Mum in Transition 5
Expats are used to coming and going, but what happens when your children move country and you stay behind? In the fifth in a series of new articles, Ata Bos writes candidly about her confrontation with an empty house after her sons leave Finland for a new life in Holland, her country of origin.
While my life in Oulu seemed like an expedition to the North Pole—biscuits and pemmican gone, hiking around ice chasms with the dream of planting a flag somewhere—visiting a cottage in the Finnish forest feels safe and familiar. On these terms, Finland and my ‘breakdown’ seem manageable. Where two weeks previously I had struggled to reach yoghurt from a fridge, fetching wood for a fire is simple.‘There’s a fireplace; there’s a basket that needs filling,’ I think. The simplicity comforts me. I carry a piece of wood from the forest inside and feel courageous. The trees are like giants standing still. I hear the wind and my husband breathing, but no one slams a door or revs a car engine and no email ‘ding’ makes me jump.
I’m like a little girl again. The birch branch smells like spices, and my muscles work perfectly, expanding and contracting as if by magic. I see myself doing things and before long I do them. Walk-to-the-lake-with-a-kettle-to-get-water, I think, and my thigh muscles move. Sit-down-by-the-fire-and-watch-steak-fry, I tell my brain, then do it. The flames make smoke, and sometimes I change place when the wind blows smoke in my direction, or change place to be closer to the fire. My husband and I sit on tree trunks and eat our peppers and onions, in smaller, half-plated portions because the boys aren’t here.
This is more than a day trip to Helsinki would have been. I’m training myself, proving that I’m alive and that I can exist without crying. Out here I know I won’t cry; in Oulu I was afraid to meet people or talk on the phone because a word or a phrase; for example, ‘How are you doing?’ or ‘How’s work?’ or ‘Are you missing the boys’; would start an emotional reaction; I’d start to bawl. ‘No …. I’m … not … missing the boys,’ I’d answer, tone wavering before the sobbing started. The tractability of life here and the absence of people is like a warm blanket.
Vaguely, I know that behind this comfort, my mind is scattered and conflicted. A dull confusion sits in my stomach, and the headache is a hand around the back of my neck. I see disorientation in how my husband doesn’t ask, ‘Are you enjoying this?’ or how he doesn’t mention the boys or work, not even his own. My mind soon flashes warnings also. Don’t start talking about living in Finland. Pause. Don’t talk about how lonely you are at work. Pause. These are accompanied by mental cinema of the upset I’ll experience if I do decide to blab. In one image, I decide to climb a rock by the lake and fall, breaking my spine. In another, I leave my hand on the fire, then notice the flames.
With another warning, ‘Don’t talk about work at all,’ comes visions of crying once more, rushing to the water, shouting, splashing, holding a broken leg and in hysterics, screaming curse words, ‘shit’ and ‘scheisse’ and ‘godverdomme,’ the Dutch word for ‘god dammit,’ because the ‘r’ sounds angry—you can really roll it—and the longer it is, the angrier you are.
At five pm the sky’s black. My coat, woolly scarf and hat keep me warm. When the chimney starts to warm, a glow can be seen through the glass doors. We decide to go for a walk. Returning, the thermometer reads thirteen degrees; I keep my coat on and pour coffee. The chandelier over the kitchen table gives just enough light to read. My husband searches for a comic from upstairs, an attic space under the slanted roof, and now and then we go to the sauna with a flashlight to check that the stove is burning.
We take our clothes off in the dressing room. ‘Want to take a dip?’ my husband asks, pointing in the direction of the dark surface below. I shiver and stare at goose bumps on my arms. ‘Wimp,’ he says, and then walks towards the lake while I step into the sauna. I pour water on the stones and mix boiling water from the tank with lake water before washing my hair. I step onto the bench, get seated, and close my eyes.
Cold or not, I suddenly want to stay. Everything would be perfect if I could stay. It doesn’t matter how long: two weeks, two months, a year. I feel as comfortable as a tribesman in the wilderness; heating, food, music, friends and electrical appliances or not. I rehearse a conversation in which I talk about staying to my husband, who’s still in the lake. ‘Can’t we stay longer?’ I say when he does come in. ‘Teaching duties next week,’ he answers. ‘Leave me here,’ I say, anticipating his reply, trying to move him, ‘—one week might just be enough.’ His face turns; the discussion is going nowhere. ‘No way Ata; that’s never going to happen,’ I hear him say, although he doesn’t say it.
My husband is worried for me. On the other hand, I’m rebelling not just against his ‘duties’—in our family the word’s almost a joke, he’s so rigid in procedure each time he teaches classes, in addition to his research—but against obedience, against having to follow rules and timetables. I want him to stay as a gesture of solidarity. ‘Why can’t we just stay?’ I almost shout aloud.
When the evening of the second day is almost over, I realise that two days aren’t enough, that I can’t go ‘back’ to a ‘normal’ life, to a routine in which I won’t hyperventilate before meeting colleagues so as to prevent my face cracking and showing weakness. After the cabin, the road to Oulu and a new life seems more a journey into a complete void than the polar voyage I had compared it to. At the same time, these days have been wonderful. I’ve begun to feel as if I can live, that on a basic level I am part of the world and not out of place. When we step into the car, snow—the first of the year—is falling. Perhaps it is possible to make a change.
