The Grand Cottage and Other Such Sundries

Here I am at the library computer, come in from the wilds of the forest. Hardly. I'm just saying that to excuse myself for not brushing my hair this morning.

My newest resolution. Yesterday was my 29th birthday and I didn't hear much from friends. Usually that's OK and I am understanding that since I don't advertise my birthday, there is no way I should anticipate calls, letters, emails. But for some reason, this time, it upset me. I guess I am feeling a bit disconnected from my former life in Toronto and wanted more than usual to hear from folks. So I decided that I will make the more than average effort to stay in touch. Since it is important to me, it would be good to be able to feel that out for myself, make it happen on my own.

So here it is, the latest news.

The cottage we're staying in is gorgeous. It's not fancy or anything (there's no running water, for example), but I love it. Chris and I are starting to make ourselves feel at home, learning our way around. Chris' Finnish is coming along. We both struggle with feeling homesick from time to time but are supporting each other through it. I think the hardest part of coming in to a new place is when you don't know how things are or how to connect with other people. Where, for example, are the alternative media sources, the underground music scenes, the counter-culture resistance movements? You always have to look for them and hope you find them. And that's not easy when even the mundane requires some deciphering.

An example. My aunt told us that there was a laundromat in town. Chris and I piled our stuff in the hamper and drove to it. Oh no, it was a professional place that does linens and things. To do our laundry would take a week or so. About 2km from our cottage, they told us, was a self-serve laundromat. So I drove there, down a winding dirt road past scarecrows and fields. There I find a yellow wooden house with the sign that says laundromat. In the driveway stands an old man who informs me that the gentleman who runs the laundromat is out of town and we should return Monday. I go back this morning and there is the guy who runs the show. It's him who will need to wash our laundry. We can't do it ourselves. But he's not sure when he can get to is. Maybe by 4pm today. Or tomorrow morning. And he can't dry it either so we need to pick it up and bring it home and hang it up. All I want, I think, is clean underwear.

The same feeling of 'this is not home' goes through me whenever we go to a grocery store. Weird how connected we become to the food we eat and how it is somehow jarring when it's no longer available. Though the store is full of food, you need to reconceptualize how you cook and what you make and somehow, it feels, even what your life is like.

Leaving Toronto was hard because it was a kind of disconnection from what was familiar and important to me. Friends, work that I believed in, a home that, for better or worse, was a good place to live. Our bikes, our cats, our known lives. The connection, most especially, with people who are dear to us was so important. Uprooting ourselves is as difficult as uprooting sounds.

In Finland there is, on the other hand, the benefit of family. Last night we had a sauna, went swimming and ate dinner with my uncle and aunt, a cousin and his daughter, and three of my other cousin's kids who were spending the weekend with their grandparents. I don't usually have the benefit of an extended family of any sort and in Toronto we haven't yet had anyone from the next generation come along. So lying in bed and reading a story to Jaakko and Aada, with Chris at my side, was somehow poetic in the way only children and family can be. Those old songs of the home hearth come back to me as the storm rages in the woods outside and we are snuggled up in bed.

There are some of the stories from this end. There are more. But I'll leave it here for now. It is the wood and the sauna, the lake and the midnight sun that continue to captivate me. The rest, I am sure, will come in time.

Until next time, Miia