alphabet of recent times

Dust, doctors, death.

Stress, songs, shivers.

Cauliflower, consideration, cocktails.

Birds, boredom, books.

Worry, whiteness, wars.

History, halloumi, hope.

winter icecream

Misty grey fields and forests. Icy winds with snow crumbs swirling around. Deer grazing in open fields, looking for sustenance under half-melted, re-frozen snowdrifts. 

It's March but spring feels very far away and in the backseat of the car, I shiver in my puffer jacket and wriggle my freezing toes. I have dressed up for a choir concert, not for a long, poorly heated car drive.

Then, incongruously, there is an icecream truck. It's sitting there at a rest stop, open for business. Icecream trucks are a thing of the summer.

We screech to a stop and four adults tumble out of the car to buy huge icecream cones. The wind coming across the fields swirls more snow around us, to prove that it's still winter. 

We laugh at it, shiver, and stuff ourselves with summer hope.

too much heaven on my mind

It's been a long, long day

Are we in heaven, heaven, heaven?

I want a playlist with only songs that mention heaven. Because my body hurts and my mind fears and hope is scarce ... but heaven is heavy with grace.

Every day I know that this might hurt but I don't care

This is heaven, yeah

the house of the thirteen clocks

The apartment building is surrounded by other identical apartment buildings, fairly new and proper. The area is quietly pleasant and has absolutely nothing interesting to look at. It was built for people to grow old in, snug and warm and alone in front of the telly. 

My mother's flat is nice, clean, with a wide collection of pretty trinkets. My father liked clocks. During his time there were 26 of them in the flat, 13 of which were ticking ones. 

I lived there for a while, years ago, unemployed, unhappy, falling to pieces. I also stayed there during that awful week after my father died. I greeted a steady stream of visitors bringing my mother flowers, lay sleepless at night, listened to the ticking of those thirteen clocks. 

But I also spent many cosy Christmas nights in the flat, with books, chocolates and that old Christmas record I always wanted to play, warmed by candles and a mother's love. 

Still, I never left the flat without taking a deep breath of relief. Not because I wanted to leave my mother. I just wanted to escape the atmosphere of boredom and decay in that building.

The ticking of those thirteen clocks has nearly stopped. My mother will soon leave the building, to move into a home for the elderly. I cannot yet deal with my feelings about her aging and the prospect of sorting through all her belongings, which go back generations. 

Instead, I write about the relief of never having to go near that apartment building again.

before, but decades ago

Arctic winter, so cold that cars and buses stop running even in hardy Finland. 

An old lady is sent home from hospital and I try to arrange for diapers, grab handles, nursing homes and everybody's peace of mind.

I have a week off from work but not much rest. Except some precious, quiet mornings on the couch with a brilliant, icy sun, the Farseer trilogy and the last remnants of Christmas magic.

I join a new choir and practise the alto parts.

I feel I have done much of this before, but decades ago.

2023: the year of Venice and a chartreuse-coloured mid-life crisis

2023 was the year when I abandoned contact lenses, bleeding, zumba, ignorance of current events. 

I started out weak from surgery but recovered. My car - my first one ever - was broken for almost four months and I sold it with no regrets the moment it was fixed. I rode the bus and kept two companies afloat single-handedly (or so it sometimes seemed to me) during a crisis year. I read 126 books, drank wine with my friends, went to concerts and the theatre, went to the gym not often enough, joined a church group to find God, joined a choir to defrost my voice. Despite all this, I spent a surprising amount of time alone.

It was a year of special significance. A year when a fantasy novel (one I didn't even enjoy much) taught me that life is what it is, so ditch the shame and resentment and go do what you were created to do. Ditch the self-pity too and go help the people you can.

People around me suffered this year, so I worried, prayed, spent much of the summer alone. A poodle died, an old lady was hospitalized, the autumn was exhausting. But it was also a jubilee year, with a strong new focus and a tender heart.

Highlights:

* New Year with spumante in an island cottage kitchen and debates regarding divinely installed outdoor toilets and the evilness of Putin.

* April picnic with thick snow, warm sun, sausages grilled over a hot fire.

* First draft of my space opera (poor fiction written for my own enjoyment), finished after about three years.

* Celebration month and crafting my own philosophy while walking dusty streets and drinking wine by the sea. 

* Helsinki weekend with my sister: the House of Nobility, the theatre, deep talk in vintage bar Kappeli surrounded by the Helsinki nightlife, an art museum, spring flowers and singing blackbirds, silk shirts, café visits just like in the 90s.

* Birthday alone in Helsinki: exploring the Fortress of Finland and reshaping my world on an almost-deserted island, warmed by the infinite horizon, a bleak sun, wine and history.

* A big surprise birthday party, two planned parties, and one balcony party to finish off the cakes.

* A chartreuse-coloured new car.

* Cruising in a convertible, playing "Cha Cha Cha" loudly, with my middle-aged friends, to the ridicule of the neighbourhood teenagers.

* Field trip to a sheep farm to pet the lambs, and to an old mansion to look at half-burned attic rooms and luxury spa areas.

* Meteorite explosion that shook me to the bones, late one night.

* Memorable chat with an AI about explicit phrases, historical novels and Slovenian caves.

* Last(?) zumba class ever, last(?) time bringing my old mother to the cottage by the sea.

* New air-conditioning, new fridge, new stove in my 60s flat.

* The cute town of Kristinestad, explored on a hot day with a funny friend. The cute town of Jakobstad, where further exploration was abandoned when we found the cutest café ever.

* Nightwish's last concert which I eavesdropped on, sitting on a rock in the woods on a warm summer night.

* Midsummer with old and new and marvellous Midsummer People, in the forest by a sea of reeds, with a barbecue and strangely-named cats.

* Volunteer assignment as interpreter at a church conference, where I battled social phobia and other demons and decided I might as well become a full-time warrior while I'm at it.

* Exploration of various forests, marshes and villages, sometimes in sandals and silk shirts where hiking boots and safari gear would have been more appropriate.

* Road trips with an old lady: the pavillion where Jean Sibelius got engaged in secret, an ancient meteorite crater, dark lakes with silky water, bohemian farmhouse cafés, faraway villages where we might have lived our lives had fate not intervened.

* Summer almost alone by the sea, with repetitive strain injury, occasional visits by the motorcycle club and excavators and swimming elks, and putting out the bonfire after everyone else had gone home and left me.

* Music of the exquisite kind - in a church fragrant with incense on a hot, thunderous summer evening, in another church as the autumn darkness crept in and coloured lights twinkled in the churchyard.

* Night of the Arts, when I skipped the arts and holed up in crowded café to plan an Italian journey with my friend. 

* Singing in a choir after 25 years of silence. First song: "The Sound of Silence".

* Italy, hot and lovely. Venice - falling into a fairytale and fantasy novel. Florence - crowds and art exhaustion. Cinque Terre - riviera life with beaches and fresa coladas. Pisa - an unexpectedly emotional evening.

* An autumn wedding where I arrived in summery silk, looked after an old lady, talked at length with a father figure from my youth.

* New book club with a minister and a pathologist, Of Mice and Men, Piranesi, and The Call of Cthulhu.

* A week and a weekend with the 16-year-old poodle, nearly blind and deaf and lame. Dark, early mornings dealing with his health issues, knowing it was time to say goodbye.

* Wintry November with snow, theatre, dancing at midnight, fancy restaurants, pub evenings, book club (another kind of pub evening), exhaustion from too much caretaking.

* Mysterious black hole appearing in my car.

* December with concerts, nostalgia and literally sickening amounts of chocolate.

* Warm and fragrant Christmas, plus complicated arrangement to fetch old lady with broken hip from hospital. Chocolates and Love Actually with the best people afterwards. Unexpected bliss.

* New Year's Eve with two people who had never met. And pizza with dark gin. And sadly noting that the days of magnificent fireworks are over. And still hopeful, a little.

slow moves in messy hair

Sleepy homesickness, slow moves in messy hair and woollen socks. The office on those silent last days of the year when Christmas is still in the air. Almost alone.

Fir trees in snow outside the window, shifting from dark to golden pink, to greyish white, to dusky blue, to dark again. Christmas lights, leftover chocolates. End-of-year statistics, last-minute shipments. Lonely colleagues between empty desks at the other end of the office. Lazy chats over mugs of coffee.

I'm reluctant to let go of glittering lights in dark snow, cinnamon scent, angelic voices, traditions of centuries, magic of millennia, Christmas in the North.