We left Savolinna with sadness, but approached Jyvaskyla with gladness. Both Tarja and Marjuska drove us to Taru-Maija's house, and we enjoyed seeing the two girls together again. It had been nearly thirty years since they were together in Oxford...they all look just as they did then, but now they are mothers of young adults -- just about the age they were when we all met.
The first day we spent just resting, washing clothes, and getting caught up in general.
Our daughter, Taru-Maija, is the most international person I know. First, her parents made sure the children all understood that there was a world beyond Iisalmi, Finland. After their Father died, their Mother traveled and worked. She and Topio went to China to do medical missionary work. She went to Australia. She visited Mongolia. She lived the international life they wanted the children to know. They sent each of the six children to London, England, for a week, and a month in the southern part of the country. It worked! Taru-Maija's children had their overseas experience in Malta, and they also visited us in Oxford when they were elementary school children. Their daughter, Mai-Schenai, in her brief 24 year life, has an extensive list of countries visited and/or lived in. Son Benjamin is on his way internationally as he prepares to study in Singapore next fall.
Topio, a pharmacist working in Norway, had spent time as an exchange student in Ohio and married a Ukrainian woman. The oldest daughter, Airi, and her Surinami husband, Kurt, spent two years of their early married life traveling the world and both volunteering and working wherever they were. Then, they settled down in Holland for a few years before returning to Finland. Kurt was so impressed with the Finnish culture of supporting family (the government gives a stipend for each child in the family while they are living at home - until they are 18) and education. (Tuition for the colleges is basically free for all kids.) Their education is extremely good, and Newsweek had it right when they evaluated Finland as the most livable nation in the world. Never mind the cold winters; the health care, education, workforce, and economics are the best.
Juhani's (brother) wife is from Moscow, and she is Jewish. Veikko (another brother) spent one year as exchange student in the United States, and because it was so good, he decided to stay one more year and work. He wanted to bring a car home -- a silver anniversary Corvette. It is still running and Veikko lets his friends use it for weddings, etc. He is a bachelor who loves to play rugby.
Taru-Maija was an international student, and worked as a tour guide for Finns traveling to both Turkey and Bulgaria. She married a Bulgarian whose roots go back to the Tartars. He is a liberal Muslim, and grew up under Communism. We have learned so much from him about the world he knew as a child. They were married in 1985, four years before the Iron Curtain fell. Living in Finland has admittedly, had its challenges for this central European whose father and sister left Bulgaria and lived and worked in Istanbul, Turkey. Taru-Maija used her extensive language skills as a planner of international conferences in Jyvaskyla.
The youngest brother, Vessa-Pekka, has a job that has taken him to many countries in Europe, but he has traveled extensively in Asia as well. He takes the travel bug to extremes: his Father was a Star Trek fan, and so, in his honor, Vessa-Pekka will be one of only two Finns to soar into space on the Virgin Galactic flight in 2012. This suborbital, 3-4 hour flight will be the ultimate in "outside the box" traveling!
I admire the internationalism of this family, the "universal" look to their children, and their intelligent approach to learning about other cultures.
On with our story. We drove three hours north of Jyvaskyla to Iisalmi, where the Heilala summer cottage is. Turning into the place, we felt at home: nothing had changed in 24 years. The big cottage, where we sleep and eat, the several smaller cottages (built by their Father with the kids as they got bigger), the outhouse, where I first saw the poster of Lenin (her brother got a copy for me to take to my office. For the students of mine who are reading this, they will remember Vladimir Lenin in his classic pose!) And, of course, the sauna, looking much the same as it had more than a half century ago when it was built. The forest was the same, with the birch trees still sporting the branches that will be bound together for use in the sauna, the same with those huge stones, boulders in fact, that are growing moss and becoming ever so slowly part of the soil, and the same again, with the small and beautiful flowers -- blueberries in bloom, currents in bloom, and sometimes, just wildflowers in bloom. It is so natural, and everyone should have a place like that to go when one needs peace.
The next day began the Midsummer Eve celebration. The Finns get a three day holiday when the longest day of the year comes...they go to their summer cottages on the lakes, for sure; go to sauna, and stay up for the burning of the bonfires. This pagan tradition is to scare away the evil spirits, but in modern days the Finns use it as a good excuse to celebrate and drink beer or Finlandia Vodka. Remember that the sun does not set - or at least it is below the horizon only for ten or fifteen minutes -- what that means is that the sky is dusky and not dark. You learn to sleep with an eye mask, or hope your cottage has "room darkening" shades. Twenty-four hour days mean that you don't have a "time" to eat. You just eat when you feel like it. We ate our traditional "bread fish" (the small fish are piled high on each other, then wrapped in rye bread dough, and baked in the oven until they are done. You slice the bread, and eat the slices of little fish and bread with some butter on it. Add to that the tomatoes and cheese, and you have a holiday meal!) and drank our Finnish beer, then went to the campground we had visited 24 years earlier.
Iisalmi is a town about the size of Oxford, but without a University. At the campground, we watched others grilling their lenkke-makkara sausages then sat down for a short beer before the bonfire. A young Finn sat next to me, and when he heard our accent, just got so excited, because he had spent time in Michigan! He couldn't get over an American couple coming to this small place in central Finland for Midsummer! We had fun comparing notes with his experience and ours with our "kids".
The fires were lit, and people gathered around the big haystack shape. The sun was setting in the sky, and people were mostly quiet. When the fire began to die down, folks began to disperse to their tents and campers, and we set out on the boat owned by Kurt. (He and Airi do not own a car; just bicycles and a boat.) Believe me, sailing across the lakes at 2 am on a wonderful sunlit morning is sheer delight to those of us south of the nordic areas. You will see the pictures, but you need to be able to do it yourself!
This was a highlight event of our visit to Taru-Maija -- but the true highlights are when we are sitting around in their living room, with the two of them, and their young adult children and a fiance mixed in. That's what this visit is really about.
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