Curveballs

Clearly, emotions and tensions were running high that Christmas in Florida. My mother, aunt, grandfather and I, who were all there living in the thick of it, were reeling from our sudden loss and trying to deal with our own shock and grief while trying to soothe each other—and it wasn’t working very well. Winnie was a rudder. She was an irreplaceable touchstone for all of us, and coming to terms with what her absence would really mean was devastating.

Needless to say, it was a somber Christmastime, and I was grateful for my husband’s natural detachment from such emotional curveballs--he had the energy to carry on with the children and keep me somewhat attached to their reality. I’ll say this about him: he is an expert at dealing with the here and now. He always finds a way to stay grounded in crisis, and he’s a fixer. Sometimes to a fault, but at that point in time, I loved him for it.

With that said, what happened next seemed to come entirely out of left field, but in retrospect, this is exactly how my husband operates. In the short time between my grandmother’s death and Christmas, he told me he was offered a job. A good one. In Chicago. And they would pay to move us. And he took it.

Behind

Oh boy, am I behind! It's hard to write about the past when there's so much present going on! Anyway, on with the story...

We were in the new house for a little more than a month before we went to the US for a three-week Christmas trip in 1999. We were set to go to my mother's, who at the time lived in Florida, for the holidays and a 60th wedding anniversary party for my grandparents, which was the prelude and really the biggest reason for making the trip.

It all felt very rushed having just moved and then packing up again for a long trip, although, Florida in December was certainly something to look forward to since we’d already had two months of winter. It was all sorted out, though, and we’d arranged for friends to live in our house while we were away. It was still so new and there weren’t any other houses around it at the time, therefore it would have been very unwise to leave it empty.

So after almost 24 hours of travelling with a 4 ½ and 1 ½ year old, we’d arrived at my mother’s in sunny Orlando running around without big heavy coats and boots. My grandparents, Winnie and Bill, rushed over—they hadn’t yet met Caroline and were anxious to get their hands on both kids and me, too. My grandmother and daughter quickly found kindred spirits in each other. They traded coy smiles and then Caroline with wide eyes fondled everything sparkly about Winnie (there was always A LOT!). Winnie affectionately dubbed her, “Tilly” and little did she know that in a few short months “Tilly” would inherit the moniker of “Mini Winnie” for her verbal and willful yet beautifully poised traits so clearly personified by her great grandmother, a true original. We had a great visit, laughing until crying, and lots of tight squeezes that told me I was safe in the arms of those who love me and believe in me most.

I suppose like most people, I had very special relationships with my grandparents, particularly my grandmothers. From Winnie, I learned how to charm with a confident, quick wit; how to dig into the bigger picture of things; how to squeal loudly when very happy, and how to sob deeply when very sad; how to wear jewelry; how to sew; and how to be relentless with personal convictions. From my Grandma Carol, I learned how to entertain; how to make others feel accepted and special; how to shop; how to carry on a conversation even if I’m bored to tears; how to identify many trees, flowers and birds and marvel in their beauty; and how to honor tradition. Both of them, two very different women, taught me how to be very creative and resourceful, love with my whole heart, put all my faith in God, and arrange furniture. I know I am Winnie’s treasure and Carol’s jewel, I know they hope and dream for me, I know they see pieces of themselves in me, and I know that they are full of pride and protection for me. I adore them just as much.

Anyway, just two days after our little homecoming, Winnie fell asleep in the beauty parlor chair she sat in every Saturday morning. We had a funeral instead of an anniversary celebration. The trip was turning out to be something different…and that’s not the half of it.

Jaunmarupe

It all happened so quickly really. In a way I don’t even remember it because it happened so fast. One minute we were shivering in an attic drafting shop of the architect we employed going over plans and the next we were having Thanksgiving dinner with 20 people in our new house.

My husband knew what he wanted the house to look like on the outside, and I knew how I wanted it laid out on the inside. Working together on this house certainly relieved the aforementioned tension. We found a rhythm in this common goal and it was fun to build this together. Unlike the Big Empty Flat in Aluksne, building this house had a strong sense of permanence to it. We were making a commitment the development of our new little “suburb” outside of Riga called Jaunmaurpe, a commitment to our children with regard to school, and also a long-term commitment to the country which, up until that point for us long term was considered six months.

So in the time from about March to November we built the house. Per my preferences, it was very symmetrical and efficient. It was built like a barn with a hipped roof. A large, open living area was at the center which looked up to a balcony/loft which held three bedrooms and a bathroom. On the first floor on one side of the living room was a family room and spare bedroom, and on the other end the kitchen and another bathroom. In the very center of the living room was a big wood burning stove which was ducted throughout the house. The plan was to use this as the main source of heat. I insisted on huge windows and the changing light bouncing off of all the clear birch woodwork was fascinating. It was incredibly spacious and cozy all at once. At about four times the size of V-77, there was room for the kids to run, and plenty of room for the huge Thanksgiving dinner we ended up hosting.

When it was finally finished (somehow it felt like an eternity to us), we scavenged for moving boxes, lined up the nanny to pretty much live with us for a few days, and we moved. I think I had the whole place set up in two days. It was November, cold, and messy I remember. And I remember lying in bed one of those first nights thankful for how lucky we were to have such a beautiful place not really believing that it was real.

Build a House

So time is marching on in Latvia, and I’ve omitted a lot. I’m offering a glimpse of what it was like to start a family in a very foreign country, and some of the little sprouts that lined the path to my present, but we all know that there’s a yin to every yang, a sour for every sweet, a pull to every push, a positive for every negative.

I believe we’re moved forward through our lives by this string of tension. And truth told, at this point in my life, I was beginning to flounder in it. I’ll allow these mixed metaphors to sit here and just continue with the story by saying, one day my husband was feeling my tension, and by way of compensation came to me one day, looked at me hard and said, “I want to build our house.”

For a few years we’d talked about building a house. We’d done some exploring as to how to go about doing this in Latvia where land ownership was still such a mess among other things, but he was serious, and he found a way. So as quickly as we could (I'm sure in order to relieve the tension), we bought some land, and we started building a house.

Family

Fixing up the Big Empty Flat was a project borne from boredom as much as necessity, but that pressure was off in Riga. V-77 was cozy, becoming full of collections and a short history of life with these two little kids and all their stuff. It was a real home. Not a bachelor pad, not a flop house, not a college apartment, but a real city flat where a real family lived. We had many “family dinners” there in chilly candlelight and warm wine with our little American community of the Lisa, Lisa & Juris with Kiki and soon Kaija, Denise & Jerry, Christopher, Scott, Dave and eventually Sveta. This was our core and our family--people I was growing up with (or in front of), and people I love and respect still. Anyway, we were this cast of varied and harried characters all traveling on that post-Soviet train to God-knows-where together.

One night Lisa honored me with the comment in her sometimes affected Rhode Island accent, “Maren I don’t know how you do it, but wherever you live you always make it feel like a home!” High praise from the woman who can out-cook us all with only a match, a chicken, and a smuggled package of brownie mix. I laughed her off, though, chalking it up to upbringing, but I was secretly flattered and not too sure my mother or grandmothers could have worked this out in a place like Latvia. But never mind, it goes back to the sculpting comment. I’m not a sculptor, nor a decorator. Nothing remarkable. Just plugging along trying to make the best of it and care for the people closest to me.

The Trunk

We did have that oak hutch refinished and whatever half-heartedness my husband felt for that piece immediately dissipated. It is one of my favorite pieces and it makes me happy whenever I look at it or open one of its doors. It was refinished by a man named Dainis whose specialty is furniture restoration, and he brought new life to the tired bones of this hutch.

Dainis and his brother were building a tidy little business scouring the countryside for antiques and either refinishing them or disassembling them and making new furniture out of the antique wood. My friend Lisa was a huge supporter of theirs and because of her their business boomed in the ex-pat community and they were able to export to the US and Western Europe.

It was here that we found our bookcase, a coffee table, and an “antique” TV cabinet. They also restored little pieces, too. I had a butter churn and a big abra—wooden bread dough bowl. It was almost a given that whenever one went to their factory, a purchase would be made, and with limited Sunday afternoon entertainment, we’d go there about once a month. It was fascinating, too, to watch these big men painstakingly sand off old paint or take tiny tools to some ancient carving that had been buried under decades of dirt and varnish.

One day, we were browsing and talking to them when at the top of a staircase landing was something we’d never seen before. It was a dowry chest: A BIG trunk with iron strapping, big handles and a big old lock. It was Swedish and under years of grit, they found beautiful rosemaling of flowers, vines, two birds and two hearts. Dainis restored the wood and a lady in their shop filled in the painted design. I absolutely melted. My husband hated it! “It’s nothing but a big useless box! It’s huge and we don’t have room for it! Who cares if it’s pretty?” Now I don’t mean to paint him as an ogre, but he is a very practical man. “Oh, but it’s so unusual! We’ll probably never, ever even see anything like this again! It’s another piece of someone’s history! This belonged to some other young bride who had to ship her own 100 pounds of home to an unknown future in this very trunk!” I don’t know if it was my personal identification with this trunk that won the squibble or not, but the trunk came home with us. Once it got to our flat and he saw how it fit into the grand scheme, and how it was actually a very handy place to store Christmas decorations and off-season clothing, he accepted the trunk.

Markers

When I described my husband’s half-hearted approval of my bed purchase for Sis, I alluded to our already full flat—we’d collected a lot of furniture by that time. We knew that we wouldn’t be living overseas forever, I was determined to make our lives comfortable at home, and we found some beautiful things for very little money that we would never have found in America. We saw these things as markers of our journey. Reminders of where we were when we started our life together and built our family. Everything had a story, too. I’ve shared some of them here between the custom Ikea knock-offs and Sissy’s bed, but there was more.

There was the Estonian furniture factory we found out about. We took some American business men there when they were scoping out exporting opportunities, and the boss ended up purchasing whole container load of their furniture to send to the US to test the market. He had my husband place the order and as they were deciding on inventory, the American casusally told him, “pick out whatever you and Maren want—thanks for taking me there.” So we ended up with several pieces of beautiful solid birch with exposed dovetail joints, including a dining table and six chairs, sideboard with a hutch, a short little dresser, a secretary desk, and a sewing box I fell in love with.

Then there was the day my husband came home and told me about a big wardrobe he’d seen at an antique shop. Closets didn’t exist and we desperately needed a place to hang clothes. He said it was huge, but the nice part was that it was engineered to disassemble neatly (so that it could be moved) and that it had a mirror. We went back together to check it out and I hated it! It was dark, ugly and old lady looking, but then I spotted a gorgeous old crusty oak hutch (another hutch!) with nickel pulls, original etched glass, and jugendstil details and carvings. I told him I wasn’t buying the wardrobe unless we could buy this, too!
“Mar, we don’t need another hutch!” But look at it. We’ll have it refinished. This is a special piece. “Yeahhhhh, maybe you’re right…” Of course I’m right. Meanwhile the Russian shop keeper was cooing at my kids as he dressed them up with heavy, battleship-gray wool Soviet military hats…We checked out the hutch, dusted it off with our fingers and the Russian man saw our mild interest. In a strange mix of Russian-Latvian-German-English, he told us a price for both the wardrobe and the hutch. No good. We dickered with him a bit longer and in the end, we purchased both pieces and all walked out with Soviet hats atop our heads.

The wardrobe certainly filled a need, but its been sitting in pieces in my garage for years.  The oak hutch is one of my favorite things and stands gracefully over me as I type this.