physical restlessness stirred inside of me. I wanted to jump up, literally tear off my skin and run away. I couldn’t stand still, I had to move constantly, but usually even that didn’t help – I did push-ups at home on the carpet to work off some of the stress. As soon as I sat back down again, it all came back.
That fateful morning started much in the usual way, except I was expecting something more than before. I had just returned from a ski trip to Slovakia, and I was physically and spiritually shaken. At the beginning of the trip, I had fallen and injured my back: it was nothing compared to what had been off for quite some time in my heart, but it still forced me to spend a day under medical care.
However, returning from the clinic, I greeted the New Year lying in the mountains, between two camping sites.
Alone.
There was a group of people somewhere below me and another group farther above. They were my colleagues, who all seemed to be satisfied with their lives and I had no idea how to tell them what was wrong with me. They weren’t my friends, because we didn’t talk about the things that mattered. I was trudging restlessly on through the snow, when I realized that the camp I was heading for was much farther than I had anticipated and I was thankful for it: just think, at this important moment I get to be all alone, by myself!
Alone.
My husband Tom couldn’t make it to the ski trip, because he didn’t want to leave his old and lonely mother all by herself. “I’ve spent every New Year’s Eve with mother, except for the year that I was in the army.” I, however, went on that ski trip with my colleagues to “air myself out,” as I put it.
Alone.
I threw myself on my back. My internal clock told me that I’d been plodding through the snow for about an hour and it should be more or less the moment when the year changes. A new year was beginning. I laid there smelling the snow that was melting around my body.
It was one of those moments that I have longed to return to later on, but it has never quite happened again the same way. I was lying there, exhausted, watching the moonlight reflecting off the snowy peaks to form a halo around the moon while I breathed deeply, like sleeping. It was time for promises to be kept and prayers to be heard, I could feel it from the stars. But the question was: what am I supposed to promise, what should I pray for?
“I’ll do it,” I swore, eyes on the vast, expanding emptiness behind the stars. “I’ll get somewhere, I’ll get out of this dead end!”
The longer I stared at the moon, the more I was filled with a sense of levity. Outside of my body, flying among the stars, I looked back and saw the snowy mountain. Down there somewhere laid a young, confused woman, asking the universe for a change.
But for starters, the responsibilities I had in this world were waiting for me. My social life was expecting me nearby. It would be seriously unpleasant for all the rest of them if I slipped into an eternal slumber here in the mountain snow! I pushed myself up, fighting the urge to stay as I was, and resumed the climb. The trails my companions had made were clearly visible in the night lit by a full moon, so I kept suppressing the desire to just turn off the path, go somewhere else, stay a while longer just by myself in these mesmerizing mountains.
After another turn and a bend, a fire appeared in sight, surrounded by people, huddled up and enjoying a wintry picnic. “Where did you come from like this? Come here!”
Suddenly my eyes welled up and I joined the others in their shared warmth. I wasn’t so alone after all, there was a spot waiting for me here by the fire.
You can lose yourself in a fire just as easily as in moongazing. I don’t remember much else from that night, aside from the new resolution: it’s time to change and to be changed.
However, back in Estonia, the same two offices were waiting for me, two jobs: one in television as an editor, the other with a magazine as a writer: in both places I was just another gear in the clockwork, whose wear and breakage went unnoticed.
Looking back at that pivotal morning, I remember that I was chatting with one of my colleagues in the smoking room. That was back in the days when we all were frantically addicted to nicotine. Maybe we all were worn and broken inside, but just couldn’t see it in each other?
“I think I’m going through a midlife crisis at the age of twenty-four. I want to get out of here!” I knew how lame that sounded, but still I went on, “Spring is just so far away and I’m so tired of my life.”
What are you supposed to say to that? I didn’t know how to verbalize it in an appropriate way that would fit that mundane setting, didn’t know how to put into words that obscure calling, the scent of expectation, the hint of something new on its way. Even if I had, I’m sure those words would have come out just as lame.
However, at that moment a young man from the neighbouring office sat down next to me and he had the answer I was supposed to receive.
“Ah, but did you know that Harri Hommik is here in Estonia right now and he’s getting together a commune of Estonians for Hawaii! They sell jewellery and handicrafts.”
He made it sound as if it was the most obvious thing in the world as to who Harri Hommik was, like “Didn’t you know that Michael Jackson’s tour arrived in Estonia this week?”
Stumbling on that recollection makes me quietly laugh to myself, while looking out at those pale grey clouds covering Northern Europe this morning. For some reason, I’ve never told to that former colleague how he changed the course of my life with just a few imprudent sentences.
Please take me with you!
“Do you know anything about a guy named Harri Hommik? He’s starting a commune of Estonians in Hawaii…”
My excited fingers almost randomly tap out the letters as I finish the email and send it to all the contacts on my address list.
A good acquaintance of mine Mari answers almost immediately. She’s replied to everyone to whom I wrote as well. “That man is a dangerous psychopath! He’s been in the nuthouse and he took his four children to Siberia and lost them there. People, whatever you do, stay away from him!”
Really?
I would like to believe Mari, but something inside of me has been set off and I’m already imagining myself by the Pacific Ocean, selling handmade trinkets on tropical islands, and I see Harri, this crazy, exciting man next to me, telling me his whole life’s story, starting with the nuthouse and continuing right up to losing his kids – provided that all the gossip is true. After all, I’m not a child that you can lose, I tell myself. I’m a brave, skilled adult woman!
And the images in my mind are so vibrant. Why, it’s like I’m on a paradise island already. What I don’t yet know is that dreams do tend to come true, but usually with a small catch.
“You’ll know who this guy is right away. He has long grey hair and a goatee, he looks a bit like Jesus Christ,” my colleague from the smoking room tells me later that day. “If Harri is still in Estonia – and he was a two weeks ago – he’ll be sitting at the Kloostri Ait3 bar in the Old Town, telling young people about his adventures and theories, so don’t be surprised if there’s a crowd of people listening to him with their jaws hanging open.”
“Monastery Barn” in Estonian.
