February 2014
Snow drifted up, sideways, down, through
bare birch branches, drifted to ground, thickening there. An explosion of
seagulls burst upwards, a fountain
of birds: an indelible evocative sight, numinous really.
This is the landscape of the park opposite
the Soviet built flats in which my aunt and uncle live in Tallinn, Estonia.
This could have been the landscape of my mother’s early life. This could have
been the landscape … but for the location. My mother was born in Pskov in
Russia, of Estonian father and Russian mother. She was schooled in St
Petersberg, Russia and then Tartu, not Tallinn, and then only a short time. My
mother and her brother came to
Australia on a ship in the mid-1920s. They were immigrants, boat people.
It was Australia Day recently: when
Australians celebrate with the welcoming of new Australians and the drinking of
beer and explosions of fireworks. My heart was heavy and the Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie
refrain just left me cold. I had only been back a week from Estonia, this land
of my mother’s. The memories and
rememberings somehow didn’t sit well in barbecues, and so I stayed at home.
Re-membering, note the way I write it, is
the putting together of things half imagined, half recalled. Re-membering joins the dots. The story, my story,
is situated and relational. This story is situated in place and it is
relational to circumstance, place, time, people and the teller herself. This
story of my mother, and thus me – to a degree – starts in 1909 with her birth
into a disputed land. Of interest to everyone, wedged between the Baltic Sea to
the north and west, Latvia to the South and Russia to the East, Finland, across
the bay, and Sweden, over the Baltic to the North-West; sometimes claimed by
Germans, sometimes Finns, the Russians, the Swedes; Estonia, of interest
because of her precious port in the capital, Tallinn. This port is remarkable. It doesn’t
freeze over, because of warm currents. It opens frozen northern Europe to the
world. So this little country, with its rich cultural history, its opera,
ballet, and theatre companies, its artistic and musical history, its unique
language (related not to Russian, but to Finnish and Hungarian), is attractive
to larger countries that want to expand their borders. In 1909, Estonia was
annexed by Russia. She gained a short lived independence in 1918, but soon she
was gobbled again, this time into the Soviet regime, gaining independence again
in 1989. Now she is dirt poor and propped up by the economy of Sweden (a
dominance of another kind). She is poor but not down and out, despite a
minuscule population of only 1.42 million people and a workforce that moves
beyond her boundaries into Scandinavia.
I am always interested in clear boundaries
and I now compare this with Estonia’s fight for independent and clear
boundaries from others surrounding her. I feel keenly the pressing in of others
desires and needs and I know – in my bones – the richness of my own space. As
one of my friends describes me, I am Elizabeth of Estonia. I know the sinews and bones, and the cries of
the children, of an ancient land, as if they were my own. This land, strewn with the moss and snow
covered ice boulders of Finnish granite that twisted and turned and travelled
across the frozen Baltic Sea, is unique. Granite is from the Finnish landscape;
Estonia is all wetlands and sandstone – and so much of it unsettled
countryside. I know it in the very
marrow of my bones, the presence of others and my own unique integrity. It is in
this knowing that the personal and
the professional meld together, for this is my gift (received, lived, and given
again).
I am, via my mother, a new Australian. Via her, I know what I give and receive
and give again, in my life and my therapeutic work. This being in me, this land
of my mother’s ancestry, is me being Australian and me being present for the
presence of others and present for myself. I don’t think I am all that
different from others who cross the oceans to this place.
My story is like snow flakes dropping, rising, drifting and bursts of birds in
silent crofts of trees. My story is merely musing, really. A seeking for sense;
a joining of the dots.
