To Whom Much is Given: Part Two

Riga, Latvia

The guy from the bus. The one with the dark, messy hair and the thick Baltic accent. He’s unshaven and his teeth are the color of candy bars. He talks with a one-quarter smile, like he’s trying to sell you tickets for something and has no idea that you’ve already made other plans. My interaction with him is gum on a shoe. I keep thinking about it, over and over on the tip of my tongue. I can’t figure out why. Still sticking. And then, it’s clear. I’ve seen him before.

In Mexico, I live in a 10-unit apartment building. It’s a mountain tree house hanging half-way over a cliff.  And the only people who live there have somehow dropped something along the way. The retired couple below me fights everyday. The woman screams and tells her 75-year-old husband that he’s a no good slut-lover, sluts sluts sluts, and “I’ll kill you,” she yells, and then I hear metal clashing and know that she’s opened the knife drawer again. The gay couple on the fourth floor happily collects the extra onion peels from my refrigerator once each week. I think they make crafts with them. And the building administrator burns incense at an altar he’s built just outside his door – smoke clouding around the shrine’s Buddha statues, crucifixes, flowers and potato dolls. But this man from the bus to Frihamnen’s Harbor…

He’s exactly like the 55-year-old manic-depressive on the third floor of my apartment in Mexico. Both men have the same yellow smell and the same melted wax under their eyes. One late night, I have some friends at my place in Monterrey. The front door is unlocked because more people are on their way. I am preparing a drink, then changing the song on the stereo, then turning around and the 55-year-old neighbor is standing right there – right there in my kitchen. He’s hopped up on something and asking me for a fix. The men around me are immediately concerned. They stand quickly and put themselves between the intruder and me.

They ask him what he wants, how he got through the door, what on earth made him think it was appropriate to walk into a woman’s apartment without an invitation. He starts to stutter. He’s unable to explain himself – pupils dilated – nearly crying over the frustration he experiences when unable to communicate. He starts to push the boys, losing his cool now, frightening everyone – an alarm clock with no buzzer. My friends take him outside, throw him against a wall and make it very clear with fingers closed tight into rocks that he is to never bother me or make me feel uncomfortable again. Don’t even say hello.

“Hello you, gurl…”

And now I am on a ferry full of my neighbors, sailing to Latvia. Upon boarding, I read a sign translated from Latvian, to Swedish, and then English. It reads: ICE WARNING in capital block letters and gives a brief weather forecast for the night’s journey. I decide to order a glass of Merlot at one of the ship’s four bars, sit down and hum to a one-British-man band’s rendition of “We are the Champions.” And then I visit the cruise casino and feel lured to the black jack table where I win enough lats to pay for tomorrow’s lunch.

Next, I walk to the candy section of the duty free store onboard. Here I notice a surprising number of families with small children also traveling this evening. My lungs expand with relief. I quickly learn to find these kinds of parents when feeling concerned or unsafe. Simply sitting near them or walking close by helps me to pretend that they are tying ribbons in my hair and reading me stories too (for information on important bedtime stories, please see footnote H).

And then slowly, as the sea’s giant waves roll over and under, moving me to sleep in my single, windowless closet-cabin, the kids from the duty free shop push my uneasy neighbor out of mind. Memories from Mexico fade backward toward childhood, and I rest for nine hours at sea – back and forth, lullaby baby.

By the time we reach Riga’s port, I am ready to walk from the harbor to the city center where I will find St. Peter’s church (one of Riga’s skyline centerpieces, and a fully restored masterpiece after suffering fire damage during World War II), the Riga Cathedral in Dome Square, and the Swedish Gate built in 1698 during Swedish rule (the only remaining fortress entrance to Riga’s UNESCO World Heritage Old Town). I move from tight alleys to open squares, turning my map a full 360 degrees at every street corner. And it’s cold; more than in Stockholm the wind here whips around me, biting and kicking, and gives me bloody blisters on my chin.

All afternoon, I walk. People are everywhere, but somehow the city feels empty. The streets are frozen and the walkers whisper. Hardened, solid faces reflect in storefront windows. The women wear the highest heels I can think of on these cobblestone streets. And the men pull fur flaps from their hats over their ears. The city gives me a feeling I’ve never experienced before. It’s as if everyone were busy hiding, only they manage to do this while actually positioning themselves as plainly visible targets in the most public of midday places. I notice that the Latvians walk with an even pace, not too quick and not too slow, heads down against the snowy bursts. They all move just like this. All of them of course, except for the children. The young ones move erratically, running ahead and lagging behind, and I happily allow them to again push the foreignness of this place just out of my reach.

By the time I arrive at Riga’s Occupation Museum, documenting over 50 years of Soviet and Nazi presence in the region, I am ready for a break from the cold. I am unaware, however, that what I’ll find inside this building will numb me and turn me even more hollow than the below zero winter coming in off the Baltic outside. The journey from 1940 through 1991 will hurt and make me want to grab the children’s hands from just a few blocks ago and skip with them until our legs fall off. And it will help me to understand why the behavioral differences I notice on the street have less to do with age – adults acting one way and children acting another – and more to do with stark generational contrasts that presently define the country’s mood swing up or mood swing down.

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Sometime around 9000 BC, after the Ice Age glaciers retreated, nomads settled the Baltic lands in order to collect and trade the region’s rich amber deposits. Latvia’s history was subsequently defined by a series of violent German crusades, and then occupation periods by Poland, Sweden, and eventually the Russian Empire. After World War I, Latvia seized a window of opportunity to declare independence from Russia on November 18, 1918. The country signed a peace treaty in which the USSR promised to never attack Latvia again, ever…

…until 20 years later when World War II started to frown it’s ugliness across all of Europe. The Soviets found creative and devilish ways to break their treaty with Latvia without violating the terms that had been set. The Russians bombed themselves just inside their western border and blamed Latvia. Then they accused Latvian political leaders of hosting secret meetings with Estonian and Lithuanian councils to conspire against the USSR. Grounds enough to invade the Baltic states in 1940.

And when they invaded they did it with jaws like a bear trap. In the first year alone, 30,000 men, women, and children disappeared forever – sent to work camps in Siberia and never heard from again. Nearly a thousand were shot, execution style, before they could even be dragged from their neighborhood. Children were imprisoned for singing Latvia’s national anthem or wearing patriotic colors. And the women were sent to special camps where male soldiers raped as they pleased.

The Soviets were so ruthless, in fact, that when the Nazis briefly fought them off and hosted their own occupation of Latvia from 1941 until sometime around 1944, the Latvians celebrated the German takeover because at least their inhumanity was somehow targeted, less random, and sickly ordered. The Nazis blamed Soviet cruelty on the Jews and by the time World War II was over, only 1,000 Latvian Jews remained.

When the Soviets retook Latvia in the WWII tug of war for control, they started burning things. Everything. Churches. Books. People. They killed senselessly and disappeared entire communities; one morning you wake up and your neighbors are gone and you have no idea why. The randomness of it all caused such terror, causes me such terror that I start to feel cold and ill.

It’s one thing to watch a documentary. And it’s altogether different to read a book. But when you touch the wood from a work camp bed, knowing that innocent prisoners were forced to hide the bodies of other dead inmates there – pretending that the deceased were only asleep – so that extra food could be harvested from the body... when you touch that wood you want to throw up on yourself.

Or when you see the miniature cloth dolls sewn by 25-year-old girls in Siberian camps, using hair from other dead prisoners, bark fiber, or scrap cloth. It’s like somebody takes both hands and squeezes your stomach until you’d prefer for it to pop. I see drawings of Latvian flags from families left to live in agony over the loss of their loved ones, and read patriotic love poems written from the deepest part of a man’s heart. Such love and such passion for home; and such unforgiveable violations of that sacred affection.

In Riga, history becomes my troubling present. I am affected by the violence of Latvia’s occupation years, but what actually troubles me more is the senselessness behind it all. I am lost between the neighbor that was shoved onto a train to Siberia and the other who was tied to the execution wall. I am wandering aimless between one girl’s guilt and another’s innocence. And more than anything, more than any other question this experience drives into my mind, I want to understand the senselessness that put me in America, born in 1984, so far from it all. A generation and an ocean apart.

I’m looking for an appropriate response. An inch of guilt wants to come up from my toes but I push it down. I think it’s something else. In Latvia, my guilt means nothing. It’s superficial and selfish, and it doesn’t come from the heart. For the most part, guilt dwells in our intestines, close to the dirtiest muck in our bodies.

I am hoping that the response I start to feel once safely aboard the ship again is something more permanent. I want it to last longer than three hours in a museum. I want it to drive me forward and change me. I want it to expect something from me. And there it is. This is what I take:

To whom much is given, much shall be expected.

It would be a crime against generations past with problems more complicated than mine, for me to sit down and let my life just happen. I can’t and I won’t. I will question things and take notes. I will open doors and walk through them. I will keep going, treading, and finding. I will feel the richness of every moment as deeply as I possibly can. And I will keep learning and pushing upward against gravity. All of this, so that other people’s struggle for a life that was given to me so freely will not be wasted. Ever. This much, I promise.

 

 

 

Footnote H: I’m eight years old in the first house my family has ever owned at 110 Mitchell Drive in Pittsburgh. It’s summer time and Grammy and Grandad have come to visit. Grammy tickles my back just before bed. The sun is still out, but an 8 o’clock bedtime is an 8 o’clock bedtime. My sister and I share a room. Every night we listen to stories. Tonight, after our back tickles, Grammy reads “The Funny Little Woman.” “Long ago, in Old Japan, there lived a funny little woman who liked to laugh, ‘Tee-he-he-he’ and who liked to make dumplings out of rice...” And when Grammy reads the laugh, she performs it. Her reenactment of the Japanese woman’s laugh is so high-pitched and so funny that my sister and I squeal with delight. Every night we ask her to read it over and over again. And she does, and it never gets old.

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Once each week, Kimberly and I bring home a new book from the school library. If it’s a silly book, Dad gets to read from the edge of our beds. Our bedroom at 110 Mitchell is a cape-cod doll house, with window nooks and crawl-in crannies. This week, we’re working through a chapter book, “Sideways Stories from Wayside School.” Funny vignettes about Mrs. Gorf the third grade teacher who has a long tongue and pointed ears make my sister and I giggle and imagine our own world with such fantastic detail. Some nights my sister and I create equally whimsical stories and whisper them to each other long after Mom and Dad have turned out the lights.

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And then there’s Shel Silverstein. His poems are so absurd that they can only make perfect sense to a kid. His story, “The Giving Tree,” teaches me to see the world from all different angles. Because see, when a tree makes friends with a boy (stay with me here), the relationship can be seen from many different places. First the tree offers the boy a branch to swing on, and then some fruit to help him grow strong, and then shade from the rain, and then lumber for a boat, and finally a stump to rest on. It’s a story about one relationship with many phases.

My family reads me stories over and over as a child, and they use the words from these tales to nourish and encourage me. And perhaps in these close head-in-their-lap moments, I am able to first feel the power of a good story and of those who tell them in my life. 

To Whom Much is Given: Part One

Day nine in Europe

Sometimes I drink my morning coffee at 2pm. On other rare occasions I imbibe before 8am. When it’s a holiday, I mix it with whisky. But on everyday, the cup is special. No matter how fast I have to drink it, the moment is always slow. It’s a small space for me to think about whatever I want. Flying to the moon perhaps. Or building a bridge. Or finding true love. It’s a time to invent, reinvent, think crazy thoughts, and reclaim my sanity.

Today’s cup is particularly delicious, not because the instant crystals I’ve resorted to this morning have been freeze-dried to perfection (actually yuck), but because I’m comfortable in a friend’s apartment on an island in the Stockholm archipelago. I’m warm in my pajamas, thick wool socks, and hooded sweatshirt. It’s 11am and I’m holding a map.

As I unfold the poster’s complicated origami creases, I begin to travel. For the one-millionth time, I ask where my journey will take me. I’ve started in Stockholm – and it’s been a solid first step (click here to read more) – but now I really should figure out what’s next. Generally speaking, I mean. Maybe, I think, I should have some sort of plan.

Before coming to Europe, I tried to make an itinerary – really I did. But it just never came together. I’m no good at playing connect the dots. It’s difficult for me to see the line that links black dot city number one to black dot city number two. I prefer to color in the white spaces until something appears. In the end, the picture always turns out to be a stained glass image anyway.

Take a sip. Ahhh… warm morning coffee says I’m ready to go. Spread out the map. Get crazy and reclaim your sanity. Close your eyes. Read the brail creases with your fingers. Stick to the Baltic region. Draw circles with the tip of your index finger. Start to slow down now. Eventually pull your finger to a stop. Open your eyes and find what’s next. The closest destination appears to be Helsinki, Finland (although my finger actually points to a space just southwest of Helsinki in the icy Baltic, indicating that I’ll have to travel by boat).

Good. It’s decided then. Now, that was a productive morning cup of coffee! After determining the end, you must discover the means. So now, I need to find a way to get to Helsinki, via the Baltic Sea, without overstepping my daily budget. This kind of party game, pin the tail on the Baltic, is simply no fun with money to spare. Sometimes, we have to get poor in order to gain the richness of freedom and the wealth of adventure. Still other times, I happily confess that a glass of Moet champagne, first-class air travel, or 5-star room service is all a girl can ask for to feel that extra kick of life.

Thirty minutes later, I’m on bus 442 into town. Then I take the tunnelbana’s red line to Gärdet. Then bus number one to Frihamnen Harbor. I’m looking for Tallink’s ticketing office. Tallink, based out of Estonia, is one of many operating companies to navigate regular 15-20 hour ferry routes across the Baltic between Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. I approach the ticketing window and say that I’d like a roundtrip ticket, and that I’d like to sail as soon as possible.

“Do you have any student discounts?” I want to know, fully aware that I’m not technically a student, but that being unemployed comes close enough.

“No, but the ticket you want is on special if you leave in three hours. It will cost you €25 for the 17-hour trip there, 7 hours in port, and again the 17-hour return trip to Stockholm.”

“Perfect,” I say as I hand her my passport and Visa. It’s a great price, cheaper than I’d researched online. All I have to do is get back to my friend’s place, grab my stuff, and go. Just like that. Stockholm to Helsinki. Bam!

I return a few hours later, and hand my ticket to the boarding agent. “This way,” he tells me in English after checking my American passport. I follow his arm motion. He leads me to the left. I read the signs and stutter my next step. “This way TO RIGA, LATVIA.” Oh God. What? I return with the boarding agent and tell him that there must be some mistake. I’m scheduled to leave for Helsinki, not Riga.

“No, no,” he clarifies. “Your ticket is for Riga. You go to Riga now. Look here,” he points to the small print on my ticket. Small, just like the city names on my map. Close your eyes, and pull your finger to a stop. Pin the tail on the Baltic, pin the tail on my ticket.

“To Riga?” I ask. “Are you sure?” Quite sure. Oh my, I realize. Each ferry company operates specific routes typically between a set list of cities. And so when I arrived at Tallink’s ticketing office, I assumed (please, no questions. The answer is “I don’t know”) that the only tickets they sold were for Helsinki. I was unaware, however, that Tallink operates both the Silja Line and the Tallink Line; the first to Finland and the second to Latvia and Estonia. While purchasing my ticket, I stupidly (or fantastically – these things are all a matter of perspective) never once mentioned my destination. I have no idea what led me to this silence, really. It tickles and worries me. I imagine calling Continental Airlines and booking a silent reservation. Like, “I need a round-trip ticket,” and saying nothing more. Please, let’s forget the details, just a confirmation number will suffice. Open the map. Draw come circles. Round and round she goes; where she’ll stop, nobody knows!

A small humph giggle starts to bubble inside me. I stare at the bridge leading to the ship’s entrance and everything starts to make a bit more sense. Riga, Latvia, explains why bus number one to Frihamnen harbor was full of so many Russians and so many migrant workers. Some of them were drunk. I know this because I saw them verbally assault and throw empty beer cans at an elderly homeless lady on the street before they climbed onto the bus a few stops before the harbor. Others were clearly not drunk; some of them carried a single canvas nap-sack, while another tore into a large loaf of tough sourdough bread. My impression is that relatively few Swedes travel to Latvia. Nearly all of them quietly step off the bus before reaching Tallink’s port. Perhaps they prefer other destinations in Scandinavia, or the quick trip to Germany to buy cheaper cars or tax-free booze.

The passengers that move between Sweden and the Baltic states seem somehow rougher. They come to Scandinavia to work odd jobs, construction gigs, etc. – sometimes for a week, a few months, or longer. They make a living by finding what they can, thanks to the recently passed freedom of movement for workers policy (part of the EU’s Free Movement of Persons Act and one of the EU’s four economic freedoms including the free movement of goods, services, labor, and capital). The policy considers migrant workers as a “mobile unit of production, contributing to the creation of a single market and to the economic prosperity of Europe,” while also giving citizens of the EU the “personal right to live in another state and to take up employment there without discrimination, to improve the standard of living of his or her family.” Migrant workers boost their host country’s economy by reporting earnings and paying the appropriate taxes.

On the bus, I distinguish immediately that I am no longer listening to Swedish. Instead, I hear the deeper, harsher sound of Russian and Latvian. These languages are rounder than German, for example, but just as hard. I look around and realize that I’m the only woman going all the way to the harbor. And I sense that the men know this too. One of them starts asking me questions with a thick and cloudy accented English.

“Hello you gurl,” he starts hitting the seat next to him, trying to get my attention. Moments like these are a challenge because closing the door to a pleasant conversation before it can even be opened is never nice. But I remind myself at least once a day that traveling alone as a woman has its own particular set of rules and precautions. Follow your instincts and read the vibe. Become an expert at reading the vibe. Don’t give out too much information. Pick your strangers carefully. And always remember (this is going to sound extreme, forgive my drama ahead of time) that at any given time, somewhere around 50% of the world’s population is biologically equipped to do a woman harm should they want to.

“Wher ar giu fron, gurl? Wher ar giu going?” I throw him some bone answers, and hop quickly off the bus at my stop. Leaving him almost mid-sentence with his next round of broken questions.

This exchange sets the tone. It hardens me to my surroundings and prepares me to pop my collar, put my fleece ski hat on, and take my make-up off. Ok then, I say to the boarding agent, looking across the ramp to the eight-deck cruise liner. Let’s go to Riga, Latvia.

 

 

 

 

Footnote G: When your cup of coffee is full to the brim…

I’m in Pittsburgh for Christmas vacation with my family. We enjoy these days together, visiting museums, going on winter picnics, attending afternoon matinees and waging games of poker. Every morning, my parents always wake up first. Mother puts the coffee on and whips up yummy breakfast treats – biscuits and gravy, homemade coffee cake, egg casserole, and fresh fruit. She calls for my sister and I when everything is ready. We plod downstairs, sleepy eyed, and ratty haired. We read the morning paper, watch the news, talk about yesterday, and sip on our coffee. Today is a special occasion because we’re all together. So Mom splashes a sip of Kahlua to her coffee. Kimberly likes Bailey’s. Dad and I give ours a hit of Jameson’s. After an hour of breakfast, it’s 10am, and just for today, just this once, it’s the perfect time to go right back to bed for a mid-morning snooze. There’s so much to do, busy busy, always going, but this morning’s coffee whispers a sleepy-head slow down tune in our ears and puts us under feather comforters until noon. Today we rest, move like turtles, and bask in our own delicious irresponsibility.

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Winter in Mexico is not what you’d think. It’s brittle and breakable. It’s colder than most because the homes there are built to keep the heat out, not in. So we use space heaters, blankets, gas stoves, anything, to stay warm.

I am living with Bonnie in Chipinque, the mountaintop state park in Monterrey. Since many years ago, Bonnie has been a part of my extended family. Together we have stumbled through first jobs, angry breakups, big life choices, new pairs of blue jeans, and many, many martinis.

Some winter mornings on the mountain, I surprise Bonnie in her bed, spastic and shivering with cold. Two bodies are better than one for staying warm. She throws pillows at me and tells me to leave her alone. She says it in that tone, though. The one that actually assures me it’s ok.

One morning, I bring her a cup of coffee (we take turns making it; first I throw the ground crystals in the filter and the next day she does). Sometimes we talk while we sip, and sometimes we don’t. But one of the best and most special compliments that Bonnie ever gives me comes when she tells me that her coffee is the best she’s had in a long time. Two girls sharing all the riches in the world; a very simple pleasure; an ordinary something to push our day toward something extraordinary.