Journey to Latvia—Part 2 (Return to Riga)

 by Zinta Aistars

Suitcases are up in the apartment, my international phone is charged and ready, and I am running on pure adrenalin, eager to get back out on Riga cobblestone. One night missed as the jet crossed the international dateline, but I push through fatigue and feel surprisingly clear-headed.

Clear-headed enough that I remember a promise I made while still back in the states. I am to call Andris in Ventspils—port city on the Baltic City, city where my father spent his youth, city filled to brimming with my own memories—as soon as I land. I am back out in the fresh, cool autumn air of Riga at dusk. I lean up against a building that has stood many more lifetimes than mine alone, and I call.

“Ja?”


1993 in Ventspils


I know that voice. I have known that voice since I, and the owner of that voice, were 15 years old. For a tall man, it is surprisingly soft, almost whispery. But then, I think, he would know it is me. That voice encircles me like a spell I’ve never quite shaken. After 17 years, I’m back in Latvia, as if I’d never quite left.

“Esmu seit,” I say. I am here.

There’s a pause, a stillness. Time shifts its shoulder, moves its weight from one foot to the other, stretches its lazy muscle, and stands still again. Perfectly still.

Like that, 17 years vanish. We pick up the conversation where we left it. But we don’t talk for long … my stomach rumbles for a meal, my feet itch to dance on cobblestone, and just in front of where I stand, the Daugava flows smooth and silky toward the Gulf of Riga. I hold the phone to my ear, leaning against the stone wall, listening to that voice, watching the lights come up on the bridges over the river, blue, white, glimmering and winking.

I promise to call again later.

There are so many to call. Even as I walk, messages start to come in on my phone. I had given the number out to family and friends along with my itinerary, and now greetings roll in. Welcome home, says one message. Are you here yet? Call as soon as you can, can’t wait to see you! Welcome, again. Welcome. Welcome home, they all sing.

I find dinner at Cetras Istabas (Four Rooms) on Livu Laukums (Livu Square). It is a change I can’t help but notice: since I was last here, at the very beginning of Latvia’s renewed independence, entrepreneurship has burst up from the streets into seemingly hundreds of cafes and pubs, stores and boutiques, business establishments and offices. I know well that Latvia is suffering economic hardship—unemployment is at an all-time high of 20 percent and the country is bleeding its population into surrounding countries, as heads of households look for work elsewhere—but one would hardly know it by walking the streets of Riga. A steady stream of people walk to either side of me, in front and behind me. Music swirls into the air, coming from various open doors and windows and from street after street of outdoor cafes. Kiosks line the square, and stooped old women and a few men sell their wares—strings and ropes of amber, ceramic souvenirs, magnets and keyrings, mittens and socks knit with the elaborate and brightly-colored patterns of Latvian folk design.

Every block sports several “Valutas Izmaina” offices, places where one can change money from any country’s currency into Latvia’s lati and santimi. I compare exchange rates at a few, and make my trade for a little at a time. The US dollar is weak, and my one dollar exchanges for about 50 santimi, tiny copper coins and a few silver ones.

I recognize Riga like an old friend, and details flood back to me as I look around. But at the same time, she has flowered much brighter and prettier, truly the pearl of the Baltic as Europeans have dubbed her, than she ever was before to my eyes. I have seen her in many phases, none darker than the first. During Soviet years, these same buildings were gray and peeling, showing their age and lack of care and loving ownership. It wasn’t just the buildings, however, that I recall as gray. People were gray, too. Their faces. Their eyes. Gone glazed and unseeing. No one on the street would make eye contact. No one spoke. Riga was a silent and washed-out old woman, having lost her spark. Now, she was in love with life again, flashing her vibrant smile, an almost gaudy flirt, and her eyes shone and reflected in every face I passed in the narrow streets.

The laughter and chatter of a thousand voices echoed off the buildings. Couples walked arm in arm, steps synchronized. Young women skipped over the cobblestones in stiletto heels, never missing a step, never tripping, so I could only shake my head in amazement—one learns to walk one’s own territory with light step. Anyone else on such spikes would twist an ankle on these rounded old stones.

Watching the clock, I aimed for bed at a logical hour, even if my body was seven hours behind me, in Michigan. I called Ventspils one more time, as I said I would, tucked into my Riga bed and blankets around me. Like a dam opened up, conversation flooded the lines this time, a rolling rapids. Ventspils was still a little more than two hours west of me in Riga, and the plan was to drive there day after next. Andris and I had arranged to meet on Sunday, but he asked now that I slip out from family bustle on Saturday already, after I had met with everyone and had time for greeting.

“Tu celies no tiem desmit galdiem!” he said, urging me to rise from those “ten tables” of endless hospitality. We both had known the routine more than once. Me, on my visits here, and he, on his visits to the states, traveling from house to house, host to host, each insisting on another elaborate meal with extra helpings. I will, I laughed. I’ll slip out. It would be good to meet just a little earlier…

Our personal history was a little wild and varied, a little hairy and slightly insane. There was a time for friendship, a time for crazed romance, a time for forks in roads that would lead us each our own way again, if unwillingly. Yet with all those chutes and ladders, our bond held firm. All that mattered to me now was that my lifelong friend be happy, be well, know a sweet moment now and then and laugh that laugh I adored. As we talked, I could hear the lively chatter of his two little girls in the background, a new family, and he chuckled as he said he was often mistaken for their granddaddy. Those little girls were his second chance. We had both lost, and lost much along our paths. If I had fought for and won achievement in my art, in literature, but lost at finding trustworthy companionship, he had fought for and won a good home, but lost at developing a lasting career with his music. We had each had to pay our dues.

No matter. I hadn’t come here to solve any world problems, in my world, or his, or any other. I had come here to rediscover my fatherland, ease away the shadows of bleaker times, and reestablish contact with family and friends living here—Andris among them. If I had feared that my arrival would not be welcome, my fears had all vanished by now. I curled into my Riga bed for a first night’s rest, knowing I had many here waiting to see me, with what by now I knew, beyond doubt, was sincere joy of reunion. I would sit and rise from ten tables, with extra helpings of love from family and friends I suddenly realized I had missed with a terrible ache, left unacknowledged. Until now, when I could at last open that clenched fist, held so tightly and so long closed, and release what was, leaving my hand open for what was yet to come.

(To be continued…)

Journey to Latvia—Part 1

by Zinta Aistars





What have I done? Doors were meant to close, I meant to close them, if gently. Instead, I have opened them wide again, doors flying open on hinges, windows open and curtains billowing in the wind. The journey is over. That is, the getting into a plane, lifting off, landing, time spent overseas in Latvia, nearly three weeks, plane lifting off again, plane landing again, is over. Another journey has begun now, and I have no idea, none, where this one will lead.

I sought a kind of closure. I sought a sweet farewell. Oh, those many loved faces and places … but I love them all still. And more, I love myself in them, in those places, reflected in the eyes of those many faces, and many of them mirroring my own features, my own sensibilities.

It happened again. The very same thing that happened all those many times before when I traveled over the ocean, plane circling over the blue of the Baltic Sea, landing on that forested northern land of Latvia, land of my mothers and fathers of uncounted generations before. It happened: I felt myself transform from one person into another. Yet still the same. Some parts unfolding into light, other parts folding in to sleep. My American self went to sleep; my Latvian self stretched sleepy muscle and limb and blossomed open and bright into light. Just like that, and I can see it in the photos now that the trip is done… the light falls differently on my face. I felt it on my tongue. Words turning to another language, softer, rich with meaning, the layers of many hundreds of years, a nation that has walked the earth far longer than most. History trembled inside me. Even my Latvian language changed … from the firm intonation of Latvians in America, to the soft, flowing and musical intonation of Latvians in Latvia.

I was home.

I knew it the moment we landed. A jet airliner over the ocean, a small plane from Warsaw, Poland, took me to Riga. For weeks, I carried a clenched fist inside me, hard with fear, and a body memory of the pain endured the last time I was here, nearly 17 years ago. It was autumn then, too. Lush with color. Raw with reds, dipped in gold. My every nerve simmered with fire at the farewell. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to come back, to feel that way again.

I needed to get past that. I had waited long enough.

The clenched fist opened slowly into a soft, pink palm, held open. The plane landed, rolled down the tarmac, and my eyes misted over with tears. What was I afraid of? Of this? Of coming home? Of all these open arms waiting to greet me?

There, the first set, at the airport. My old friend Janis, his wavy chestnut hair now turned a brilliant white, enfolded me in a warm embrace and handed me a beautiful bouquet of Latvian samtenites, marigolds. It is our tradition to always greet each other with flowers at most any and every occasion. It had always been that way. It always, surely, would be.

We are driving into Riga, and my head bounces on its rubber neck, this way, that, taking it all in, my eyes not nearly big enough to draw it all in, all of it, every bit of it, all these places I know, I know these places, that building there, the arch of that bridge, the sheen of the Daugava flowing between her wide banks, the cobblestone streets of Old Town in Riga, I know this place, I am this place, this place is in me, I am home, at last!

Too many homes, I think, too many. Is a person bereft who has so many homes? Or is this wealth? Pieces and shards and chunks of my heart planted and rooted in a myriad of places, scattered like seed to the wind. Chicago, where I was born; Kalamazoo, where I was raised; Cincinnati, where my children were born; Alaska, where I fell in love with the earth in all its glory; the Keweenaw, where I knew love, to be loved and to love with all in me—life, man, wilderness, art. And here, Latvia, land of my ancestors, land where my first language is spoken on every street corner, land that my parents taught me to love, but then learned to love on my own. So many homes, and so much of my life, feeling oddly homeless, nonetheless.

Yet all other homes are forgotten the moment my foot hits the cobblestone. These streets know my step. Mine, along with so many centuries of steps so like mine. Riga is steeped in history, a city established in 1201, hammered by wars and violence, yet rising again and again and yet again. Her last rise was in 1991, when she threw off the shackles of Soviet occupation, 51 years of torment, and declared herself free again.

I had seen her for the first time when I was 15 years old. Latvia had been forced into Soviet rule after World War II, and my parents had fled to Germany, then the United States, to avoid deportation to Siberia. I came that first time with my parents, my parents younger then than I am today. I can only imagine the fists and knots of fear in their stomachs as the plane landed in Riga. But I recall the joy of seeing home again on their faces, too. Even as the face of Riga was worn then, and gray.

She blazes with color now. I take it all in as we drive up to Old Town, park the car at its perimeter, because cars are not allowed to drive into its center. New Riga, yes, there cars race and intertwine on busy lanes. Here, only footsteps ring on the old cobblestones. My suitcase rattles on its little wheels as I pull it along Miesnieku Iela to Pils Iela, where the rented apartment awaits.

To either side of me, the ancient buildings rise proud and with bright, renewed faces. Brightly painted, polished windows, flowers blooming in window boxes. Latvian flags wave where once I only saw communist red. The thick burgundy stripes, the color of so much spilled blood, is centered with a pure white stripe. Legend has it that the Latvian flag came from a white linen table cloth, spread on a table where a Latvian woman lay a soldier, wounded in battle, so that she might care for him. His blood spilled to either side, but beneath him, the linen remained white.

If that soldier died, and so many with him, so many Latvians thrive today. Such a tiny country, nestled in the center of the three Baltic nations—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania—about the size of the Upper Peninsula in Michigan. Yet the culture remains rich with art, music, literature, even as the country now struggles with a barren economy, much as the rest of the globe but without the same reserves as the superpowers.

I feel a thousand upon thousand of those before me seep into the fibers of my being as my steps resound on those cobblestones. We are here still. We are here. We still live.

Only a short time will I be here, but, standing at the tall, brown door of Pils Iela 18, old keys rattling in my hand, I will open myself to all that comes to me, and I will offer myself whole in return. Those 17 years, they were long, they were unbelievably short, they are mere memory behind me, misty wisps of vapor, a coolness passing over my cheek and gone, and now, time stands still.

Riga, I’m back.

(To be continued, see next installment…)

Journey Across a Lifetime

by Zinta Aistars

I wake lazy this morning. Monday, and I don't have to go to work. Don't have to drive from home to the office, that daily 110-mile trek. Instead, I am preparing to make a journey of about 9,000 miles. Tomorrow, September 21, my journey begins to Latvia, a return trip for the first time in some 17 years.

Only I realize that my journey began a long time ago. It began in the spring, when I first made the commitment to cross the ocean to the land of my mothers and fathers, past generations as far as any geneology has taken me. It began when I decided it was time, it was time overdue, and I went to the city hall office to renew my dusty passport. It began when I purchased the airline ticket, from the very same woman in Chicago who had sold me a ticket for my first trip to Latvia, at age 15. Indeed, I gaze at an old photograph in my album... a 15-year-old me sitting at a table next to a 15-year-old boy playing his guitar for me, his eyes dropped shyly to his knees. We met then for the first time. He would grow up to become a classically trained musician, and I would grow up to be a writer, each on our side of the ocean, yet sharing a language and ancestry. That "boy" is today my music editor at The Smoking Poet. That boy grew into a man who would become my lifelong friend.

An evil empire would fall between then and now. An Iron Curtain would move aside. A lifetime would pass. Several lifetimes, it seems, and today, we are both gray and with fine lines at the corners of our eyes.

"Gaidisu..." he writes to me this morning. "I'll be waiting for you..."

And the notes back and forth across the ocean have moved with increasing speed and frequency. Many friends and family members I haven't seen in such a very long time have resurfaced in my life, in my every day. A goddaughter who was an infant when I was a teen, a baby I held in my unaccustomed hands.... today she is a young wife and mother, waiting to introduce me to her two children. There are those that I met so long ago, and today they are gone. Their journeys are over. My grandmother's brother, Arnolds, who was deported to Siberia, thought lost forever, thought dead, but who managed to return to his home in Ventspils after a journey of years, gaunt, near death, yet still knowing how to laugh. I remember his laughter on subsequent visits to Ventspils. I remember his kind smile. I will never see him again, not in this lifetime.

I remember my grandfather's sister, Anna, proud and tall woman, whose life story, too, was harsh and filled with loss. I remember my grandmother's sister, Milda, short and plump, hair swinging across her face as she giggled deliciously. I couldn't help but smile when I was around her. Gone, all gone now. Interesting to me today, looking back, that those who would have most reason to be hardened and embittered, for all the tragedies in their lives, showed the brightest smiles and back then greeted me with the warmest embraces, making me feel at home. They helped me understand the meaning of family.

So much has passed during all these years. We have all changed. So many of us are now parents, grandparents, even great-grandparents. Too many of us are gone.

This journey began so long ago. So very long ago.

And as I pack my bags today, tucking my renewed passport and airline tickets into a pocket, I realize I may never make this trip again. I have had my own harsh choices to make in life. I, too, have had to walk away from sweeter dreams and a brighter happiness. I remember Arnolds, Anna, Milda, and take courage. But I've done my best, made what I've known in my heart were the right decisions, and so I prepare now to see all those much loved faces one more time, realizing that after those joyous hellos will come teary farewells. I have been saving for a dream to move north to Michigan's Upper Peninsula for a long time... and these trips, expensive as they are, can eat away at this other dream I have had since I was a girl. Choices. I have more choices to make.

So my heart has opened again, warm and full to bursting, and then clenched again, knowing that the flip side will be wet with tears. I already know how this story ends. Yet, I am reminded, "never say never." Who knows what may yet come? Certainly as I look back on my life of more than half a century now, I can see how many twists and turns there have been in this plot, how many surprises, how many impossible dreams become stunningly possible. One never knows.

The heart must always remain open to possibilities. A journey is an adventure when we let the road lead us instead of our always trying to determine which road we must take. I have my goal to pursue, but the forks in the road, I know, will yet be many.

For now, I read those warm notes that have traveled so many thousands of miles ... gaidisu ... and my heart beats steady and strong, full of anticipation. So many beloved faces. So many threads left untied long ago, to be picked up again. That gray we now have threaded through and through our hair, it has been honorably earned, and I am proud of it. If my heart had ever clenched tight again, it is today soft, and open, and pulsing with the pleasure of knowing that I am welcome, that someone somewhere waits for me, with open arms.

The clock ticks. The time nears. The jet engines begin to whir and gather speed.

It is time. At long last, it is time to go home again.