Precious history [by Laura]

There's an old Russian couple living next to my parents. I don't think they speak a word of Finnish; I know my parents don't speak any Russian. In spite of this, and this is the thing I'm trying to get at, my parents once rang their door bell and gave them food. You know, it's something I never really thought people do anymore. In a way, it makes me kind of proud that in spite of the language barrier, and the fact that my parents don't know the Russian couple, in spite of cultural taboo of butting into other people's business... they still thought about their neighbour when they had too much of their own and went ahead and gave it away to someone who seemed like they needed it.

It kind of makes me wonder how well I - or any of us - really know our own parents.

I’ve come to think that the first shock of growing up is when you realise that your parents aren't always right; somehow the knowledge of this shakes the very bedrock of your being.

The second realisation usually only comes later, in a moment of crisis possibly, when you have no one else to turn to for advice... And it turns out that sometimes your parents really do know better, that sometimes they are right.

It's hard to write objectively of your own parents. I, for one, have absolutely no doubt that they love their children and would, if they could, do almost anything for us. I don't know about my two sisters, but I suspect that even though there are differences to the ways we perceive our parents, and although there are times in our lives when we wished for more support than what has been readily available -- there's no uncertainty in my mind that they did their best to raise intelligent, independent people capable of taking care of themselves.

As impossible as it seems, even my parents have had doubts of whether they've done a good job or not. As they're inevitably getting older, it seems more and more important for me to get beyond the parent/child relationship and find out who they really are; what wishes did they have for life, did they achieve them; what makes them the people they are. All of my grandparents are dead by now, and I woke up too late to realise that they and the lives they led were a part of my own personal history - now inevitably lost except for what I can learn from my own parents. It's not always easy to open the conversation, especially since I'm the youngest of my siblings, but even when getting stories out of my parents feels like pulling teeth, getting to know them more intimately makes me feel closer to them and, surprisingly, to my roots in the East of Finland.

In the end, who'd ever have known how similar I am to the man who, for the most of my life, I've in turns looked up to, feared, loathed and pitied. I'm more like my father than I ever thought, and realising this has made it possible for me to understand him and his ways. I've started writing down the little titbits I learn from the family history, and I know my eldest sister is also interested in making research into the genealogy of our family, so hopefully, with combined effort we'll be able to preserve what's left of the lives of the past generations - and the rest will of up to us.

Your assignment - go out to your old relatives and really talk with them about their past. I guarantee you it’s worth the effort.

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Although otherwise common as muck, Laura claims the title of the Queen of Procrastination. She's also an expatriate Finn who spends most of the time inside her own head - out of which the words overflow on their own accord. Any resemblance to coherence is therefore purely coincidental.