Cup of coffee is the first thing that reminds me happiness. I made one just now. There is something soothing about the smell of coffee in the morning. For the rest of the rushing world it marks the beginning of the day, the wake up call. For me, the opposite - I have hours for myself and my thoughts.
It takes me back to my childhood, its aroma leads me to those mornings, when sunbeams sneaked through the curtains and there is not a worry in the world. I can’t wait to run to the kitchen and sit down with my parents to have breakfast. I loved Saturday mornings, whatever happened during the week, nothing changed these small things. Like pancakes on Sundays. To be fair it was never just pancakes, Sunday was the day of baking. I didn’t particularly like cakes then, but never the less I enjoyed baking with my dad. I loved how he experimented with recipes and had this small smile under his moustache, when he nailed it. As if he was glowing with pride but he was too shy to own it. There were so many times, when I was so proud of him, I never said it, as he never did, but I know now, I should have. The things that were unsaid then, are still lingering in the air and want to come out.
On weekends we often went to countryside with my aunt and cousins. My cousin was my best friend even though we have five year age gap. Our summerhouse was amazing for couple of kids with vivid imagination. I must specify, that it wasn’t exactly a cottage, the house was cut off from all the civilisation. The nearest main road was roughly four kilometres and nearest shop definitely not walkable distance. It was old yellow farmhouse with barn and sheds in the middle of a deep forest. The house belonged to my great uncle, my mom and aunts used to already play there as kids, guess that place had been around for generations and had tons of great memories within its walls.
We ran through the forest and fields, we climbed trees, we built forts. We were ninjas, we had army of soldiers. We were Indians, we were cowboys. We nurtured baby birds and chased lizards. We had campfires and picked hazelnuts in autumn.
I was afraid to go to outhouse in the dark, because my cousin’s ghost stories. And the fact that he kept locking me in the thing constantly. But I wasn’t mad at him, everything was an adventure, when I finally got out, I spent hours looking for him - the Great Escape had already turned into hide-and-seek. I looked up to him, like he was my own personal superhero, I had unconditional love.
As I grew older I ended up less and less in that forest wonderland. Along with myself, my best friend had grown up and forgotten how to play as well. I sure hope he too remembers everything like it was yesterday. These are the memories kids should have growing up, being anything they ever imagined and run free.
My summers at my grandparents were the opposite from the island. When my aunt was a strong believer of letting the children play, my grandfather demanded discipline and hard work. He thought that was the only way of getting ahead in life - waking up with the sun, doing your chores, lunch, back to chores, working until darkness comes. His generation had it rough and it sure was the only way to get by. This intro to summers at grandparents might have started off gloomy, but quite the contrary - it had its own beauty.
We had all the vegetables and fruits imaginable growing in our climate zone right in our summerhouse. I loved casually picking a plum from a tree, sitting in a cherry tree and munching or sunbathing behind a raspberry bush. When granny was preparing lunch, she told me to bring stuff from garden. I pulled fresh potatoes and carrots form the soil, picked tomatoes and cucumbers for a salad. I can still taste it. I remember what are the flavours of vegetables, when they haven’t travelled thousands of kilometres to get to our supermarkets. I miss the realness of freshly squeezed apple juice and scent of those asymmetrical giant tomatoes.
As my grandfather was rather convinced everybody needs to work, we had quite a few conflicts, when I was growing up. I had always been the hedonist and a dreamer. I wanted to be in that scenery, but I didn’t want to turn this bliss into a burden. My only way was to escape. Escape to the limitless void, that I filled with books, thousands of stories, mysteries, fantasies. I read sometimes three books a day, I could never get enough. I didn’t have any friends there, nor was I missing to have any. All I wanted to do, is lay on the grass, in the middle of the blackcurrants and gooseberries and hungrily consume stories.
I started off with summers, yet all the favourite parts take place in winter. I find it fascinating how beneath the frozen ground and glistening snow, is life ready to burst out. Everything is just constant cycle of waiting and growing. Nothing really dies, its very much alive and idling. I loved winters - even the darkness. The calmness and silence assured me, everything will once bloom again. Winter is like guarantee, that next step is no doubt spring. I might have liked it even too much, perhaps I have been most of my life in the winter-phase waiting for spring to come.
My favourite memory is a particular winter I stayed at my grandma’s a month or more. I usually didn’t spend more time than couple of weeks at my grandparents in winter time. It was before I started school and that year my dad was helping out my uncle cutting down some trees in the forest. They stayed out until dark and I spend all these long days with my grandma, just the two of us. I don’t remember much, what we did, I guess I had to be only four or five that time, but I remember the feeling of warmth and coziness.
I was sitting by the window, looking at snow. Barely anyone on the streets, just this eerie church next to our house and blizzard. Winters were different then. We got meters of snow piling up to our yard. It seemed like the snowing never ends.
I was waiting for my dad and grandpa to come home, but just because I was scared that something bad would happen in the dark forest filled with snow. I loved sitting in front of a fireplace wearing woollen socks and drinking hot chocolate. Listening to fire cracking in the oven, distant mellow music coming from kitchen, where grandma was humming to the tune. In those dark Estonian winters, time literally stopped. Now I find it hard to cope with, the shortness of daylight time, the countless months of cold, but then I couldn’t imagine anything more peaceful. It was the winter when I charged my battery.
Winter had Christmases. The time of the year my dad went particularly crazy with baking. My early years I thought naively that making hundreds of gingerbread men and glazing them was for me - to make my holidays special. I am convinced that it was for him. I am convinced he did that because he missed being a child and the simplicity and beauty of life. That doesn’t change obviously anything, it was a magical time.
Maybe it was for mom. We always got the tree and we were in a hurry to decorate it before mom gets back from work. He was sweet like that, everything had to be ready before she came - dinner on the stove and not a single dirty dish anywhere. Home was always spotless clean and freshly baked cookies waiting. I see now how much beauty was in details. And god, how much I am like my dad.
One December he painted small footprints on my windowsill. The muddy prints went from the window to my slipper, where elves were bringing candy. I couldn’t believe my eyes in the morning, that I have been so blessed and I of all the kids in the world have proof that elves are real. I called my cousin, he came over immediately to investigate and he too had to admit, elves are in fact real. Which clearly meant that Santa was real too. He was ten and I was five back then, he wanted to be all grown up already and he had told me past two years, that it is all made up and parents bring candy and gifts under the Christmas tree. I never believed him, not because I was naive, I just loved believing in fairytales. I’m glad this trick extended our childhood couple of more years. My dad didn’t reveal it was him for fifteen years. I was twenty something when finally casually he broke the silence, with the same little smile on his face. He knew he did good. That time I really did say, it was the coolest thing you could do to a kid at Christmas.
The older you get the more you realise that a lot of things wasn’t just for kids, it was for adults who had missed out most of it when they were young. I am about same age now, what my dad was, when I was a toddler and my first memories were made. I relate to this guy in his early thirties more than ever. He had so much energy, creativity and ideas what to do with a small child. From feeding duckies at the pond to teaching a three year old how to play chess. One thing is sure, I don’t remember ever watching tv - always out somewhere doing something. Autumn we were picking mushrooms, in spring cowslips. When the weather was bad, I was painting, learning animal names in Russian, memorising capitals of Europe, drawing penguins or making clay monsters.
I remember pretending not to know how to read for a year, just because I liked that dad was reading books to me. One unfortunate moment I corrected him, what he had just read and got busted. Then I had to do my own reading, what I secretly did for a long time anyway already. Bet he knew though and liked reading children’s books out loud as much as I did.
I did more as a child than I ever do in any given day now. I can go on for hours telling what made my growing up great. Truth to be told, it has been hours and two mugs of coffee later.
I feel I have lost connection with Earth. I haven’t felt it under my bare feet so long, I haven’t noticed the first snowflake in ages. I have missed out falling leaves and first timid snowdrop in March. I haven’t breathed in sea-breeze. I notice the rain, I notice the sun, but I haven’t paid much attention to seasons changing even. I simply miss it.
I don’t particularly enjoy being cramped into a metal tube each and every morning breathing in someone else’s sweat. I don’t enjoy being hooked to magnetic fields and being monitored by every single device wherever I go. But this is the time we live in, this is our reality and we really were the last children without it. There is something spectacular about us, because it's only us whose one leg is in past and one in future. Is that partly why we feel so disconnected?
Now I have started to value time and myself more. I value this very moment where I can reflect and appreciate, what I have and what I have achieved within. I see so clearly the gap between then and now. I have had amazing childhood and wonderful memories filled with joy and colours. It was a pity that it had to end perhaps sooner than expected. It was a pity that tragedies hit our families one by one and it has ripped us apart. We barely see each other, nor we talk or reach out. We don’t have any of that anymore - the summerhouse is gone, the smell of grandma’s cinnamon buns is gone, along with my grandpa and his grumpiness. I saw my cousin last time at the funeral.
I haven’t mentioned my mom much, but it feels that this time it’s not about her. She hasn’t been controversial like my dad, she remains a saint in my eyes and nothing will ever shake that sacred place inside me. It is my dad who both build me and destroyed me and he deserves a passage of beautiful memories. To be honest it is only me, who saw that wonderful side of him. For others he was a son, a brother, a husband, a friend, an uncle - but only I have seen the dad.
That brings me to the big question. The question, what do I want? I can’t sit here and mourn all the great things in life. I’m not dead and buried yet. I am very much alive and thriving. Even more now, because I have lived through and relived all the grim. I thought the past four years of my life, when I retreated and confined myself into solitary, were the years where I grieve and simply start over. Indeed I did that, but all that time, I only figured out how to deal with negative. I learned how to not sink and go on no matter what. I know how to survive.
But I don’t know how to be happy. I don’t know how to trust this. How to go back to the twenty year gap in between and awake the child within. After I lost my family I though I don’t deserve another one, that I am not worthy. I am meant to be alone and not be part of any Christmas Eve’s ever again. Ever since I have always worked on holidays or traveled, because I don’t belong anywhere anymore. Even thinking about it makes me always cry. This isn’t right, I know. Everyone deserves a second chance, even the horrible one’s and I wasn’t even one of them. I was just a kid.
I do know what I want. I know I want to do all these things again and I want to share them. I will never forget the quote from ‘Into the Wild’, that said ‘Happiness is only real when shared.’ I think that movie has been quite symbolic and resembles my life and I hold it very dearly.
I want to spend time in the countryside and appreciate nature. I want to walk through a field of wheat and watch sun slowly sink in the nearby forest. I want to sit on a beach and listen to the waves coming to shore. I want to cook real food I picked from garden and host a dinner party to close friends. I want to watch campfire burn in the night. I want to watch stars and listen to crickets. I want to create colourful memories and bring that joy into someone else’s eyes. I want to bake cookies and wait someone home from work and simply make them smile, because I did something small and thoughtful for them. It doesn’t necessary mean kids, it doesn’t take more than two to have family. It doesn’t take more than just one person to share happiness. But it is also incredibly beautiful to see three or four generations together sharing the same moment and memory.
Up until now I think I have been embarrassed to say out lout that I want a family. I don’t need to chase all the money in the world or become famous. I want to celebrate holidays with people I love, I want to be waited home. I want someone to worry again if I get home safely at nights. Maybe I hated admitting it, because it felt unfair. How could I have any of that, if mine are gone, how could I betray their memory? I admitted myself into solitary and learned to live in it, hating every moment.
I want genuine connections and unconditional love, ability to trust and see behind people’s mistakes and flaws. Leave judgement behind and have deeper meaning in conversations. I want to be supportive and to be always there. I want to be authentic and natural. I want to plan future and travel unknown destinations. I want to be excited to get back to home. I want home.
That is not what I want, this is what I deserve, to love and be loved. And share the memories that are yet to come.