir, wearing a sleeveless shirt, skirt and sandals, feeling sun on my skin. Winter is lovely, but I will be happy when I’ve pushed through it and into the season when I can pack away pounds and pounds of cold-weather gear.