Come Helsinki or High Water

Dear Friends,

A trip to Helsinki the first weekend of December properly ushered in the Christmas spirit -- a broad phrase that covers a host of elusive feelings and wishes and emotions. Where did the spirit come from? It had something to do with location -- Finland, after all, holds bragging rights on being the official home of Santa Claus. Something to do the with climate -- there was snow on the ground. Good, thick snow. Made for packing. The kind that crunches under your feet. There was good company -- Ali and I again met up with Laurie, another Fulbright teacher from San Diego living this year in Vantaa, just outside of Helsinki proper, who treated us as kin. (Laurie spent a weekend with me in Riga in early November.) And there was nature. Not ten steps from Laurie's back deck lies a beautiful, unblemished forest of tall pines and twisting dirt paths.

On Suomenlinna Island, after walking among the ramparts, we warmed ourselves with cups of gloggi as we witnessed "King Gustav" of Sweeden declare the official opening of the Christmas season, complete with cannon blasts and fanfare. The next day we saw the Jolly Old Elfiss himselfiss parade in a horse-drawn chariot down a street adorned with candles and greenery and carolers. This was followed by a luscious lunch of reindeer quiche. (Don't tell Mr. Claus.) The city was cast in the colors of Christmas, from the crimson Uspenski Orthodox Cathedral looming in the distance to the alabaster Tuomiokirkko Lutheran Cathedral regally residing in the middle of Senate Square.

Given time, I told myself, I could easily fall in love with Helsinki.

Saturday evening, Laurie prepared makkara, a traditional Finnish dish of smoked sausage complemented by a dry Merlot. After dinner came time for a round in the sauna, pronounced suh-oo-nah if you're Finnish, located off of Laurie's upstairs bathroom. Warm and relaxed, the evening's night cap was enjoyed under bundled blankets in front of the TV where we gleefully stumbled upon the last twenty-five minutes of White Christmas. Oh, the insouciant glories of a warm home on a cold snowy night!

In spite of the warm glow brought about from the sauna and the wine and the blankets, I sensed a slight draft: my toes, though properly covered in socks, were cold. During a commercial break, I glanced down (as if looking at them would warm them). At first, I saw my socks were brownish along the toe lines, probably from the wear and tear of breaking in my new brown snow boots. But, as I looked closer, I saw that in fact my socks were themselves wearing away. The fabric was thinning.

I know what you're thinking: Boy, Tim, it's been two weeks or so since you've blogged. We were hoping for something a little more... I don't know, spectacular, a little more Euro than this. Not that we don't care about your socks and other routine podiatric concerns, but come on!

The plot thickens, dear reader, when I mention this: the socks under present scrutiny are exactly seven years old. Once darker green, they have warmed and comforted my feet quite adequately all this time. But I'll tell you how I remember their age: they were a present, the last present, in fact, from the girl who was once slated to be my wife.

I can't say the diamond ring was exactly returned in the socks, but it was returned with the socks.

My college sweetheart and I promised our love and life devotion to each other sometime in June 2000. By December of that same year, the ice that had begun to form over waters once tepid and flowing was beginning to crack. I was twenty years old.

Children, let this be a lesson to you: don't consider m-m-marriage at such a young age. Beware even mentioning the word. Go back to your play pens! Go back to your pull-up pants and dolls!

Her silence was the first indication of her desire to throw in the towel. I was taking a break from writing my senior seminar paper comparing the literary works and respective religious conversions of G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis when over the phone I said to this girl, with a quavering voice, You don't want to end things... forever... do you?

She didn't respond. This was a turning point. Up until this time I had only suspected dark clouds and wind. She was calling for a hurricane. Here we shared a moment of private conversion.

That's when it began to snow outside.

In addition to a senior paper to write, I also had a Christmas show to do with my fellow musicians and best friends who comprised our a capella quintet. On stage, I sang and played "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" Inside, I wondered what I was doing with the rest of my life.

After the concert, the guys came back to my apartment and that's when I really opened up about what was happening to me, with me. They stayed and talked with me nearly all night. "I can see this calls for a lot of conversation and a twelve-pack," I remember one of them saying, walking out the door to do some quick shopping.

The girl was living in Chicago; we were almost four hours apart. Over the phone, she suggested we meet half-way in Bloomington, at the Cracker Barrel, to... disengage. I don't like Cracker Barrel on a good day, and somehow, with the rage and chasmic despair moving inside me, I couldn't envision the two of us rocking amiably on the wicker chairs like old timers, reminiscing about the good days gone by as the winter sun set before us. I told her she'd need to come see me.

And she did. Carrying a heavy heart, a diamond ring, and three pairs of the best damn socks I've ever had in my life.

My heart was utterly broken, but my feet were dancing.

She hadn't wrapped the socks. We'd picked them out somewhere together months before, trying to get an early start on the Christmas shopping.

After I walked her to her brother's car in the falling snow, I went to see my parents. Through my tears, I told them the news, but feeling the bulge in my coat pocket, I laughed as I pulled out the socks and exclaimed, "But, hey, look what I got out of it!" They hugged me and we cried like mourners believing the cosmos were running accordingly and in order even still.

I've always believed travel has less to do with sight-seeing than self-seeing. Travel is the purest form of character study. For as much soul-searching as I've done abroad, it didn't take Latvia for me to see that this particular relationship that ended ended providentially.

I have been thinking a bit more critically about holes, however. Holes form when something that was is no longer. What once was fullness becomes space. Holes are the result of occupancy transforming into vacancy.

Holes are empty. Holes are tears in fabric. Holes make your toes tingle with coldness.

But holes are opportunities. Holes let in the light. Didn't Joana Macy say it perfectly when she wrote "The heart that breaks open can contain the universe"?

One other notable landmark in Helsinki is the Temppeliaukio Church, hewn completely in solid rock. Thirty some years ago, two brothers had the idea and the dynamite to create a church out of one enormous granite depository of the many that line and compose Helsinki's battered coast.

I went inside this church building. Heard a men's choir sing there. The acoustics were as live and vibrant and ready-made for sound as any I've ever heard. Though the walls are solid rock, it's the people inside that produce the heavenly sounds. The rocks themselves, as far as anyone knows, have yet to cry out.

Church out of rock. Something out of nothing. Pulse within stone.

Flippantly, upon exiting the church, I picked up three printed cards on a table in the lobby. Each contains a quote, and my favorite one simply says this: "How God will transform my troubles I know not, but that he will transform them I know for sure."

When it comes to holes, experience has proven God to be a masterful seamstress. Not to mention a professional stocking stuffer.

Yours,

Tim