It's all good

What do you think about the phrase, “it’s all good”? I kind of like it. I like it a lot more than, for example, “no problem”, or “for reals”. I like the idea that even when life isn’t quite going your way, you can handle it, or find the silver lining, or put up with what’s going on temporarily.

I feel that way about this year, literally: it’s all been good. This year? Yes – it’s been a year already. (OK, cheating a little: it’s been an academic year, 10 months.) In less than 24 hours, I’ll lock up my apartment for the summer and head for the US. It’s unreal (for reals) that the year is over, and I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t turned in grades today and had end-of-year coffee with three of my colleagues yesterday. One Swede (who, unlike me, did not feel this year was “all good”, and so she’s going back to her homeland), one Finn, one Canadian and I had a relaxing couple of hours in the “Taitokortteli”, the charming wooden house full of shops where local craftspersons sell their creations and where anyone can learn to weave. I had a very Finnish-looking piece of cake to celebrate this year: mostly crust and cream with red currants, strawberries and cherries on top.

This year has been something like that cake: it was all good. Even the month of February (probably the red currants) had its positive aspects (like the fact that it was a short month). But with the constant sunlight (even between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. it never quite gets dark) and the warm temperatures, it’s hard to remember what February felt like. I got all my classes taught and received positive evaluations (even some enthusiastic ones!); I spent two weeks teaching in other countries; I gave two conference papers. So I survived the year and did not make my boss regret hiring me. A victory!

 I suppose it’s traditional to do a retrospective of a year like this by talking about what you’ve learned. So here are my top ten, in no particular order.

1. Home really is where the heart is. So trite, so true. My little apartment here has all of a sudden started feeling like home. I’m looking forward to coming back here. I’m not sure when this transformation took place. Perhaps when I started booking my tickets to go back to the US?

2. The US is not the center of the world. I have intentionally not read US newspapers while I’ve been here. (OK, I cheat once in a while.) And although the US is a huge and powerful country, not everyone pays attention to everything happening there. 

3. “Ever after” may be one of the most harmful phrases ever created. I think I’ve been at my most anxious when I’ve been wondering if I’ll stay here “ever after” when I might actually not have been anxious at all if I had stayed in the moment and noticed how high the quality of life is here. The air is pristine. (Well, not today – a building went up in flames north of town and it smelled like burning tires for a while.) The water is delicious. I can walk through the woods anytime I like. My stress level is low. I don’t own a car. I could go on and on.

4. National stereotypes must be taken with a grain of salt. I’ve known this for a long time, but this year has really brought it home. Finns come in all flavors. I know very reserved ones, very boisterous and loud ones, kind ones, ones who love the US, ones who never want to set foot there, conservatives and liberals and the apolitical. There are cultural norms but these aren’t related to personality. If I weren’t so tired, I’d embroider on this subject for a while. A later blog post, surely.

5. I’m too darned hard on myself. Make me come back and read this later on, please? I feel like the laziest person in the world when I am relaxing on my red velvet couch unless I'm working on at least two projects at the same time. I need to schedule down time more than anyone I know. Next year I must make sure this happens. Please remind me.

6. I need contact with nature to thrive. I never noticed it as clearly as this year while living in a second-floor apartment with no balcony.

7. Connections with other people are the most precious thing we have, and the Internet can keep those connections going in very nurturing ways. What would I have done this year without Skype, Facebook, e-mail and blogging? The recent revelations about the NSA’s surveillance activities cast a pall on this, of course…

8. I can do this. And, in fact, I did it.

9.  Finnish is still the most difficult language I’ve ever tried to learn. But I don’t have to chalk it off as a lost cause. It’s getting better, slowly.

10. It’s not hopeless till you’ve lost your sense of humor, and I don’t think I’ve lost mine yet.

I may continue this blog over the summer or return in the fall. In any case, thank you for joining me on this strange journey. I think I’ll go have a Karjalan piirakka now, since it may be a while till my next one.

Two weeks of "substitute teaching": priceless

Last Tuesday I returned from teaching for two weeks at universities that have Erasmus Exchange agreements with my institution: Masaryk University in Brno (Czech Republic) and Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń (Poland). My university encourages this sort of exchange for “mobility” reasons, and in fact receives some kind of financial incentive for each teacher who participates. It would be an understatement to say that I am glad I decided to take part, though the timing could have been a little better. Taking off three days after a 10-day trip to the US gave me little time to recover, barely enough time to do laundry and repack my bags. In addition, I missed spring completely. I’m back in Joensuu and, to give you an example, it was 78 degrees F at 8 p.m. yesterday. When did this transformation take place? Next year I want to be here to actually see the transition between winter and summer.

My first night away, I stayed with my friends Nina and Make near Helsinki. That is always a bonus when I  travel via Helsinki: their generous, relaxed hospitality. This time they get even more kudos because they were leaving the same morning for Copenhagen to see Bruce Springsteen and take their son Frans to Legoland. I’m so used to traveling alone; it was good to share the morning nerves and rush, get in line together, wave goodbye at our gates. I got myself to the right train station in Vienna (what a different visit than two years ago, when I got to spend four luxurious weeks there!) and was in Brno a couple hours later.

I’d never been to the Czech Republic before and wish I had done more “homework” before arriving (although, come to think of it, when would I have done that exactly?). Brno is a beautiful little city with the usual Eastern European graffiti and shabby buildings, but the center is mostly lovely. I think people are so focused on getting to Prague that they don’t bother about Brno, but I thoroughly enjoyed spending a week there. The weather was good, the food was delicious and scandalously cheap (I treated myself to a fancy lunch at the city’s most expensive restaurant: $24; most days a complete meal was $4-6). The city is walkable, so my feet got me everywhere I wanted or needed to go. My hostel was next door to St. Jacob’s Cathedral, and I went to Sunday mass; even understanding no Czech, I was able to follow the service pretty well. Beneath the cathedral is Europe’s second-largest ossuary. The bones of 50,000 people – it’s a bit difficult to wrap your mind around that one.

My colleagues for the week were very friendly, though nobody had much time for socializing. One woman took me on a two-hour walk to get my bearings on that first Sunday, and another one invited me to lunch. Jarmila is in her 60s so she remembers the “bad old times” very well. She worked as an interpreter/secretary for an English company, so she was put on the list of collaborators and had some nasty experiences, including an interrogation. She got tears in her eyes when talking about how happy she was that times had changed, mostly because she didn’t have to watch her children and grandchildren suffer through them. Others I talked to weren’t happy about the current government – they felt that the current president was a “good old boy” who was more interested in lining his own pockets than creating better conditions for the average Czech citizen.

I taught three courses while there. One was on teaching English in Finland. It turns out that the Czech and Polish languages are similar to Finnish because they have cases and no articles. So their struggles with the English language are similar. A second course was simply a lecture on how I came to teach translation and English in Finland – not really teaching, but providing a native speaker for students to interpret into Czech or Slovak. The third course felt really out of my league – assessment in foreign-language classes in the US. But apparently they went well enough, all three. Whew!

I was ready to head for Dresden on Friday, but Jarmila convinced me to spend a few hours in Prague on my way there. I have very mixed feelings about that visit. Prague is every bit as exciting, beautiful, fascinating, overwhelming, etc. as everyone says. I would like to spend a month there accompanied by several history books and some lessons in Czech. I walked over the Charles Bridge, went to the Kafka Museum, had apple strudel in a sidewalk cafe on the Old Market, visited the beautiful synagogue, strolled the medieval streets, bought a delightful little painting of Kafka’s “Goldenes Gässchen”. But by the time I got back to the train station to continue on to Dresden, I had a blazing headache, probably from too much sun and too little water. I dragged my suitcase onto the train and soldiered on to Dresden, hailed a taxi and got to my Airbnb apartment. Fortunately my host was not very talkative and understood that I needed a rest. I crawled into bed fully clothed at 8 p.m. and didn’t get up until 12 hours later.

So what a first-world predicament: I went to Prague and what I remember most is my headache. This story definitely needs rewriting.

Dresden: for seven years I taught German with a textbook that introduced Dresden and Frankfurt at the same time. I had never actually been to Dresden but from the textbook I knew some of the “must-see” sights: the Zwinger, the Frauenkirche (destroyed during WWII and recently reopened), the Semperoper. During my stay, the weather was cool and rainy, so the “Florence of the Elbe” definitely had a grayish cast. However, since during my entire visit I had the firebombing of February 1945 in the back of my mind, the weather seemed appropriate.

I have an inexplicable affinity for Eastern Germany. I felt comfortable in Wittenberg, Leipzig and Halle; I loved strolling around Eastern Berlin; and I felt very at home in Dresden. Several strangers spoke to me – did I seem so comfortable that they assumed I lived there? Mostly I wanted to walk around and get to know the city, but I did have one thing on my cultural agenda: to view the Neue Meister (new masters) in the Albertinum. It was a thrill to see some of the paintings I know through a unit I teach on Degenerate Art: works by Dix and Kirschner, for example. And, of course, I loved the paintings by Monet, Munch, Nolde and Picasso. After leaving the museum, I simply wandered around without a plan, and that was the best thing I could have possibly done. I stumbled across two wonderful soloists (music students?) performing with a keyboardist under a bridge. They sang “Panis Angelicus” and two other pieces, and it was indescribably beautiful, echoing all through the passageway. After that, I happened upon a church (Hofkirche), went inside and strolled casually towards one side chapel. I stopped in awe. There was an unusual sculpture that seemed more incredible the more I read about it. 

I’ll translate what the plaque said in German:

The Memorial Chapel

Originally, this chapel was dedicated to the Bohemian saint Johann Nepomuk.

Since 1976, it has served to memorialize the victims of the bomb attack on Dresden on February 13, 1945, and the victims of all unjust violence.

With his image of the Mother of Sorrows, Mary, who holds her Son in her lap, the Dresden sculptor Friedrich Press created an imposing memorial of suffering counted in the millions.

In her hands, Mary is holding rubble from the war, which she is fashioning into a crown of thorns. The gaping wound in Jesus’ heart bears witness to His love, which absolves us from our guilt, despite war and hatred, and offers us reconciliation.

The separate altar in the middle of the floor represents Dresden as it burns.

Friedrich Press created both works of art from Meissen porcelain.

I couldn’t tear myself away from this sculpture until a janitor said, laconically, “Church closing”, jingling his keys. How lucky I was that I got in to see this wonder right before closing time.

The next day I took the train to Berlin and then Torun. Here I want to say something about being in a country where you do not speak the language and where almost nobody speaks your own language. If you’re a language person, your decoder doesn’t shut off. You keep trying to bring order out of chaos, and it simply doesn’t work – but that doesn’t mean, in your subconscious, that you lose hope that order will eventually win. It makes you very, very tired. I spent the entire train trip, in a compartment with seven other women speaking Polish, believing I could make sense of what they were saying. Imagine my relief when Ewa, my colleague, met me at the train and greeted me in beautiful British English. She took me to my hotel and then out for coffee. I had never heard of Torun before; I was amazed at how lovely it was. The medieval city wall is nearly intact. The building where Copernicus was born is still standing and still in excellent shape. How did I not know this place existed? The view of the medieval town on the banks of the lovely Vistula River was so impressive.

Farmhouse in Torun's outdoor museum

Now I’m going to sound like I’m complaining, but it’s more like good-natured ribbing. I think I’m going to call Poland the country where everything almost works. In fact, most things did work while I was there, but in some cases it took a while to get there. The hotel room was at first glance imposing, luxurious, but the bed was dreadful (it felt like a box spring with no cushion), the shower fixture couldn’t spray in the proper direction without my holding it in place, and the Internet wouldn’t work. Fortunately, most of the women who worked at the front desk knew some English, so the computer issue was worked out the next morning. I didn’t have to teach until Wednesday and Thursday (three sessions of “Pitfalls of Legal English”, right up my alley), so I spent a couple of days either working alone in my room or wandering around alone (Ewa lives about 40 minutes outside of town and has a small child). Ewa and I took each other out for several lunches and coffees, and that is, of course, one of my favorite things to do – explore the food of another culture. What do they consider a meal? What is dessert? I have to admit that I did not become a fan of Polish food during my stay.

The kind ladies at the front desk must have known that, and wanted to make one last good impression, so the breakfast they packed for me the day I left would have fed the entire population of Torun, or so it seemed. Four large sandwiches, two containers of deviled eggs, one container of radishes and lettuce, one bottle of iced tea, three cookies and a container of cheese. They even threw in a piece of ‘espresso chocolate’, probably to compensate for the lack of coffee. I was touched and horrified. I ended up leaving most of the food at the Poznan train station, hoping a person in need would find it. There’s definitely poverty in Poland, and I witnessed it on the train. One friendly woman who helped me find the right train in Torun was on her way to the hospital in Poznan. As we parted in Poznan she moved really close to me and tried to tell me in broken English that she needed money. I didn’t have much Polish money left so I gave her a two-zloty piece and made the universal gesture for “out of money”. She didn’t look convinced. The idea that all Americans are wealthy is probably still present in Poland.

The nightmare of getting from the train station in Berlin out to the airport convinced me to stay put and get some work done rather than tourist around. In the evening I arrived in Zurich for my R&R weekend. I met up with Erik around midnight and he took me to a “Hoffest” – an annual party that the tech people (i.e. those involved with scenery and staging) put on for the rest of the employees of the Zurich Opera. It was a hoot. Lots of dancing to an eclectic array of music, strobe lights, lots of friendly people who seemed pleased to meet “Erik’s mom”. I went home around 2 a.m. and then met up with Erik for a casual breakfast the next morning. We had an early sushi birthday dinner (how long has it been since I’ve had sushi??) and then went to a recital by Joyce DiDonato – Erik had been able to get us tickets. What a lovely evening! She sang pieces about Venice, and I am no expert on vocal arts, but it felt like she was a different personality with each one. Her pianist had finger cramps during one number and they handled it so smoothly and naturally that everyone was rooting for him rather than feeling upset at the break in the show. Her last encore was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, and in light of the deadly tornados in Oklahoma, it was a moving tribute. I had the delightful experience of seeing her hugging Erik and hearing, “You can’t be old enough to be Erik’s mother!”

The next morning I wandered around Zurich on my own although the weather was windy, rainy and cold at eight degrees Celsius (46 F). Springtime?? I saw a whole bevy of swans (yes, I looked it up) on Lake Zurich who didn’t seem to mind the cold or rain at all. Eventually I met up with Erik for a rather American breakfast, except the hash browns were “rösti”. We wandered around the shops in the Viaduct, and afterwards I let him go home for his pre-show preparations.

Seeing him in Don Giovanni was amazing. I don’t think I will ever get used to having children who are professional musicians, and this is a good thing. Every performance is precious and new and exciting. This time Erik was Masetto, dressed as an Amish man. The production was fascinating and controversial – most of the recitative was removed. At the end, the singers were applauded warmly, but the conductor and artistic direction were booed. And those who didn’t agree with the booers started to shout “bravo” even louder. After the show there was a premiere party where the head guy, Andreas Homoki, praised everyone and their efforts, in particular Peter Mattei who had sung the demanding lead role while very sick. He is from Sweden, so of course Erik introduced us, and we had a chat in Swedish. He’s from Luleå, and you have to think it’s even less likely that a town far in the north of Sweden would produce an opera singer than a small town in Oregon…but I suppose you never know.

Yes, this blog is very long. I hope you don’t feel compelled to read it all in one sitting, if at all.

The next morning I flew to Vienna, parked my bags, and took a bus in to see a little of the sights. Very little. Knowing Vienna, I decided to aim for one sight and one meal. I headed for the Leopold Museum, remembering that I had seen works there by an artist I didn’t want to forget, and had gone ahead and forgotten anyway. As it turns out, it must have been another museum, or a temporary exhibit that was no longer there. But I did “discover” Theodor von Hörmann, who may or may not have been the one I was looking for. I also saw more degenerate artists, a lot of Schiele and Klimt of course, but the real gem of the visit was in the basement, where Manfred Bockelmann’s “Drawing against Oblivion” is on display until September. It is a room full of drawings based on photographs of children who were incarcerated, and mostly murdered, in concentration camps. Some of their heads are shaved, some are in prison garb. All are named, and that is part of the idea: that these children not simply fade into oblivion, but be brought into our field of vision.
http://www.leopoldmuseum.org/en/exhibitions/51/manfred-bockelmann

The trip back to Finland was almost magical. Seeing it from the air, with the sun still up at 10 in the evening, with the lakes glinting golden orange, made my heart leap a little to think that this beautiful land is now my home. Nina and Make had been on yet another trip to see Bruce, and their flight came in about a half hour before mine, so they kindly waited for my flight and we all went home in a taxi. The train trip to Joensuu the next day was surreal – where did all the greenery, summer temperatures, happy smiles and cheerful chatter come from? Back at my apartment building, I saw the man I usually see walking his dog who has never acknowledged my existence. I held the door open for him and he smiled at me and greeted me. Is this part of that arctic hysteria I’ve heard about?

Spring fever, Finnish style

At the conference I attended last weekend, Finnish author Rosa Liksom struggled to find an English equivalent for a ‘meänkieli’ phrase that she eventually rendered as ‘Arctic hysteria’. Her fellow authors from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland nodded in agreement. Something happens to people born near the Arctic Circle around this time of the year, after months of darkness and ice and heavy clothing and slippery paths and cold, cold, cold. And it’s akin to hysteria.

Here in Joensuu, hysteria isn’t terribly apparent yet. I was gone in the US for 10 days and things don’t look very much different than they did April 25. Most of the snow is gone, but there are a few stubborn patches, hiding under grit, and the lakeshores still have some ice. I saw a few leaves braving their way out of their buds, and three different kinds of flowers that I cannot yet name. Some purple ones struggling out from beneath a thatch of last year’s grass looked a lot like crocuses, and some yellow ones looked a little like dandelions – but the leaves were wrong, the stem too thick and the petals too regular.

But of course my little solipsistic glimpse of the world can be missing something. Vappu came and went while I was gone, Walpurgis/Beltane/May Day, and all kinds of hysteria could have broken loose under people’s scarves and puffy jackets. Judging by an obscene picture reminiscent of “Girls Gone Wild on Spring Break” video ads in the States, on page 2 of the school paper, this holiday is all about bacchanalian hysteria of the rawest kind. The school buildings are noticeably emptier now that classes are over – are the students all still out partying in the woods? Midsummer is several weeks away, and it’s possible that this will be the height of hysteria. But it’s also entirely possible that people are experiencing their private hysterias/ecstasies/euphorias and that it is not a collective national affliction -- or blessing -- in the way you might have imagined had you listened to the authors’ panel.

I’m not experiencing hysteria – yet – but I am heaving a sigh of relief. I made it. Winter is definitely gone. I biked to the store today without a coat (though my sweater was warm), without boots, without gloves and without a cap under my helmet. I’m practically rubbing my hands together imagining packing away all the paraphernalia, including the little reflectors that help people steer clear of you as you walk home in the dark. 

However, I should probably not have made a trip back to Oregon at this time of year. I have a severe case of garden envy. I visited a new friend who cut a beautiful, whole cauliflower from his garden and prepared it for dinner, adding onions, garlic and broccoli shoots he had harvested shortly before. I miss that immediacy, that ability to walk out and fetch dinner from the earth. I was able to visit my house, where another friend has been caring for the beds there, and I saw the small potato leaves starting to unfurl here and there. Is there such a thing as soil hysteria? If so, I am feeling it with nearly every fiber of my body. And I wonder if it is a genetic disposition – if it’s my peasant stock claiming its own. As if I can’t go for more than nine months without digging my hands into a pile of dirt.

I am most confused now. I should have hung in there for the entire cycle of Finnish weather, perhaps entered into hysteria with my new compatriots, not ‘gone home’ for a breather before coming back and finishing the year. Do I stay? Do I go? Do I commute? How does one make the decision where to hang one’s hat? The friend with the cauliflower had a very wise suggestion: decide where you want to wake up every morning. I’ve been thinking about that. And I think it doesn’t matter as long as I can walk out into a landscape with a steaming mug of coffee, looking at how far along the living creatures have come since last I looked. Can I do this in a greenhouse in mid-winter? Can I walk out on a frozen dock and feel the same satisfaction as I look at the ice? Is it the traces in nature I want to see, or is it vegetable matter that matters?

And there’s the issue of impact. I’ve always wanted to be where I’ll be of most use. I know I’m doing some good here, but I felt that way in Eugene as well, and across a broader spectrum. I know, the sages will say that you can make an impact no matter where you are. Is it more meaningful to give back to the culture that raised you? Less meaningful to educate the privileged? Am I arguing about angels on pinheads here? At least I’m not hysterical about this – simply thoughtful and curious about how it will all turn out.

Now I’m headed for another three weeks away from Finland. Things are sure to be far advanced by the time I get back. Hopefully I’ll get to experience a taste of hysteria when I return – or at least some measured cavorting in someone’s backyard.

Fickle April

How did April creep up like that? Maybe it’s the snow still lying on the ground – retreating with so much sun (15.5 hrs/day) and temperatures finally above freezing, but still hanging in there – that made me think it was still March, or at least still winter. But now there’s just a week left in this month, and after Vappu (April 30, the Finnish version of Walpurgis) I sense that it’s a downhill race to summer. However, with any luck, there won’t be enough snow left for it to be a race by downhill ski.

I don’t really have a theme to this post. I’ve felt I had to have one up till now, but this will simply be a check-in, partly motivated by the fact that I will be going “home” (where IS home, by the way?) for a brief visit in a week. People will ask how Finland is/was. What will I say?

1. The jury is out. Definitely out. I thought by now I’d know for sure whether Finland was my new destiny, the homeland that’s always been waiting for me, or a huge mistake, a well-intentioned but ultimately foolish detour from what I should really be doing. But I am nowhere closer to knowing the answer to that question than I was in August. Of course, I told everyone I would give it a year, and it’s only been 8.5 months. Surely I will know in the next three months…I think…

2. Life in Finland has been healthier. I don’t own a car, so all my local transportation has been by bike, by foot or by bus (and taxi or car trips that I can count on both hands). I feel fitter, less sedentary. The air is very clean. Apart from my own self-imposed work stress, people are much more relaxed about getting things done. Health care is free. Health care is free. (That one counts twice.)

3. Loneliness is more palpable. Most of my colleagues live two hours away, and this makes weekends very quiet. I’m used to at least having Sunday dinners with my friend Cynthia. We’ve been Skyping instead, but it’s still too quiet. And my language abilities aren’t yet good enough to scour the papers for local activities – and I don’t have the money to participate in them anyway. I guess I didn’t realize that all those evening committee meetings in Eugene were serving a social function as well as my need to save the world.

4. It all feels so temporary. I live in an apartment with hardly anything on the walls, with mismatched furniture and a crappy bed. I have a very small, low shelf as my only bookcase. I have no garden. Most of the apartment seems like vast, echoing space. Maybe this is what pioneering is about. But it makes me feel like everything is on hold until I fish or cut bait and either sell my house in Oregon to buy something here or give up and go back to the US.

5. The Finnish language is hard. I’ve always known this. It’s been a struggle since trying to get my dad to give me a vocabulary word each day. I’ve made progress, but I still worry that I will say something terribly obscene by not remembering the right combination of double/single consonants. And teaching English means I don’t get the immersion experience that would boost my Finnish into more fluency. Plus I have a Canadian colleague whose Finnish is so much better and he always goes around apologizing for it. This doesn’t exactly instill confidence. And trying to translate my Finnish friends’/ colleagues’ Finnish from Facebook? Forget it. It’s dialect. So learning Finnish may not help anyway.

6. It’s so awesome being able to get to Europe so quickly. Since arriving here, I have made three trips to Europe (as opposed to the Scandinavian peninsula). That sounds so extravagant in the US. How amazing is it to be able to travel in so many other countries without vast outlays of money or time? And having Erik in Switzerland – what a wonderful coincidence. If I weren’t living here, I wouldn’t get to see any of his performances.

7. The perks of my job are substantial. I’m not getting paid as much as I thought I would. Finnish taxes are high, and there are several other deductions from my wages I hadn’t counted on, including union dues. However, I get to work in a modern, private office with a very good computer. I get to choose my own hours. My classes only meet once a week. usually for two hours. A class hour is 45 minutes. My largest class was 19 students, but most are more like 10. My students are highly motivated, polite, obedient, interested in what I tell them. The library system works well. You get extra vacation pay. There is a bistro just downstairs, and most people take an afternoon coffee break. You get funding for two conference trips per year, and you have the chance to do an Erasmus teacher exchange. What this means in my case is that I will go to Brno in the Czech Republic and Torun, Poland, each for one week. Paid. You can also get discount coupons for the local swimming pool.

Oh, and this job is permanent.

8. I get to eat weird and sometimes good foods. Yesterday I had a glass of ‘sima’ (fermented beverage with raisins made only this time of year, something like mead) together with a reindeer sandwich. This morning I had yoghurt with apple and cloudberries for breakfast (the yoghurt actually came with the cloudberries). I still adore Karjalan piirakoita, though I have stopped buying them every time I shop. I’ve learned to like what amounts to hamburgers with chopped-up beets in them. I am constantly aware that I’m living in a foreign country and get to have these interesting, if not always successful, culinary experiences.

9. Starting over is a privilege/punishment. Sometimes I believe this 'redo' is a privilege, sometimes I think it’s a cruel joke. At times I’m in awe that I get to be in this new country, and I could go back to my own country anytime I want to – especially when I see the Somali women in skirts and veils that can’t possibly be protecting them from the cold. Unlike me, they can’t go back. At other times, I wonder what I did to be punished by this exile when friends are winding down their careers and talking about cool things they’ll do with their husbands in retirement.

I think I’ve covered a lot of my rumination tracks, though I know there are more. The weather continues to fascinate me. The ice is melting in the river though there’s still snow on the lake. The sun comes up at 5:15 a.m. and sets at 8:45 p.m. Nothing is blossoming or leafing out yet. I have a feeling that when spring comes, it will be fast and furious, and then it will be summer. This combination is so odd. I think I understand the Saami calendar better – this must be winter-spring. The weather, then, is of two minds, just as I am about Finland.

Marching on

These past few days, I’ve had fleeting thoughts that I’m really over the hump. They’ve remained unarticulated, until now. I haven’t wanted to jinx anything. But my teaching schedule is getting lighter. So is the sky. And, best of all, February is over (see my previous post). I’ve scheduled a trip to Switzerland and Germany for spring break (barely scraped up the money, but I managed!), so the prospect of seeing my son and dear friends in Saarland surely lifts my heart.

Of course, the temperature is not 'over the hump'. It’s gotten colder. I walked to the train station yesterday, and back again after another trip to Tampere, and it was -18 C. This is not comfortable weather for walking, no matter what you are wearing. Those few days of plus degrees may have had me fooled. But seriously, it can’t stay this cold forever. So I’m trying to focus on how beautiful the ice and snow look with this much sunshine. On the train yesterday I was fascinated by how the forest looked like it was covered in glitter, and I was dazzled by the orange disk of the setting sun (at 6 p.m.!) as it was reflected on the snowy fields. This beauty will disappear once everything starts to melt and the ‘ugly’ season starts.

I’m also coming to terms with moving on in my life. I’ve held on to the idea of living in my house in Eugene – now far too big for just one lone woman – for so long. I’ve pictured myself puttering in the garden as an 80-year-old. I’ve seen imaginary grandchildren tossing the Legos I’ve saved into the air, crowing, while their parents tell them their memories of the house and point out the height marks on the doorpost in the kitchen. I’ve savored the idea of relaxing on the deck in that delicious scent of fir and roses with Eugene friends, and of finally inviting them to dinner there after years of stressed-out, single-mom life. I’ve thought about my pets aging and, reluctantly, imagined their burials along with the other pets in the backyard.

Friends from Germany visiting in Eugene

Those are a lot of things to give up. But I think I am getting closer to doing just that. The ability to do so turns on a realization I had: I can either live in that house, waiting for those occasions when my busy children will have the time and money to come visit, or I can sell that house, move into something smaller (perhaps in Finland?), and use the money to actually go see them. And there is also the socio-political issue of fairness: is it right to hold on to so much space that should be full of new tenants, not my memories?

Having this realization has also made my mood shift. Once you pull yourself out of one track full of unquestioned assumptions and pictures, I think it makes it easier for you to examine other things as well. What are the other ways I have reacted instead of acted in my life? It’s heady stuff to contemplate. It makes the world grow suddenly bigger, expands my spirit and makes me almost giddy considering the new possibilities.

For now, the possibility of putting my winter gear in storage, the prospect of a two-day teaching week, and the promise of spring break are euphoria enough. That and reminding myself how glad I am it isn’t February anymore.