Hi Everyone,
I am on a trip down Memory Lane: Tallinn, Estonia, to be specific, where once upon a time I was married and where my son was born, more than two decades ago. If you have not had the privilege of visiting Tallinn, it is a full-blown fairy tale. It is to my knowledge the oldest remaining castle town in the world to escape destruction in the Second World War. Around me are the massively thick castle walls, the red-tiled turrets, real triple-stepping cobblestone streets and flowers that at this time of year are insanely Arctic, vibrant blue, red, yellow and pink.
The air comes straight off the glaciers. I can’t breathe deeply enough and there is a zephyr so playful at breakfast that if the tablecloth was not pinned down, we might just fly off. My waitress, while not the flaxen-haired beauty from years ago, is all the same perky, fluent in English and emblematic of Estonia today: international, European and up to the minute. Even with all its modernity, Estonia remains magical. I can see it in my son’s eyes, his remembering, and his British girlfriend’s eyes, who is seeing it for the first time and, as a flaxen-haired beauty, fits right in.
Yesterday, we went to visit our old home (my son’s first home) in Kadriorg Park, a 70-hectare (almost 200-acre) historic palace park, immediately outside the Old Town where we once owned an eighteenth-century wooden home painted in the colours of Carl Larsson that most probably once belonged to the serving staff of Tsar Peter the Great and his Estonian wife Catherine’s summer palace.
As many mothers might say, the infancy of their child is a place of supreme delight when learning between mother and child is a tremendous flow of unspoken love. While everyone does parenting differently, of course, for me and my son, who was a major surprise in and of himself (read my novel Mine), the rocking chair, singing lullabies and the soft sound of snow on the roof reigned supreme.
As my son, his girlfriend and I wandered on Roheline Aas (Green Meadow Street) toward our old home, my heart sank just a little to see that it had not been kept up in the way we might have imagined. With a wee bit of courage, we tapped on the door, and were invited inside, to what was now a kindergarten. In that instant, everything changed in that charmed Estonian way. Inside, a dizzying flash of the past flew round, as if all the hours and minutes of learning, play, love and song, between my son and myself, multiplied. Mini chairs, tables, instruments and playthings abounded everywhere; tiny beds for nap times were lined up in what had been a dressing room; the alphabet stood emblazoned on the walls of what were once the master bedroom and the reception room. Soft carpet spread out everywhere.
Speechless with the explosion of learning, affection and care that filled the house, I turned to the young woman, the teacher, who had invited us in, as she timidly asked, “Did you or anyone else ever sing here?” I nodded yes, as she said, “I hear it. Everywhere.” She pointed to the kitchen, the stairwell, where, yes, I’d carried my son as we sang our way down to breakfast and always up to bed. The walls had the same tiny, soft design as two decades earlier, and the stairwell remained a tribute to Carl Larsson’s bright, clean, joyful colours, remnants of our past.
Crisp whites and reds, soft blues and greens still held ground, as did the beginnings for a mother and son, a time full of love and joy and peace and song, enough to last a lifetime. Memory Lane, a house, a home, on Green Meadow Street in Kadriorg Park, still imbued with all that was once, and is still, held dear.
Wishing you, too, a majestic August, worthy of awe and respect, and courage to go back to the beginning, along Memory Lane, to spend a few minutes there, shapeshifting, visiting, recalling all of the very best.
Love,