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.