Settled On

Alisa and Keith had a very cozy tri-level townhouse in Wheeling with two spare bedrooms and extra bathroom for us. They worked so hard to make us comfortable, and as a married, working couple without kids, the imposition of dilapidated us falling down on them had to have been an imposition, but they never once showed it.

We fell into a routine: My husband and Keith would drive together to the Metra station and take the train together downtown and back every day. Alisa drove around a lot for work at that time, and would often get home before the men in the evening giving us a chance to share our day as we put dinner together. I quickly enrolled Jims in a preschool program run by a long-time friend in my old North Park neighborhood, and otherwise kept my little kids entertained, tried to keep Alisa & Keith’s home intact and clean, shopped for food and put dinner together for all of us each night, and of course worked on finding us permanent residence.

Life obviously doesn’t stand still when you’ve been away for years, so even though the Chicagoland area was familiar to me, things changed. I forgot where things were and had no idea how places had evolved. Where to take sick kids to the doctor? How to begin looking into kindergarten? What did housing cost? Where to buy a car? Where to insure a car? Alisa & Keith helped us navigate all of these things and with their generosity, really took the pressure off making quick decisions in favor of making good decisions.

Finally, we settled on Evanston. It is where I grew up, very convenient to the city, right on the lake which would provide lots of entertainment in the summer, and a true city with neighborhoods and a culture—not a suburb with subdivisions and cul-de-sacs. And we decided to rent at first. Evanston was expensive and also we decided that we weren't in a great place to make a commitment as huge as real-estate purchase. Buying our little Ford Focus and committing to 2-year mobile phone plans seemed like big enough steps. In Latvia, you never had to commit to much of anything.

With a city and community settled on, I began making calls and arranging to look at flats. Like Chicago, Evanston has many flats. High and mid-rise apartment buildings of course exist, but brick buildings with very spacious 2-8 unit apartments are even more prevalent, and that’s where I steered our home search. Chicago flats are very comfortable. I’ve lived in several of them: North Sawyer was a 3-flat, flats were my homes with friends in college and after, and of course, my Great Grandma Lucy’s 2-flat meant love and old-Chicago all rolled together. They are solidly built with brick, oak, and wet plaster. They have enormous windows, vestibules, ancient buzzer systems, always a living room and dining room, gorgeous doors, and back porches. They were efficient but elegant, encouraged community and family, and were simply built to last. I learned to appreciate them, and it was settled.

While Jims was in preschool, I would drive up with my little girl, park and stroll her down the streets I grew up on looking for For Rent signs and assessing the buildings and neighborhoods from the outside. It was very cathartic walking these same sidewalks as the mother instead of the toddler in the stroller, or the little girl trying to avoid the cracks, or the preteen with a dollar in her pocket heading to the bakery for a happy face cookie. There was most certainly a full-circle feeling running through me, and as I found myself in front of Mustard’s Last Stand, next to Dyke Stadium and across the street from the colonial office building my father used to work in (top floor, last window on the left), and with the oak trees in bud and daffodils in bloom, something inside of me--louder than a nudge and quieter than a whack on the head--said there's a story in all of this.  It was about the size of a whisper, but very clear, that one day, when the time is right and the whole circle closed and everything settled on, I would have a story that I would need to write and that this day would be part of it. 

Merry Sunshine

As I wrote before, at age 13, my family moved to North Sawyer Avenue in Chicago. I hated every minute of it. I hated our new home, I hated our tiny back yard, and I hated my new school. As an 8th grader from a proper middle school in Evanston, I did not appreciate this K-8 business at the new school. I did not want to have recess with first graders. Heck, I did not want to have RECESS at all! To add insult to injury, students did not eat lunch at this institution. You walked home for lunch, thus eliminating a big social component. Not that it mattered much because I felt like there wasn’t a single person I could relate to and that they had prejudged me as a stuck up girl from the suburbs anyway. Probably this was a bit true, and honestly, I did my fair share of prejudging as well.

So everything about my little life at that age felt completely out of my control and like one giant step backward. This frustration was of course punctuated by all the daily trekking back and forth four blocks to the stupid school. After about two weeks of my walking pity party, out of nowhere a girl, a fellow 8th grader I hadn’t noticed before, started walking home with me. She talked. I talked back. This continued until we got to my house and I asked this chick where she lived—right next door, a fact she already knew. Alisa and I have been walking together ever since.

Unlikely friends had become best friends very quickly. My bedroom window and her sister’s bedroom window were only separated by the gangway (about six feet) and we would hang out the windows and talk and talk until her sister demanded her room back so that she could blast Madonna’s Holiday. Then we would swipe my brother’s walkie-talkies when our parents (and Alisa’s sister) were irritated at the amount of phone time we spent. We would have secret celebrations in the gangway with Perrier water and full size bagel dogs her Bubby would buy. We were inseparable that year to the point that for a while her dad thought I was passing her drugs through the carefully folded up notes we’d exchange on pretty paper. We weren’t doing anything even remotely questionable, though, just being 13 year old girls talking and analyzing our way through life.

In what seemed like a cruel twist of fate, as quickly as I had been plucked from the suburbs and plopped in Chicago, Alisa was plucked from the city to the suburbs. Just days after our 8th grade graduation, their family moved a million miles away (or about 20) to Buffalo Grove.

It was heartbreaking to think that we would be separated. However, through high school, college, her graduate school, deaths, marriages, births, oceans and way beyond, distance has been the only negative thing ever between us since 1984.

I could never adequately articulate what this relationship or what this woman means to me except to say that one gray day Alisa chose to walk beside me and the glorious, merry sunshine came out. Thank G_D she didn’t run.

Home Again

Chicago and its North Shore is my home. I grew up in Evanston through 7th grade and then we moved to the North Park neighborhood on the north side of Chicago. But returning to my home was both helpful and disconcerting. Helpful in that I had friends, family and a knowledge base, but disconcerting in that there’s always a self-imposed expectation as to lifestyle. There are no truly fresh starts when you go back home.

My husband was to report to his first day of work almost as soon as we landed, which left the heavy lifting of getting settled pretty much up to me. This move happened so quickly that we didn’t have time to find a place to live, but my most beautiful friend Alisa and her husband St. Keith generously offered to take us in for a few weeks until we could figure it all out.

When we got to their lovely townhouse, Alisa took one look at me (my friends can really read me like a book) and knew there was crisis. A few weeks lasted about four months, and Alisa and Keith gave us so much more than a place to stay. As Alisa has always managed to do with me, she took the scary hurt away making it ok to be home again.

Practicing

We left Latvia with much less ceremony and much more baggage than what we’d arrived with years earlier. A huge container had been loaded up and brought to the Port of Riga ready to cross the Atlantic. It would arrive in New York in about a month's time and then trucked to Chicago a few weeks after that. We moved to Chicago early in January, 2000 with two kids, four suitcases, Sissy’s big German stroller, and a Pack & Play. So much for 100 pounds of home.

I remember sitting in a restaurant at Gatwick airport the day we “moved.” London was our layover and we had many hours to kill. I don’t think I’d slept in days, the kids were antsy and feeding off of my unsure nerves, and all this tension was coming to a head. Gatwick felt like purgatory.

Jims' Godmother, Aunt Lisa (now London Lisa), who had just months before moved from Riga to Chicago herself, met us at O'Hare after we had travelled about 24 hours and scooped us up. Lisa will tell you that she isn't the nurturing type, but she mothered me and the kids perfectly right then (my husband never needed mothering--just ask his mother). She was sympathetic as our comforting link of familiarity from our suddenly-vanished life in Latvia; she had long, tight arms especially for Jims who needed to be around someone happier than I was; and for me she had a sister's searing look of strength mixed with slight irritation that said, "Come on, Maren pull it together...!"

Everything had turned into a frenetic scramble inside me and I was all at once amazed and aggravated that the effects of what we were doing, what we uprooted, didn’t seem to bother my husband one way or another. It didn’t feel right to me, but then nothing did, so as any good designer should do, I began rearranging my black to balance out his pastels and florals. I was practicing, trying to turn my tension into something more interesting and hopefully practical.

Tension as a Tool

This particular part of the story feels very long and drawn out to me. Stupidly, I’m just remembering that this period of time was long and drawn out! This process of moving to the US was tedious, gut wrenching in many ways, and just downright laborious. It was wrought with tension.

My husband was a Peace Corps Volunteer. At a close of service conference he attended after two years in Latvia, the volunteers were told to be prepared for culture shock when moving back home. They spewed off a statistic that said something like, for every six months you’ve spent in the field, expect it to take one month to readjust to life in America. For us at that point, this readjustment time amounted to about a year. At first I didn’t buy it—I’m not someone who lets a lot of grass grow under my feet (another gift from Winnie), but I had this terrible anxiety at my growing task list and growing “unknowns” list, and I was beginning to get the point. An inner tension prevailed and was getting stronger by the day.

The thing about tension is this: I think a little is a very good thing. Nothing worthwhile I’ve ever done seems to come without a dose of it, and I come to expect it—often even welcome it—when I work at something that’s important to me. It’s the thing that shows contrast. It’s the thing that makes the mundane or the tedium all of a sudden a bit more interesting. A little is a very good thing.

I liken it to putting a room together—there needs to be some tension as a stabilizer or a grounding. It actually makes a space feel more comfortable. Think of when you would visit your old Aunt Florence (I had two of them, I know…). You would likely enter her living room and be stared at by generations of photographs in glimmering silver frames sitting atop a round piece of glass which tacked down a piece of floral chintz. Then a petite settee in another fancy pattern of matching tones would beckon you to come keep the needlepoint pillow company. These are the same flavor as the curtains, as the lampshade, as the rug, as the Florentine foot on the sofa table, etc. There’s nothing wrong with this, the coordination evokes softness, peacefulness, bygone eras, and Aunt Florence’s folly, yet it’s UNCOMFORTABLE!

Enter blessed TENSION! Throw some BLACK mats under those silver picture frames! Replace the mauve throw draped over the chair with a vibrant PURPLE one! Toss the chintz doily and let the glass top rest DIRECTLY on the rich mahogany round side table. Break it up! Add some TENSION and suddenly, flowers and pastels are actually appealing. Everything is more interesting when given room to breathe.

I often find the same irritation when entering the ladies room in nice hotels and restaurants. The overworked décor is simply agitating. It’s all very pretty and serene, but I can’t hike up my tights fast enough to get out of there! It needs an infusion of the unexpected. Tension equals relief.

…Until there’s too much. Then there’s chaos.

The Life Chronological

I will note my absence from posting by letting you know that all these events happened exactly ten years ago this December. It’s a lot for me to take in, and realize, and write about! In the last entry I wrote about not knowing what had hit me, and this is true, but I was reacting to a sense of duty and didn’t have time to be dogmatic or even thoughtful about it.

Wallace Stegner, in his Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Angle of Repose, tells the story of a grandmother’s remarkable life as explained by her grown and physically impaired grandson. When I first read it while living in Latvia, everything resonated with me, and if you know the book, the reasons why are obvious. Stegner writes,

“My grandparents had to live their way out of one world and into another, or into several others, making the new out of old the way corals live their reef upward. I am on my grandparents’ side. I believe in Time, as they did, and in the life chronological rather than in the life existential. We live in time and through it, we build our huts in its ruins, or used to, and we cannot afford all these abandonings.”

This is exactly how I sold this lifestyle change to myself—that it was my generational and marital duty to pull up my skirts and get on with the business of moving forward.

The care that I took creating a home out of nothing in these Latvian flats was all to be left behind. The heart and work I put into building the Jaunmarupe house—designing my first kitchen, engineering the layout of gorgeous Villeroy & Boch tiles, standing over the guy with mortar and glass block making sure he built a shower wall exactly to my specifications, painting every single room myself, measuring and creating a design with the hundreds of balusters in the loft so little people wouldn’t slip through (although little Sissy did manage to get her head stuck during Thanksgiving dinner…), arranging our precious few belongings including our gorgeous antiques I’ve described within the walls built specifically to fit them—all to leave behind. Who can afford to believe in the “life existential” anyway.

Leaving

Now that we’ve segued through Thanksgiving, on with the story: I don’t think it ever really HIT me that we were leaving Latvia. We just built this house, our lives were comfortable, we knew how to manage living there, and life there seemed to just get better and better. It all happened so fast, though, and there was so much to do, I never really had time to process it.

We had a month before my husband started his new job in Chicago, and we were still on vacation in Florida! He had to resign from his current job, we had to figure out how to get a shipping container to move from Latvia to Chicago, figure out where we were going to live in Chicago, figure out what to do with our house and car and other things we couldn’t/didn’t want to take with us, get medical records and vital documents in order, I had to tie up loose ends of projects I was involved in, say our goodbyes, the list went on and on and there simply wasn’t time to ponder anything. We just had to do it.

That month was one of the scariest, busiest and most surreal times in my life. Nothing about it felt right, but there was little I could do to argue the plan. The String of Tension had apparently thickened its hold again, and cooperation and infallible union seemed to me to be the only remedy for easing it.

Thanksgiving

Interrupting the story again to touch on Thanksgiving. How can I not? I think Thanksgiving is a very creative holiday, definitely a part of my process, and certainly should count here.

Growing up, my holidays were probably much like yours: Lots of family gathered around one big dining table, a few satellite tables nearby, and the obligatory kiddo table. There were always at least two gigantic birds, enough other food to feed small African nations, happy spirits of the soulful and liquid variety, lovely tables set, scenic outdoor images from the windows of the candle and fireplace glow inside, and usually a slack handful of otherwise dinnerless friends/boyfriends/fiancés of my relatives. This is what Rockwell had in mind.

Christmas seems to hold more tradition in both the American sense and of course the religious sense, and although Thanksgiving is strictly American and traps tradition, it’s somehow looser. This was made evident to me during our time in Lativa. Those were the very best Thanksgivings.

Truth told, although our American clan I’ve written about before looked for any excuse to get together, Thanksgiving was special. It meant sharing in an intentional way our heritage, our nostalgia, and of course, our thankfulness.

Finding a turkey was always part of the anticipation. That generally started in September. Turkeys weren’t raised in the Baltics, Polish turkeys were skinny, and no one wanted to even think about a Russian bird. If we got into a pinch, we might settle for a Scandinavian hen, but the angling always started at the American Embassy—they always ordered a pile of Butterballs and had them delivered hard as rocks through the Diplomatic Pouch. None of us were embassy employees and our State Department status at the Peace Corps (1) wore out, and (2) didn’t have any clout to begin with. So we had to buddy up to someone in order to save the rest of us from a pasta Thanksgiving (which Lisa would have pulled off, but still…). The problem was that this embassy tribe of employees was usually pretty transient. As soon as one of us got to know any of them, their term was up and they were going home, but once in a while (usually with an invitation to our infamous gathering), some Secretary of Something would tack on a 25 lb. bird for us. Otherwise there was smuggling. If one of us had an autumn trip to the States lined up, or visiting family, we would bring back a turkey or two. The American’s didn’t care if we took it out of the country, but the Latvian’s always scratched their heads at us bringing it in. That frozen ball shrinked-wrapped in plastic with English all over it appeared mighty threatening notwithstanding the pop-up indicator.

So once the stress of the turkey was over, we could look forward to the rest. Scrounging ingredients to make American side dishes, fudging recipes to make things taste like Grandma’s, and the crazy routes and distances we would take to make it “home” for Thanksgiving was always part of the fun. See? Creative!

More often than not, Lisa would host Thanksgiving. For one she loves to cook and entertain, and for another, she has a house and the space for often 30 of us. One year, actually I think it was the year Lisa was in the States after having given birth to her second daughter on Halloween, we rented a villa (for lack of a better word). It was a big old house, with lots of land, rolling hills, a barn and a sauna. We had the complete run of the place. I think about 20 of us spent the weekend there, cooking and decorating, sledding, keeping the heat going in the house, reading by the fire, general monkeying around.

Thanksgivings were always very cold, beautiful, delicious and made us all the more thankful to be together in sometimes God-forsaken Latvia. And they had become infectious. By this time our Thanksgiving gatherings had created something of a buzz in the international community and everyone wanted to experience what we had that day. Often we had foreign guests, and they were always very cautious not to steal the show or trample on our heritage. They knew they were guests; observers to our Americana.

I think back on those days, remember how hard we worked to create something special for each other through all the senses. Those holidays inspire me to work every day at creatively creating comfort, safety, warmth and love. Thanksgiving is absolutely part of this story.

And I wish you all a happy, memory-making, creative, inspiring and bountiful Thanksgiving!

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.

Thanks

It's been a busy week, so I haven't been able to keep up here as I would have liked, but I do want to thank you for the fantastic feedback! I am extremely touched that so many of you have expressed enjoyment out of reading this. It's humbling and encouraging all at the same time. It is my honor to offer a mid-afternoon bender!

Until my thoughts are re-collected and we go back to Riga, 1998, I remain yours truly,

Sissy's Bed

So as my Sissy was lamenting about her deprived life and space, I was trying to explain to her all the good juju that surrounds her in her very own physical place in the world. It was getting through to her that her room was not only lovingly designed by me and decorated by us together, but also that the things that take up her space are meaningful—full of history and reminiscences and love. All things I want to fill her life with.

Then I got to the story of her big oak bed.

When she was a baby, I managed to get out of the house one Saturday morning and walked through Riga’s Old Town which is just a few blocks from Valdemāra 77. It was kind of raining and I didn’t really have any destination in mind, but I found myself walking through a funny little passage I didn’t usually take, and I found a little antique shop, so I went in to get out of the weather and kill some time. This was a tiny place, but it was packed, and also there was a Latvian man running the shop. This was unusual because for some reason Russians seemed to be the primary proprietors of antique shops. The only reason this matters is because I couldn’t speak very well and in turn negotiate with the Russians (I spoke Latvian). So a very sweet old Latvian man was very happy to see me that drizzly Saturday morning and was anxious to offer coffee and let me squeeze through this shop. Honestly, it was more like a crammed closet than a shop, but I enjoyed talking to him and looking around trying to take it all in. It was full of big old wardrobes and dressers, and nothing was arranged—just piled and stacked. But then I saw something that caught my eye. It was oak with a very tight grain and a gorgeous patina, and it looked like little doors. So I asked my man what the heck this was and he told me a girl’s bed. OH!

For a little European-sized twin (slightly smaller than a standard US twin), it’s massive. The headboard is almost 5’ tall and footboard slightly shorter. They are constructed as in an Arts & Crafts fashion, except that they have delicate floral hand carvings at the top. If I had to date it, I would say this was built around 1920 when the Arts & Crafts movement met Art Nouveau. You can understand why I thought they were little doors. Then I asked my man how they worked and he showed me the two big rails that looked more like beams leaning on another wall. OH!

It was perfect. No damage, no stains, perfect. This bed was clearly made and taken care of with a lot of tenderness and purpose for a very special and very loved little girl. All I could think about was this little girl falling asleep feeling like a princess with her dad’s handiwork and protection cradling her sleep. This felt like a secret treasure and I had to rescue it for my girl. So I asked my man coyly how much. 50 USD he told me. OH!

I felt too guilty to even dicker with him. I ran home to get my car. I don’t even think I called my husband to tell him what I was doing. I had my keys on me, so I just took my car and zoomed back down to Old Town to try to park close to the shop. It used to be that there was no driving through Riga’s Old Town—you had to have a special permit or have diplomatic plates, so I had to park somewhere on the outskirts. I ran back to the shop(as if someone was really going to steal my treasure in the rain from that mess of a shop in the 10 minutes it took me to return), I plunked down my $50 and lugged this bed three blocks to my car. Four pieces took me four trips. It was kind of a ridiculous site really. The rails are at least 60 lbs. each and are about 6’ long, and the headboard I'm sure weighs more than me, but I carried ALL of it in the rain to my big old car.

When I got home, my husband was a little irritated that I went and bought even more furniture for our already filled flat especially since Sissy was still an infant. I think he was cursing under his breath as I enlisted his help in hauling all of this up two flights of stairs, and then we got it in. And he LOOKED at it. Then he looked at me and said, “Yeah, you needed to get this.”

So, Caroline, I believe your special bed was crafted especially for a little Latvian girl who's riches surrounded her. And I believe this bed was waiting in that crowded corner of the little old Latvian man’s antique shop just for me to resurrect it for you. There is lots of love that surrounds you as you sleep tight in your very own room.

Sissy's Room

So our Sissy is now 11. She is on that tender cusp between little girl and snotty teenager and I’m desperately trying to keep the snot out. Sis has always been a mamma’s girl. Without question, she adores her father, but she has an inherent need to be connected to me physically and spiritually, so we foster that. My mother would tell you she is exactly like me from her quick temper, to her endless collections, to her always-game-for-an-adventure attitude, to her eager drive to see things through. With that, I’m going to side track our tale for a bit and share a relevant slice of the present…

Last week, she was eager to “do something” with her room. Her brother just had a cool man-chair added to his room to help encourage high school studying, and she, naturally, was feeling short changed. I told her I’m not discussing anything about her room until it was CLEANED UP, and surprisingly, she didn’t fight me on it. She was really angling… It should be noted that in Sissy’s 12’x12’ish room, she has a desk, chair, narrow chest of drawers, 32” round pedestal table, end table, her bed, and Tuna-the-cat’s bed.

Finally she announced that her room was vacuum ready and with tape measure in hand, she ordered me up to discuss rearrangement options. She was bent on rearranging things herself, was desperate to move her massive bed around, sling her dresser and desk to opposite ends, add a man-chair of her own and bring in a dance floor. She did not like me telling her it’s not gonna work. We pulled the tape, we monkeyed with curtains, we discussed balance, and finally I had to pull out my Professional Interior Designer card and tell her (in the same gentle terms I tell all of my clients things they don’t want to hear), that there is no other way to arrange her room for more floor space and that what she has is the very best way to arrange her room. (It should also be noted, too, that through all of this I’m laughing to myself as I’m rolling my eyes at her—after all, this is my determined little thing—MY most recent sculpture—the same girl who for Christmas two years ago wanted crown molding in her room!) She was crushed, though. Life isn’t fair, Jims gets EVERYTHING, and she never gets anything, lalala…

Once she finished her tirade, we sat down on her bed, and with her silky brown head in my lap, I reminded her that her corner desk was mine growing up where I did all my homework, wrote in my diary, and read my Nancy Drews while I sat in the same old maple almost Windsor-backed chair that used to be Grandpa Evans’ kitchen chair when he was a boy. Then I told her how her side table came from the radio cabinet makers in Aluksne from our first home, and how I fell in love with the chest of drawers from Latvia crafted by a friend who made new furniture from recycled antiques scattered around the Baltics. I asked her if she remembered when she was six and we found her pretty, shiny, black round pedestal table at a funny furniture store in the town where her Grandnan lives. I reminded her about how I stumbled upon her fantastic Tord Boontje die-cut light fixture while in Paris with her Aunt Lisas, and how I had to have it for her because it was called “Misdummer Light” even though it meant I had to hand carry it all the way home. And then I told her the story of her gorgeous bed...a story that will have to be continued tomorrow…

A Sissy

The arrival of my daughter was almost identical to that of my son in that I was sequestered away in Helsinki for at least a month and living back at the Mission House. The difference was that it was summer instead of early spring, my friend Lindsey and her family no longer lived in Helsinki, and I had my three year old guy with me. It was a neat adventure for him so much so that he barely missed his dad who was again working back at home. We spent a lot of time playing the park outside the Mission House, climbing up the big hill to the shops, taking the ferry to the Helsinki Zoo, and there was a lot of fun to be had with the old gate mechanical elevator.


My little boy took it upon his little three year old self to “take care of Mamma.” The truth is that I was nervous about being alone with him with no help so late in my pregnancy, and we rehearsed the what ifs if I went into labor before Daddy could come. He is a patient and compliant soul to begin with, but he was especially easy on me that month as we waited for his sister to be born. Jameson charmed the pants off of everyone as usual with his huge blue eyes and sweet closed-mouth grin, and it was exciting for me to see him not only adapt well to this unusual change of pace, but really rise to the occasion.

A few weeks into our stay in Helsinki, my good friend Lisa (aka Latvia Lisa or Kiki’s Aunt Lisa for those of you who know my friends) came to stay with us for a few days. She was also expecting her second baby in October--we had the same doctor and she had an appointment. This was a HUGE relief to me! Lisa got me out and moving, kept my spirits up, calmed my nerves, provided familiar comfort to my son, and was over all a great distraction. It’s extremely tedious to be pulled away from your home, city and normal routine to sit somewhere to do nothing but wait for your body to push out another body.

By the time Lisa had prolonged her stay as far as possible, we were pretty sure I was going into early labor. We happened to be at Ikea at the time (remember Lis?). She hated leaving us, but had to, and in the end arranged it so that Jims and I would only be alone for about a day before my husband arrived (another panicked phone call, but this time he drove to Tallinn and did not fly). Part of the urgency to time departures and arrivals just right was not only because of the baby, but also because of the mid-summer holiday and festivities going on throughout the Baltics and Finland. Life comes to a complete standstill for the longest day of the year.

Midsummer’s Eve, 1998 did turn out to be the longest day of the year for me especially. At midnight, Jims was fast asleep, my husband who had just arrived a few hours before was about to sleep, and I started rocking furiously in a rocking chair. It was time to go to the hospital. I woke my three year old child and told him that we had to go. He jumped up from his little bed and exclaimed, “Don’t worry Mamma! The nurses and I will take care of you!” And on went his little shoes. My husband had to call three cab companies before he could get one to pick up the phone, and when we did finally pile into a cab which reeked of vodka, the clearly inebriated driver drove like a bat out of hell to get us to the hospital. There wasn’t that big of a rush, but he was clearly nervous.

Seven hours later on Midsummer’s Day, Caroline was born. A nurse came to take Big Brother away to the cafeteria during the exact moments of her birth, and once he was brought back in, he kissed her little brown head and sweetly asked, “Is that my Sissy?” That’s your Sissy. He always knew she was a sister—never any doubt, and as we know, the nickname’s stuck.

Riga

Riga is a very beautiful city. When I was living there, reconstruction and restoration were just taking off and it was almost like a veil of dust and damp was being lifted off of this magnificent place. The history is rich and the buildings are stunning. Even in pre-restoration states, there were still unbelievable pearls in the pits. If you search for Jugendstil and Riga, you will see images of what I mean. And I encourage you to do so!

I spent hours each day pushing my big stroller through the streets and parks to pick up the mail, go to the market, take Jameson to his play group, etc., and even though getting my stroller wheels stuck on broken cobblestones, narrow doorways or un-shoveled sidewalks was frustrating, I was always awed by being lucky enough to live in a city that was reclaiming it’s vibrancy. Admittedly, winter was long, dark, cold and sloppy, but the spring was glorious. There were always pensioners in front of our building (and on most street corners) selling hyacinths, daffodils, tulips and crocuses wrapped in newspaper, and I was always happy to hand over my 15 sentimes (30 cents) for a little bouquet. It helped that people were smiling when the sun came out, too, even if they didn’t have a tooth in their heads.

For me, walking through those streets, seeing very old and very poor people coming out of what was clearly once a home for some very wealthy German baron or something was absolutely fascinating. There had to be a story behind it, and to me, imagining the buildings restored was like restoring the memories of these old folks who had clearly lived hard and oppressed lives. The whole history excited me—not just the history of Riga, the people or the architecture, but the life cycle of these combined. It gave me an energy that I didn’t know what to do with aside from just soaking it in and wondering if it would ever really impact me in a way besides emotional. But anything more than physically taking care of my husband and child was out of reach for many superseding reasons—the biggest being that I was going to have another baby.

V-77 II

Riga and I agreed with each other. It wasn’t nearly the project getting this flat in order. I appreciated the move- in condition of Valdemāra 77 and so did my busy 18 month old! This is a photo of our building taken by my friend Denise a few months ago. Our flat is the first three sets of windows on the left above the sign. The outside obviously isn’t anything remarkable, nor did the inside have any unusual architectural features (unless you can count 12’ ceilings), but like I wrote, it was remodeled for the upright-walking man which made it attractive enough! The top of the very tall walls were screaming DO SOMETHING with me in our living room, so I did borrow a ladder and stretch to cap the tops with a long, three-part stencil in jewel tones. It was very pretty way up there and made the room a bit less cavernous. I made some curtains, and kept rearranging our furniture, but other than that, nothing needed to be done.

With the inside shovel-ready for living, that meant I could get outside. Like I said, Riga and I agreed with each other.

The thing about the washing machine

I should probably explain something about washing machines to my American readers. Europeans don’t do laundry like we Americans. Not even civilized Western Europeans do laundry like we Americans. First of all, Europeans don’t have the clothes we Americans do. Moreover, we learned that there was a lot of waste in laundering. Hot water was inconsistent, space to hang things to dry was limited, and doing laundry was generally a pain in the neck. And while underwear is indeed considered dirty every day, we wore wool socks that were good for at least two days, and jeans often could go weeks without really needing a wash. Sounds gross, but believe me, we really were the sweetest smelling people in town. It helped that we brushed out teeth and didn’t smoke or bathe in vodka.

Part of the reason it took so long for us to get a washing machine was because they were hard to come by. Dryers as Americans know them were non-existent. There was an agitating washing contraption that was easily available, but it made a gigantic mess and didn’t really clean anything. The other option was to send the laundry out for a per-kilo fee. This we did when we had big stuff like blankets and sleeping bags, and after a few rounds of washing sheets, jeans and towels by hand we would send those out for cleaning as well, but this took time (like a week), wasn’t convenient, and had other drawbacks that I’ve mentioned before. I thought it was easier to just fill the bathtub and scrub against a washboard in the orange water.

My college-aged brother in law came to visit for a very long month while I was pregnant and feeling nauseous all the time. (Lucky him.) He came with more stuff for a month than my husband and I had combined. About a week into his trip, I asked him if he had any laundry for me to do. I almost threw up all over him when he handed me four pair of jeans, about 18 socks, gobs of boxer shorts and more t-shirts than I knew one man could own. Really? I said. He just looked at me incredibly as if to say, how dare you think I can possibly wear this pair of jeans two days in a row! He clearly didn’t realize what this endeavor entailed or that washing jeans was one of the biggest pains in the ass on earth. But soldier on I did, and he finally got the message when it took five days for all of his clothes to dry and they weren’t warm and fluffy or smelling like Bounce. In the end, he DID end up having to wear the same pair of jeans two (maybe even three!) days in a row. Šausmigs!

It was a regular site to enter someone’s bathroom and see clothes lines hung above the tub. We had that, too, and once in a while socks or shirts would spill out over the radiators or kitchen chairs, but by the time a third person was living full time with us, even though he was tiny, laundry became the bane of my existence. Fortunately, Pampers could be found all the time, even at the local kiosk with cigarettes, bananas, and beer, but there are only so many spit-up rags one can deal with on a daily basis, and unlike jeans and wool socks, those COULD NOT be stretched another day! So after a little research and digging, we found an Indesit automatic washing machine with a built-in heated centrifuge (the closest thing to a tumble dryer). It was about the size of a dishwasher and held about ¼ of a regular American load of laundry. It took almost an hour and a half to cycle through each load, but it was great. Clothes wouldn’t come out completely dry, but hanging them out for an hour sure beat hanging them out for days.

In Alūksne, the washing machine was hooked up in the bathroom, but in Riga, there was a special spot all its own under the counter in the kitchen. Very civilized. Yes, even in the kitchen, very civilized. And in Riga, I no longer had damp clothes hanging from every door and pipe—I bought a drying rack! This may have been the best 8 Lats I ever spent in Riga. I could hang TWO loads of clothes from this thing, and it only took up as much space as an ironing board. Because of the limited capacity of the washing machine, the only way to keep up was to do laundry every day, so my drying rack was a permanent fixture at the end of our spare room in Riga.

That thing has travelled with me all this time and I still get people asking me where I found such a fantastic drying rack…ha ha. As I write, my fabulous Latvian drying rack is holding “delicates” and a bath mat. Old habits die hard.

Valdemara 77

A new job took us from Alūksne to Riga—a move I couldn’t make fast enough! There was really no community for me in Alūksne and lonely didn’t even begin to describe it. Riga had everything, long-time friends, an ex-pat community, restaurants, shops and a buzz. I found us a new flat at Krišjānis Valdemāra iela 77. It was four rooms with a kitchen and bathroom and had been previously been rented and renovated by a foreigner—this meant the fabulous fiberglass wallcovering and real paint had already been applied along with a clean bathroom (meaning fresh tile and fixtures that hadn’t been rusted out by the orange water) and a western kitchen (our love affair with Ikea continues). It even had a designated place for my new washer/dryer unit in the kitchen! All we had to buy was a stove, and as luck would have it, the only electric stove that would fit was a top of the line Electrolux glass top. Darn. I wouldn’t get to light a pilot every time I wanted to boil drinking water and hope we don't all blow up.

Good Riddance

We lived in that flat in Aluksne for almost two more years. I think our last home improvement there was procuring a washing machine which at the time was an enormous luxury. Prior to that, I would usually do laundry by hand in the bathtub, and once in a while we would send our laundry out for some old lady to do, but that wasn’t my preference because it took too long, the clothes would smell funny, and they would be rough and hard.


We left Aluksne for Riga, Latvia’s capital and when we shut the door on that flat for the last time I didn’t look back. Even though I’d thrown myself into making that flat a haven for my family, Aluksne was a very hard place to live, and it was easy to let go of all that effort. This was odd for me. Usually I get much more attached, but good riddance was all I could think of.

I’m sure that old Soviet block apartment is still standing, and not until today have I ever wondered who has lived in and hopefully enjoyed the work and love put into that flat.

Petie and the Pratie

So settling back in to the BEF in Aluksne was underway. I don’t think I mentioned, though, that before I was Mamma to a baby, I was Mamma to a kitty cat. Peteris Pirmais (Latvian for Peter the Great), or more commonly known as "Petie," was an orange striped tabby who thought he was a dog. Somehow I end up with cats that act like dogs. First there was Tonto, also orange striped and as faithful a companion as any Native American, then Petie, and now Tuna who is all gray save a white heart on his throat. All of these felines knew how to work a crowd, work over a rodent, and hold their own with raccoons, possums, and I think Petie might have even had a run-in with a wild boar once…


At any rate, I finished the second bedroom of the flat with a potato. At that point I was tired of scouring the country for decent materials, and I didn’t have the time anyway, so I thought I’d go native. Not that Latvians decorated with potatoes, (however I do believe they have 101 uses for the ubiquitous tuberous crop) but native in that for once I was going to use a completely indigenous resource to help make the flat more of a home. Call it embracing my environment.  So I cut stars out of the praties, dunked them in blue paint, and stamped Jameson’s new room full of blue stars.

As I was doing this, I was using newspapers on the floor to blot the paint, my little guy was snoozing in his bouncy seat nearby, and Petie was standing guard over his new ward. Petie thought he was the bodyguard. At one point, I noticed Petie jumping around trying to catch a very fat but very fast fly, and the cat was very agitated—the fly was getting too close to his baby—then the fly landed on our sleeping boy’s head. Oh the conflict on that cat’s face! He wanted to swat and pounce, but he didn’t dare bother the boy! As soon as the fly flew off, Petie bounded after it only to land in paint and add paw prints to the stars on my blotting papers. No harm done, but kind of a cute story and illustration of how this became a family affair.

Not a Sculptor

It was true, with a little assistance and a whole lot of grace, a beautiful child was indeed sculpted. All mothers are obligated to say and feel this, but in those first hours of Jameson’s life, once we were finally left alone together, I marveled at his 19 ¾” of perfection. I remember this specifically because, to my amazement, when I fingered his tiny curled ear, it blossomed open under my touch. Jameson still has beautiful ears!

So when I was told with a wink and a smile that I was “a sculptor,” I was too embarrassed and grungy-feeling to really believe that I had done anything remotely amazing or artistic—Jameson’s beauty was clearly God’s handiwork and I just did the eating and the pushing. It didn’t take long, though, for this rejected compliment to reach deeper depths for me. Scarier depths.

A few entries ago, I wrote about leaving the flat in Aluksne only to return several weeks later to an essentially new life. Physically having baby and making that adjustment is about as life changing as one can get, but never one to take things half way, the birth of this child was redefining my approach in ways it would take me years to even understand.

So in those first days, as I put Baby Jameson to bed in the big vegetable basket he slept in, all I could thing about was this huge responsibility, and opportunity, to sculpt his life. That would take REAL artistry, and that scared the hell out of me.

A Sculptor

Days after newborn Baby Jameson and I were discharged from the Naistenklinikka (where I may or may not have swiped one or two of their standard hospital-issue yet incredibly comfy nightgowns), we were trying to get to know each other back at the comfortable-but-not-home surroundings of the Mission House.

I was exhausted, felt awful, and had that brand new mother haze about me. So when a visiting friend turned to look at me holding my newborn, I naturally thought he was gawking at the black circles under my eyes, my dirty hair, and my newly soggy shirt. When I shot him an equally filthy look to get him to quit staring at me, he said with his signature twinkling eye, "Maren, you're a sculptor." Embarrassed, I rolled my own bloodshot eyes at him.

Helsinki III

After a few weeks of going about my business and reading too many heavy books like Sophie’s Choice (for me at the time, a terrible choice), I actually did make a friend. Lindsey was introduced to me through the International Church folks, my hosts. Lindsey’s husband worked for the American Embassy and they had lived in Helsinki for a couple of years by then. In fact, their daughter, two year old Emily, had been born at the same hospital where I would be admitted, so Lindsey knew all the ropes I had to maneuver.

Lindsey was truly heaven sent, and she operated like a big rainstorm (or like my Grandmother Winifred), fearless, fast moving, and washing all the dust away. Even in other types of foul weather, she was determined to get me out and distracted from my big wait. Likewise, she was determined to get her little brood out in the double-wide Emmaljunga stroller. Emily had a four year old brother Christopher—together they were an adorable team and always compliant and happy. Lindsey and her kids were an excellent example of what I'd soon be handling myself! We went on some wonderful little excursions, us four, and Lindsey took excellent care of my spirit. She took this photo of me a week before my son was born.

When I finally thought I might possibly be in the early labor stages, Lindsey insisted that my husband get on the next plane. I was always hesitant to bother him with my own little insecurities and anxieties, and I wasn’t sure if this was labor or just going bananas, but Lindsey boldly responded to my flakiness and said, “It doesn’t matter, Maren! You need him and he needs to get here!” So together we picked him up from the airport in Helsinki and my husband didn’t exactly know what hit him--He’d just been shuffled onto a plane and then fetched by his slightly stir-crazy wife and some lady with lots of thick dark hair and two little matching kids strapped into the back seat of a Fiat!

In the end, my son was born 24 hours and a plate of deep fried jalapenos later on April 7th. Lindsey was right and knew exactly what I needed. Save my husband, she and little Emily were also my only visitors in the long (but customary) five day hospital stay. She had a fantastic chicken dinner waiting at my door on the day we were discharged back to the mission house, and soon after that, she and her husband Paul had us three over for another wonderful meal as a farewell to Helsinki.

Lindsey gave me so much more than distraction and good food, though. The love, kindness and instant friendship she showered me with has become something I have committed to passing forward. I knew I’d never be able to repay her, but it will always be my pleasure to return the favor in her honor to anyone crossing my path like I crossed hers.

Lindsey, Paul, Christopher and Emily came to visit us in Aluksne a few months later, and unfortunately, seas much wider than the Baltic have usually divided us since then, but we remain in contact. We both vividly and so fondly remember our very short time together. I was so grateful to her and the beautiful example of womanhood and motherhood she was--and still is!

Likely you are thinking that my little trip backwards has taken a wrong turn from the original direction of How I Became a Designer to Indulgent TMI, but I assure you, even though there are no building materials or architectural details involved in these few entries, our story has not gone astray! Thank you for sticking with me!

Helsinki II

I haven’t explained why I was shipped off to Helsinki. Most of you remember: I was there to have a baby. Medical care in Latvia at the time wasn’t um reliably safe. So long story short, I’d been receiving prenatal care from a doctor in Helsinki and was instructed to arrive at least one month before my due date so that any emergencies could be handled appropriately at the big Woman's Hospital. It wasn’t very feasible for my husband to sit there with me for a month or more since he had a job, so our friend Arden had arranged for me to stay at the mission house of the International Church. This was a beautiful old apartment building in the city center that had been converted to offices for the attached International Church and a few floors of dorms for missionaries who needed a place to stay while in Helsinki. I was able to stay in these dorms.

The whole set up was really ideal for me. The building was converted cleverly without losing some of the old details like the mechanical iron-grate elevator with the manual door. It was very safe and extremely convenient, too (not just the elevator, the whole building!). I was told I could have my pick of rooms on a certain floor since the dorms were otherwise empty and I was given keys, codes and even a mailbox. I chose a nice-sized room adjacent to a private bathroom and across the hall from the kitchen. Down the hall were two common living areas with satellite TV. Other than an African choir that was there for a few days (they were a lot of fun!) my floor was empty the whole time. My room overlooked a lovely little park that was always busy even in March and the harbor beyond it. It was really like a palace--sparkly bathrooms, fresh paint, clean furniture, a clothes washing machine(!), and a bottomless supply of hot water that could even be drunk right from the tap. Heavenly Helsinki!

After I got settled in and my husband left to go back to work, I was really on my own. Aside from scheduled doctor’s appointments, I generally filled my days by walking. There was a little American library set up by a government agency and it was at the opposite end of the city center from my place, so I usually made the library my destination and then would slowly work my way back from there. Along with an obnoxious amount of reading, I spent a lot of time window shopping, food shopping, a little bit of baby shopping (although the Latvians had made me pretty superstitious), and testing my sense of direction by exploring the winding streets and looking at the buildings. There is such a contrast between pre and post war construction. Helsinki was really opening my eyes to what the landscape of the Baltics could look like in 75 years.

The Baltics obviously weren’t the only concern or wonder I had about the future. This was really the first time I’d truly been alone—and aside from my unborn baby, I was REALLY alone. Believe it or not, it was still not only extremely expensive, but also technologically difficult to make phone calls to Latvia, so I think my husband and I spoke only a couple of times per week. Moreover, I only had access to a payphone in the dorm. Email wasn’t something that worked yet either, so even in 1995 it was kind of like the Dark Ages. All that quiet usually has a way of speaking certain truths if one’s ready to hear it. I think for me, some truths started peeping then, but the more immediate concerns were a bit bigger and scarier to deal with at the time--I had to deliver a baby by myself, potentially without even my husband with me, and in a foreign country. I was kind of in survival mode.

Helsinki I

As many of you know, Helsinki is an interesting city. It’s this funny hybrid of Scandinavian folksiness and Soviet utilitarianism. It is also happens to be the cleanest capitol city I’ve ever visited. Sterile even. Like you could lick the tram tracks and they might taste minty. Anyway, you see this as you walk the streets, but living there and experiencing it as a whole culture was something that really resonated with me during my two extended stays. Everything has a purpose and that thing—a window latch, a toilet paper holder, an elevator—is crafted beautifully. There are no frills, no gimmicks, no ornaments, no fluff, but everything is quality, clean and honest. That’s the way I encountered people, too. They did their jobs quietly and diligently with no song and dance, but with positive energy that was attractive.

The contrasts to me were astounding. Here I was an American—Excess is our middle name. We are used to more, bigger, better, faster, sweeter, brighter, etc. But I had just spent the last year thrown into a post-Soviet hangover where everything was run down, falling apart, gray, and unkempt, and uncared for. The attitudes of course, are similar respectively. (By the way, I’m not knocking Lativa or its people! In 1995 the country was till traumatized.) Socialism is just a different animal, I guess, and from my tiny perspective, it was working in Finland.

I appreciated the pride the Finnish people took in themselves, their work, and their community, and I appreciated the functional beauty they created out of very simple things. For me it was all very comfortable. At the time, I didn’t realize how important this would become for me in my approach to design, but truly, for my approach to living.

Filling the Flat

At the end of all this we had a bit of a housewarming party. Some of you were there. I found a photo…It was after New Year’s in 1995, and almost marked a year since I was brought to Latvia as a new wife. This was the first adult place I could call home, and while most of the necessities were there (we still didn’t have a washing machine), I was looking forward to filling it with life in every material, physical and spiritual sense of the word.

The party was certainly a start to that, but there was something bigger looming. A few weeks later, I had to leave for an extended stay in Helsinki. I remember crying that day as I got into the car and looked back at the windows of the flat through the curtains I had just made. I had just spent months creating this safe place to soothe our new and sort of feral life; Now I had to leave this home for at least 4 weeks which promised to be an unforgettable, unpredictable, and uncertain period of time. And I knew quite clearly that regardless of how this time played out, when I returned, none of it--my home, my marriage, my whole life--would ever be the same.

Locally Grown

Clearly, things were taking shape in the big empty flat. There was nothing opulent—hell, it was barely furnished at this point, but I was always amazed when even at this stage people (Americans, Latvians, Europeans) would walk into our place and inevitably give out some signal of approval. There was always a sigh, a nod, a little smile, or even an exclamation as they entered and got their bearings. It was hard, though, to actually make guests comfortable in our place for very long because despite the warm and creamy walls and inoffensive divans, eating on our laps and resting beer bottles on the floor was not comfortable.

Our first trip to Ikea in Stockholm is a story in and of its own, but we came back with a catalogue that had become my biggest source of entertainment that cold, dark winter. The solution for getting furniture seemed easy enough—Ikea does ship after all, but getting materials in and out of Latvia in 1994 was still a big, expensive pain in the ass. My husband, then, had the idea to chat up our new friends at the VEF Radio shop—remember the kitchen cabinets? They seemed to like the idea of making some knock-off Ikea furniture!

Once I knew they were game, I had a lot of fun tweaking some Ikea designs to fit our needs and then coming up with a few of my own. From birch and pine we ended up with two little end tables, a coffee table, a dining table with two benches, a hanging bookcase, and a pair of night tables to match the new bed. In the end it turned out beautifully!

Commissioning furniture sounds like another luxury expense, but having these pieces custom made for us, with unmistakable quality, and the lumber grown and processed in our very own town, was actually less expensive than purchasing it from Ikea. Our backwater radio-cabinet craftsmen were very proud of their results, too. Except for the coffee table, every single piece is still used and enjoyed 15 years later and across the ocean!

Mebelu Nams

Another thing we did while waiting for the carpet to arrive was look for furniture. Literally, we had a little gate-legged table, two stools and a mirror. Sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags was getting very old especially since I was pregnant. Things just were hard to come by at that point in Latvia especially in backwards Aluksne, and we were told to go to the only furniture store there was—Mebelu Nams (or “furniture house”). Like most necessities, Mebelu Nams was in Riga and by far the biggest store in Latvia at the time. I think it was even bigger than the Universal Veikals (the everything store—think Soviet Wal Mart).

Our buddy Ainars came through again and let us borrow his truck one day so we could take this excursion. Not really knowing what to expect from this Mebelu Nams, we were surprised. It was huge with many confusing floors full of furniture suites. The thing that really surprised us was that it wasn’t really possible to purchase a chest or a chair—you had to buy the previously blogged about kompleksa of furniture. We went in with intentions of finding a bed and sofa at a minimum, and again we didn’t know exactly what to expect, but the thing was that we couldn’t simply buy a couch—we had to buy two couches, two chairs, two end tables and a coffee table. Sounds convenient, right? Living room in a box, right? Ick. In theory this might have been a nice idea for several generations of folk who had been taught to never have an individual or creative thought because Mother Russia would see to all their needs, including, apparently, furnishing their homes. That was aggravating on many levels, but this was only half the problem. Not only was the notion of having to buy a packaged set of furniture unappealing to me, the FURNITURE was unappealing! There were two styles throughout this entire Ikea-sized store—horribly ugly and hideously ugly. The choices were cheaply-made, overly-ornamented, heavily lacquered crap imported from Italy, or Russian imports with a style which was a tasteless hybrid of the Italian design and the old lady designs which looked suspiciously like the wallpaper I’ve referred to before. It was all gigantic with price tags to match.

After wandering through this mouse maze of a store looking at one ugly kompleksa after another, we were discouraged and I could feel my taste level being compromised out of desperation and the prospect of spending the rest of the winter sleeping on the floor. My head hurt, I was nauseous, and even my unborn baby had had enough. My husband and I were starting to squabble because we were both frustrated and tired, and I finally said, “I’m not leaving without a bed.” And at that moment the Universe heard my cry.

As if by magic, we came upon a tiny corner of this vast store where there was yet another kompleksa of Polish furniture. It wasn’t bad despite what the sales lady was telling us. “Oh, you don’t want this,” she said, “It’s from Poland. It’s cheap looking and the quality must be bad because the price is less. And there isn’t a whole set to buy, a maximum of three pieces. And look, it’s made out of pine and the other is made out of shiny plastic.” Yes, these were really her arguments, and before she knew it we were asking if we could take it today.

Now, this Polish furniture wasn’t beautiful or terribly high quality, but it wasn’t bad at all. There was a bed frame (and ONLY a bed—no gaudy night tables or humongous wardrobes to match) which consisted of a pine headboard and footboard of good, five-piece construction in a natural finish and it came with two glorious looking European-sized twin mattresses. We also bought a sofa that came with the obligatory pair of matching armchairs. It was all upholstered in a soft, woven fabric with a large, jewel-toned floral print—the least offensive in the joint and even against my newly fiberbglassed and painted walls it was even a bit interesting. The furniture gods smiled down on me and whipped up a miracle that day, and we brought the whole kompleksa home in Ainars’ van.

Clever Scandinavians

Ok—on with the big empty flat story…

While waiting for that carpet to arrive, there were other things to be done. Namely, something had to happen with the cold concrete walls. This was a bit of an issue because quality paint was hard to come by for one thing, and latex wouldn’t stick to this for another. Somehow, though, the ceilings were high (8’-10’) in these block apartments, and they had been treated with some chalky paint-like substance and were white and clean looking. I wouldn’t want to lick them, but they looked ok, so that was one less thing to worry about.

Now most Latvians covered these types of walls with bad wallpaper in antiquated, tight prints (often in varying shades of pink) which was predictably hidden by massive bookcases and wardrobes (the concept of closets were lost here). So without any furniture, much less the en vogue overpowering furniture usually found, or an affinity for the taste of a 120 year old woman, we needed to find another solution.

During this time, we had been invited to our friend Arden’s flat in Riga. Arden was an American; a Lutheran pastor from Minnesota who had been sent to start an English-language ministry in Riga. He set up shop in the old Anglican Church in Riga’s Old Town, and would in a few short months baptize our son there. We lived far away, so we weren’t regular attendees, but we enjoyed Arden whether we saw him behind a pulpit or behind a beer, so there we were at his flat one day. He lived in a similar but smaller block apartment than we did, and it was fixed up very comfortably. It took us a little while to figure out why it felt so comfortable, and then it dawned on us: he had PAINT on the walls! No distracting, headache-inducing wallpaper! How did he do this?!? Then two beautiful words that we’d never heard in such a combination came from his mouth: Fiberglass Wallcovering. Huh?

Fantastically fabricated by clever Scandinavians, fiberglass threads were woven together to produce a very strong and pliable fabric sold on meter-wide rolls designed to cover imperfections on walls, absorb paint, and provide a reduction in reverberation. Better than all that, it came in a variety of textured patterns to boot! We had to get us some of this.

I don’t remember for sure, but I think we may have purchased this in Helsinki. That sounds extravagant, but it really wasn’t because I was travelling to Helsinki on a regular basis anyway for pre-natal appointments. It’s kind of like the trip from Detroit to Chicago with a quick ferry ride added on. The Dan Ryan is as big a pain in the ass as any border crossing, too.

The fiberglass went up with regular wall paper paste, was very forgiving, and even before painting it, the walls looked great. We had chosen a pattern of very tight basket weave which added an interesting texture and dimension. We ended up being able to find decent latex paint imported from Germany and threw up a couple of coats of a buttery color. The light from our west-facing living room windows was no longer cold and harsh but warm and cozy. Form followed function.

I had to take a breather from this renovation story because I’d been out of town attending my 20 year high school reunion of all things. It was the only school reunion I’d ever been to, and probably the only one I’ll ever attend. I don’t keep up with many people from those days; however I have enjoyed reconnecting with a few over the last several months, and really this handful of people is the reason I made the trip. We had a decent turn out for a class of about 350, and I probably don’t need to explain to you how fascinating it is to see how people have grown up.

This combined with the preparations being made for my own son to start high school in a couple of weeks, naturally has me thinking a lot about how the high school environment and experience influences an individual as well as a collective group. I was scared when I started high school--the concept itself was daunting to me, plus this was a prestigious school in the middle of a city I hadn’t been a part of very long. On top of it, as a magnet school, my school was also intended to be racially balanced. There was a lot to adapt to!

In four years, though, I made very good yet unlikely friends, was exposed to fantastic opportunities, was given opportunities to shine, and was forced to stretch outside my comfort zones in order to enjoy all of that. A good taste of real life for sure, but in the end, my high school experience probably wasn’t all that different from yours. But for me it was unique, and it ended up giving me some guts I didn’t know I had.

After 20 years, one kind of forgets about all of that formative development. The reunion was a nice reminder of what the world looked like back then and how the scope has gotten so much bigger. It was good to take stock at what I had done with the tools I gathered in high school, and of course learning a bit about what my classmates did with theirs. Pretty impressive. I hope my son and his classmates will be as lucky!

The Carpet Story

With the kitchen working, we moved onto other necessities. The rest of the floor in the flat was just a subfloor at that point and we needed to put something down. It was suggested that we just buy a set of ugly matching rugs from the market (you know, a “Kompleksa”) and throw those everywhere. No thanks. Wood was the obvious choice seeing as though my husband helped run a big saw mill outside of town, but I had a baby coming, and I wasn’t convinced that hardwood flooring would be manufactured or installed with any quality standard whatsoever. It seemed like a recipe for trouble, especially with a baby coming. Ideally I wanted carpet. All the Latvians (except for Ainars) thought we were crazy because carpet holds allergens and bugs and dirt so they said. Never mind what could be living in the rugs from the market that likely had fallen off of some truck from Tajikistan as they were suggesting. It was all mostly a fear of the unknown. Most of these folks had never actually SEEN carpet, so like anything it was skepticism of the unknown.

Once every few weeks we would travel 4-5 hours to the capitol, Riga, to see friends, try to get things we needed that weren’t available elsewhere, take care of business, etc. While killing time one day, I found carpeting. It was in a shop that sold pots, pans, and general house wares, and there they had sample boards of commercial-grade nylon carpeting. I asked the guy behind the counter if I could look more closely at the boards (at that point I wasn’t sure if this place actually sold the stuff or was just showing off the sample boards), and the man proudly said that this is carpet from Poland, it’s very expensive and no one has ordered any yet. Why he was so proud about this, I have no idea, but maybe it’s because I was the first person to inquire. I asked how much and how long it would take to order it, and he gave me a price which didn’t choke me, and a time frame which almost did. All he said was “a long time.”

Long story short, we ordered the commercial-grade nylon carpeting from Poland and “a long time” ended up being about 12 weeks. We kept checking in with the shop to see if the delivery had arrived yet, and finally after our 3rd or 4th visit and phone call, it had arrived. Good ol’ Ainars happened to have his truck in Riga that day and was happy to pick up the roll for us and deliver it. Another bucket of glue later, we had installed wall to wall carpeting in the living room and hall of our big empty flat. It was instantly warmer, and if there were any allergens and bugs, the VOC’s got ‘em.

Ainars

So the flooring’s in, the refrigerator is also plugged in, and we’ve got 6 dishes, 4 mugs, a handful of silver wear, and a couple of pans all sitting either in the sink or on the stove or in the new fridge. We needed some cabinets. If I’m remembering those days in 1994 correctly, our friend Ainars helped us out with this.

Ainars was a character from another place and time. Aluksne was very much a backwater town in the northeast corner of Latvia about 30 km from each border (Estonian and Russian). If you’ve ever met anyone a little off and wondered what rock they’d been living under for so long, it was probably under the rock of Aluksne. At this time, I would say life here was very much like a teeny, remote town in Middle America during the depression. People were poor, not educated, isolated, very simple and usually drunk. Many folks had never even ventured the 300 km to the capitol city of Riga, but instead always stayed right there in Aluksne.

That place was quite a study, and although Ainars had lived there for his whole life as far as I knew, Ainars broke the mold of Aluksneians. He certainly didn’t live under the Rock of Aluksne because he was probably too busy chiseling it. A monument builder by trade (yes, mostly tombstones), Ainars knew a little bit about just about everything, and I think could craft almost anything with his thick, meaty hands. He was a sweet and generous man, and really liked practicing his English on us. He was an artist, maybe a bit of an intellectual, and his house and yard looked like Fred Flintstone’s quarry. Think Owen Meany but much bigger and with a normal man’s voice. I don’t really know how old Ainars was, he was neither very old nor very young, but we got to know him through a mutual friend and he ended up taking good care of us in Aluksne.

Anyway, Aluksne was actually known for a few good and interesting things, and one of them was the old Soviet VEF radio cabinet shop. Others can recite the history better than I, but no one was buying big, wooden VEF radios anymore, so the once famous (?) cabinet shop, full of carpenters and craftsmen was just trying to get by making whatever. Ainars, an unusually creative thinker given his personal history, knew one of these guys and talked him into putting a few cabinets put together for us. I think three pieces in all—it was all our tiny kitchen could hold. They weren’t fancy, but made from clear pine or aspen, and honestly I don’t even remember what the counter top was. Something highly lacquered, I’m sure. If I was cleverer back then, I would have gotten Ainers to fabricate granite counters for us. All I remember for sure, though, was that there wasn’t much choice in the matter. But again, I didn’t really care. It was all a matter of necessity and function, and I was grateful for Ainars.

Marketing

I have to say, this blogging thing will be a lot easier to deal with once kids are back in school. I feel as though I’ve fallen behind and I’ve barely started! Back to the story, though…

I think it was October or November by the time we got the big empty flat. I remember the heat was on. In Latvia, there were no thermostats then. God forbid anyone has control over temperature, or hot water for that matter. There were only a couple of days of hot water in the summer until October 1 when the radiators kicked on and that also meant warm, orange water flowed from the faucets like honey. That’s too poetic…Flowed like Tang. Anyway, it was fall, it was cold, we had a big empty flat, and I was pregnant.

We started in the little kitchen. If the whole thing was 8x10 it was big. We’d gone to the market one Saturday, as we did every Saturday, to eat fresh pirogi and buy produce, meat and cheese and toothpaste and batteries and bootlegged cds, and found two specific things we needed: rolled vinyl flooring and a little refrigerator which ended up being the biggest fridge we could find.

I couldn’t believe the luck in finding this flooring, not that vinyl flooring is such a much, but remember this was freshly post-Soviet Latvia where if you found Heinz ketchup on the shelves it would be enough to throw a party, so this was exciting. Fortunately, the flooring vendor was smart enough to also carry some adhesive (must have been off the sauce that day), so we could get to work and lay it down. That we did! It was super easy and the one tight seam was barely visible and ended up being completely hidden by the little kitchen table we would later put in the room. The hardest part about laying this cobalt blue, brick patterned flooring was waiting 24 hour for the adhesive to dry before walking on it! I specifically remember, though, being so excited once I saw it down—things were beginning to take shape and this was going to become our home!

100 Pounds of Home

While living overseas, I moved a lot. In fact, since I graduated from high school, I've never lived anywhere for more than three years. But anyway, while living in Latvia, we moved six times in so many years to a whole hodgepodge of places. Now that I think of it, though, I'm realizing that in the first year alone there were four moves. It's a good thing there was that 100 lb. rule because we didn't have a car, either.

First there was the scrudgy flat in beautiful Cesis; then we upgraded as house and dog sitters for the summer (who remembers Sir the girl dog?) to a funny little house outside of Riga which was full of African treasures and a very expensive sound system that I think only played opera; after that we slummed again in an overly-furnished, claustrophobia-inducing flat in Aluksne where the landlords would constantly enter without warning and eat all of our food in the refrigerator (even when we were home); to a bare-to-the-concrete-walls Soviet block flat that we got to make our own.

I remember ITCHING to get that place. It was nothing special by a long shot, but it seemed like luxurious space to us--first floor, two bedrooms, and stripped down of everything except the kitchen sink. It was a completely blank canvas.

Not Today

So, blogging is outside my comfort zone. However, it’s been an idea brewing for several weeks, and with some recent pushes to promote my business in creative ways as well as the out-of-the-blue suggestion from a very savvy and patient friend, it almost seemed like I had little choice in the matter. (One of many ways my insides are coming out.) With that, the big questions are, of course: what in the world to write about on a semi-regular basis, and also how do I keep this interesting without exposing every gut I have?

I was able to reconnect with my old camp and college buddy Krista the other night, and as she was telling me about her own blog, she said, “I just write to these guys,” pointing to her friends down the row of our seats at the Tiger’s game. Great advice. I can do that. (That is, write to my friends, not to hers…) Then the very next day, London Lisa said, “Well, Maren, I think you should just start writing about the way you became a designer.” Ok. I can do that, too. But not today.