2015 goods and bads – hyvät ja pahat

30.12.20151.1.2023 Marilka

Yritin, mutten osaa enkä kykene. Aina olen jonkinlaisen katsauksen menneeseen vuoteen tehnyt. Tämä viime vuosi, mahtuuhan siihen monta hyvää hetkeä, mutta nyt pääni täyttää vain yksi ajatus: tämä oli se vuosi jolloin isoäitini kuoli. Ehkä se jo yksinään kertoo, kuinka paljon hän minulle merkitsi, merkitsee vielä kuoltuaankin. Jos nyt jotain muutakin koitan vuodesta muistaa, niin esikoisen protujuhla ja omat nelikymppiset, nuo parit bileet kesällä. Ja se viimeinen päiväni isoäitini kanssa landella kahden. Mersun kuntoon laitto ja katsastus. Erinäisistä syistä vaikea viime talvi. Isoäidin hautajaiset syyskuussa ja kummitädin isän hautajaiset marraskuussa. Loputon ikävä.

I tried, but I can’t. I’ve always done some sort of recap of the past year at this point of the year. This past year, there’s plenty of good moments, but still, right now the one thing occupying my mind is this: this was the year when grandma died. Maybe that alone tells the tale of how important she was to me, still is even dead. Trying to remember something else about this year, first things that pop to my mind are my oldest daughter’s “protujuhla” party and my own 40th birthday party. And that last day at our summerplace, just my grandma and me. Fixing our Mercedes. Last winter that was difficult for several reasons. The funerals of my grandma and my godmother’s father. The never-ending pain of missing my grandma.

Tatuoinnit, Berliinin reissu, kivat ulkoilut… Annan nyt kuitenkin periksi. Ehkä ensi vuonna taas. Toivottavasti se on hyvä vuosi, vaihteeksi.

Tattoos, trip to Berlin, fun outings… Anyway, I give up. Maybe again next year. Hope it’s a good one, for a change.

I have a dream

6.9.2015 Marilka

I have a dream. And I know how stupid it sounds when I talk about it and then give all the millions of excuses for not pursuing it for real.

I have a dream. I want to write a book or two or maybe even more. Not just any books, but books about my grandmother’s journey from Carelia, from Vyborg, to Helsinki as a refugee of the second World War. Books about the carefree childhood, the teen years in Vyborg, the summers at the country home in Huumola, the voyage from Vyborg to Vaasa to Helsinki. Not the usual memoirs, but novels. With a storyline that brings the whole life there alive to the reader.

I have a dream. I want to write abook about my husband’s adventures in the States some years ago. In the same manner. I already started that one while he was gone there, but never continued when he came back home. Then again, I don’t even know if I’d like to publish that one while he’s still alive.

I have a dream. I want to write a book about my own teen years of growing up, struggling in my relationship with my dad. And mom, in retrospect, in ways I didn’t understand back then. I didn’t really understand much back then. It has all started to dawn on me after my mother’s death. I want to write a story about the girl who’s me, but not me. I don’t want to write faithful-to-the truth narratives. I want to write stories based on the true stories.

I want to write. I want to write something that matters. I want to write something that is more than just a blog post that has 10 readers. More than just a novella or short story lost and forgotten in the masses of stories in the Internet. I want to write books that people will want to read. Books that they might benefit from in a way or another. Books that have the potential to change, if not the world, the world of a reader or few.

I have a dream and my fever is rising. I want to pursue it.

I need time. I need time to write, I need time to do the research I suck at. I want to get my facts right in the books, even if they are fiction. I suck at research. It’s a wonder I ever managed to finish my Master’s Thesis. I have no patience for research. Still, I need to do it. I need time. I need the feeling that I’m not in a hurry, that there’s no rush, that I have all the time in my life. That I can use up hours for research and then write another day.

I have a dream I cannot realize while working all days and taking care of kids and dogs in the evening, being with my husband. I love my family. They are my inspiration, my meaning for living.They keep my feet on the ground and my emotions roiling and my self strongly attached to *life*.

I have a dream of having a little house by the seaside, with a little veranda overlooking the sea. I would sit there on the veranda, with my research books, with my laptop. I would read, I would write. I would gaze at the sea for inspiration. At times it would be stormy, at other times still and glistening in the bright sun.

I have a dream and I want to try my wings. I wish I could. I hope I live to see the day when I can. I hope I live to be able to fulfill my dream. To dream is good, right?

Happiest day of my life

27.8.2015 Marilka

Every now and then you hear someone ask: what was the happiest day of your life? People look back and think about days like “when I got married” or “when my child was born” or “when I graduated” etc. And there’s nothing wrong with that. On the contrary, looking back at the joys you’ve had in your life is usually a good thing. Remembering the good and happy times can be an important resource when life is giving you lemons. It can be the strong undercurrent that helps you make the lemonade.

I can list many of those “happiest days of my life” too. Such as the day I got married – even if the marriage evetually ended in divorce. The days when my daughters were born. The day my current husband told me he loved me. Yet, those are just the highlights. Who remembers the normal nothing-special days as happy?

In recent years, I have been through divorce, brain surgery, my mom’s death, my grandmother’s death and things that I do not want to list here. All of this finally got to me last winter – too much is just too much – when my axiety became so bad I didn’t sleep and I was just screaming at my husband without real reason. I got help, but when the axieties subsided, on came the depression, that probably had been creeping on for some time. I didn’t want to work, not even get out of bed. I didn’t feel joy, life felt like tar I needed to drag myself through. I wasn’t suicidal, but often times thought that everybody would be better off if I didn’t exist.

You know the movie It’s a Wonderful World? We used to watch it every single Christmas with my dad when I was growing up. One Christmas my sister and I hid the movie (a VHS tape) so that we couldn’t watch it. We sat on the sofa with meek faces, watching our dad look for the VHS for a long long time. I even started to feel pity towards him, but my sister pinched me to stay strong. Eventually dad figured out our ploy and I think he was quite hurt. We didn’t watch it ever again with him.

Sometimes in the depths of my depression, I thought about that movie. Just a fleeting thought, but enough to bring me back to reality. Not that I thought that my little actions in this life would have changed the fates of too many people, but there is my family. My husband and our three daughters. Our dogs. All of whom rely on me in some way. So I never neglected my motherly duties, I never shied away from those who love me, whom I love. I tried to be there for them, forgetting my own misery.

Today I woke up – when I finally woke up, waking up is never easy for me – feeling the luckiest person alive. Thinking to myself that this is the best time of my life, the happiest day of my life. There’s nothing special about this day. I snuggled next to my husband for a while before getting up, like I do most mornings. I had my cappucino. I took the dogs out. I started to work. I shed some tears over a video George Takei had shared in Facbook. I missed my mom and my grandma.

I still think this is the happiest day of my life. Ever since yesterday. Yesterday was the happiest day of my life since the day before that. I believe I’m pretty much over my depression. I have always believed in living in the moment. Learn from the past, remember the good times, dream about the future. But don’t dwell on either one. See the good in each day.

Happiness is not a destination, it’s a way of life. It’s little things like sunshine and a smile. It’s the big things, the family, friends, dogs, that are. It’s about focusing on the good instead of the bad. It’s about seeing that what is good in things instead of the bad. It’s about saying “I’m so glad we got our other car fixed and running in time to turn that leasing car in” instead of “oh, this is a miserable day, I need to turn my nice leasing car in”. A deeply depressed person is not able to do that, but as for the non-depressed, it’s about the attitude.

Yes, sometimes life feels too hard. But in the end, it’s just life. I prefer to look on the bright side of things. We have a saying – in Finnish like it is in English too – “Nothing so bad, as not to be good for something”. I try to find the good. And when there is none, for I cannot find anything good in e.g. my mom’s or grandma’s deaths, I try to accept them as what they are: a part of the circle of life. That understanding does not mean that I wouldn’t grieve, I do, fiercely! It gives me the ability to let go. The grief can’t suck me down.

[Edit 28.8.2015 – A day after writing this I stumbled upon this article about happiness. I can pretty much vouch for every point made in it. Happiness is mostly a choice 🙂 ]

You gotta dig dig dig…

11.5.2015 Marilka

The sun was still up high and shining warmly when both I and my husband were done with our day’s work. It was a sure call for some more yard work. We’ve got a couple of parties coming up in the summer time, so it would be kinda mandatory to get the yard in shape by them. There’s so much to do, plus all the things that we want to do, in addition to the stuff that we need to do.

The first stuff went to the category of need to do. Husband gave our reciprocation saw to me and asked me to start sawing some branches into smaller pieces. The winter storms had cut off pine branches and sent them flying to our yard; one of them took the target scope – oops, start – from the hood of our Mercedes. We also cot off some overgrowth from the trees at the edge of our yard in March. I modified an old kitchen cabinet a bit to work as a saw horse and we efficiently worked through the pile of branches together.

The next project was to start planning for our brick grill; a task in the want to do category. We got a pile of bricks some time ago, leftovers from someone’s yard paving and from a fireplace they had torn down. We decided on a spot in our backyard; a nearly flat spot not beneath the trees. We measured it up, then marked the borders with a shovel. “Okay, you can start to dig now,” said husband, and I was like, now? “Okay, I need some inspirational music,” I said and took my phone out of my pocket, launched Music Tube and searched for Summer Stock Dig dig dig.

Nothin’s what you get for free.
You’ve gotta dig, dig, dig, dig for your dinner,
Never was a money tree.
And furthermore, my friends, I must repeat,
Nobody’s livin’ down on Easy Street;
And if you want to owe for groceries,
You’re gonna get an awful lot of “No sir-ee’s.”
You’ve gotta dig, dig, dig, dig for a dollar,
‘Taint as simple as you think.
You can’t purloin a sirloin
Or the butcher will put you in the clink.
You just can’t be a lazy bird,
You’ve gotta get off o’ your twig;
So you can afford your room and your board,
And it’s nice to have the price of a “cig.”
Say, you’ve gotta pay the fiddler man
If you want to do a jig.
You’ve gotta be as busy as a bee
To be a Mister B. I. G.
And if you want some dig-dig-dignity,
You’ve gotta dig, dig, dig, dig, dig for your dinner,
Dig, dig, dig, dig, dig.

https://youtu.be/1ANCuq_RKUs

The movie is one of my all time favorites – I’m a sucker for old MGM musicals, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers… And so I dug. Dug until I had taken out all the moss from the designated area. Then it was leveling time, finetuning, and leveling again. Somewhere there we took a break to grill some cheeseburgers on the gas grill and eat while the Finnish ice hockey team beat Belarus in the World Championships by one penalty shot.

We went back to the yard to fit some flat stones for the foundation of the grill. Then we tried a few bricks for the measurements of the grill. Then we sort of got carried away and ended up dry fitting them all, resulting in a proof of comcept (POC, as we consults call it) grill we named Stonehenge. No, we’re not going to use it for grilling just yet (at least not much…), we are going to mortar the bricks and make it into a proper grill. But yes, we have enough bricks to do it.

By the time Stonehenge was done, my work gloves had holes in the fingers. I just bought them a couple months ago! I’ve been working a lot. Gotta get a new pair. And if someone could tell me where I could get a new back, I’d be thankful 😉 Just kiddin’. Really working and working more is the best cure. In Finnish we say “se lähtee sillä millä se on tullutkin” – the cure is the cause.

Before hopping to bed, I played the hair dresser for my oldest daughter, trimming her hair from the side and applying new hair color (her hair is half black, bottom half since I don’t let her dye her hair all the way to the scalp).

Sauna

29.3.2015 MarilkaLeave a comment

There are different kinds of saunas. There are the regular electric saunas you can find in every other appartment in Finland. There are the fancy Sun sauna home spas, like the one we built into our house with my ex. There are the public saunas in gyms and swimming halls, with that distinc smell of humid hot wood and sweat combined. There are the shared saunas of appartment buildings when the appartments don’t have saunas. There are the “savusaunas”, smoke saunas, where the walls are black with soot and the air tastes like smoke. And then there are the “mökkisaunas”, the saunas with wood burning stove (mökki is a cottage, summeplace).

Some people love the savusauna. I don’t, really. I love the classic, preferably a bit old, mökkisauna. The smell of the burning wood, without the sting of the smoke. The gentle heat from the wood stove, the kiuas, so much sweeter than in the electric saunas ever. The rugged rustique of the old wood panel walls. The kind of sauna people have at their summer places. The kind of sauna you can find in an old house like this one we live in now. The kind where you can expect to find birche leaves on the floor after some back slapping with a “vihta” – a bunch of birch branches – in early summer time.

I’ve experienced them all in my life. I guess most Finns have. I used to think the sauna at our summer place was the best one on this earth, and probably it is. With my ex, we tried to make the sauna experience fancy with the special soapstone electric kiuas, fancy rounded sauna benches, romantic led lights, fake stone walls and smoked glass wall between the sauna and shower room. It was nice, very nice. Given the choice, I’d still pick the one we have now, any day. I love the countryside feeling of this house, of our sauna.

There are as many different sauna-goers as there are people in this country. Some go to sauna every day. Others once or twice a week (probably the most common thing). Some only at mökki, others use only public saunas. Some don’t like sauna, some can’t live without it. The one thing that is common, though, is that everybody goes to sauna naked. Ok, in public saunas, even the Finns sometimes tend to get a bit shy and try to use a towel or their swimming suit, but that is actually forbidden.

Finns have sauna evenings with friends, in company gatherings, with family only, alone, on Saturday, at Juhannus, Christmas or any given holiday and when ever. Sauna is part of the culture, part of social gatherings, part of celebrations. And the experience is always a bit different. The whole event is different depending on the kind of sauna you are going to, the people you are going to sauna with, the occasion.

Finnish sauna is not lukewarm. Finns affectionately call it the Swedish sauna if the temperature is below 70 degrees C (160F). Most commonly the temperature in a proper Finnish sauna is 80-90C (176-194F). And then we throw water on the rocks on the stove to make the air sizzle. The Finnish sauna rocks can handle that, they don’t crack.

Our sauna evenings with my husband are something special every time. The girls used to join us, but no anymore. We used to take the dogs to the sauna with us, but since they really don’t like it, we don’t anymore. So it is just me and my loved one, in our country style old wood sauna, with a sausage pan hanging over the stove.

It all starts with cleaning the sauna and shower room. The floor always has some wood chips and dirt from the previous sauna evening and it’s good to hose it down anyway. The wood basket needs to be filled, the ashes taken out. Then my husband starts the kiuas, adds wood, sees that it keeps going and heats up the sauna nicely, and places some sausages on the sausage pan. While he’s tending to the sauna, I take the dogs out and take care of other stuff so that our sauna evening can be un-hurried and end in relaxing on the bed, drifting off to sleep, sauna-fresh.

When sauna is ready, we get into our birthday suits, take some drinks and mustard with us and go to sauna. Sometimes we just take a couple cans of beer and cider (in Europe, cider is a fermented drink, beer strenght, made of apples or pears), sometimes we prepare a tray with an ice bucket, some frozen soapstone glass holders and a bottle or two of cider.

We hop into sauna, with our drinks, and pour some scented water in our special soapstone kiuas stones with holes to hold water. This way, in addition to getting an instant blast of hot humidity, we also get a steady drizzle going, when the water boils in those stones, spewing out like from a fountain. The sausages are done too by the time sauna is ready, so we munch on some while enjoying the heat of the sauna.

When the heat gets too much to take any more, it’s time to go to the shower. The only thing I’m missing in out home currently is a door downstairs, by the sauna, so that you could step outside to the cool winter air or sweet summer night while taking a break from sauna. As we don’t have that door – once I did open the garage door and go out but that seems a bit too much ado – shower room it is. Shower, hair washing, back scrubbing, sitting around with drinks in our hands, enjoying the calm and the company of each other, in the soft light of some led lights and a candle.

We go back and forth, taking our time in sauna and the shower room. For an hour, two even. And when we’re ready come out, the sauna is not hot anymore and we are ready to relax in bed and have a good night’s sleep, maybe after a smoke (well, husband smokes, I don’t) under a starlit sky, if the weather is nice. Our home is next to small forest, stepping out into the darkness is almost like at mökki ❤