Prisoners of Hope

Tomorrow begins finals week. The tree limbs are now bare. The wind blows interminably, spinning tumbleweeds of trash across the open squares. It rains most days and nights. The sun rises by 9, sets by 5. There is a dusting of snow.

These, as Anne Lammott says, are “desert days.” The darkness, the coldness, the never-shining sun. These are the days through which we trudge with a transcendent sense of purpose, if not joy and hope. These are the days when we look around and are amazed that somehow we are still moving forward.

In the mornings, I rise at 5 and boil water for coffee, read and pray and write, then sit in the darkness for a while and try my best to simply breathe in and out and feel my feet on the cold, wood floor. In the mornings, the storm of the day is just outside the door, and I am inside, wrapping myself in layers, preparing myself as well as I can for opening that door and being whisked off in a stream of movement from which I cannot stand apart. I pray to God that I will be able to find my feet as I am carried along.

People say that the season of Advent is a season of anticipation, of expectation, which to me has always sounded strange. How are we supposed to anticipate something that has already happened? Are we to manufacture feelings that, in effect, place us in a different time? Are we to trick ourselves? Or to pretend? Are we to expect something that, despite two thousand years of regurgitated expectation, has still not happened? Mary, in the Magnificat, sings, “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” My initial reaction is simply, “No, God hasn’t.” At least not that I can see.

In spite of my doubts, these past few weeks have overflowed with preparation for the birth of our Lord and, of course, for the end of our semester. My dear students have finished their final essays, which I will grade this afternoon with much disquieted concern. They have performed their final interviews and taken their major English proficiency examination. Next week they will take their final exams, after which most of them will hop on trains and buses and planes that take them, finally, home. Some of them have soared and some have faltered, but each of them has earnestly tried and improved and each of them, however wayward, has burrowed their way into my heart.

This month also saw the production of LCC’s annual Christmas play. It ended with a chorus of staff and faculty singing, with high-pitched uncertainty (especially for me, a reluctantly recruited soprano), the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s “Messiah”. At the end, we led the crowd out both doors to the entrance of the center, where the sounds of our voices bounced like points of light, singing an old spiritual that bears new relevance in Eastern Europe, “Freedom, oh freedom, Freedom, freedom is coming, Oh yes I know…” We clapped, and we danced, and we sang until our voices were tired. When we had finished, I couldn’t help but feel a sense that returns to me often despite myself, an almost giddy joy for which I have always been grateful but which I have never been able to pin down with logic.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in response to a comment once that he sounded like an optimist, said “No, no. I am not an optimist, I am a prisoner of hope – it is quite different, because, you see, [for an] optimist when things don’t go well, they want to give up. But I and other people who are prisoners of hope are able to say that this is a world where ultimately justice will prevail.”

On the way home from the Christmas play, Scott pointed out the window of the bus. “Look,” he said. “They turned the Christmas lights on.” All down the central street, the lamp posts sparkled. From some of them, trumpets erupted into cornucopias of stars. I was reminded, as I always am when I see Christmas lights strung along the streets of a city, of the nights in the hospital when I was fifteen, after the car accident, when I would sneak over to the window with my IV tree and look out onto the town below. In Jackson, there were not stars, but angels with their trumpets, angels leaning out and up, ready to announce something good to anyone who cared to listen. And here in Lithuania, just as when I was fifteen, I had that uncanny sense of joy and peace and hope moving in the darkness: joy that I was simply alive, and peace and hope that, in all of the darkest currents, God is molding something beautiful.

Out of Context

(Warning: I wrote this entry in a bout of culture shock. In my quest to be honest about my experiences, I have put Lithuania forth in an unflattering light. Please take this as what it is: not a commentary on Lithuania or its people but simply the ravings of a spoiled American out of context.)

I’m sorry, Lithuania. It’s not me; it’s you. Your buses stink, your people are rude, and your food, for those who actually eat anything in this godforsaken place, is enough to turn Cindy Crawford into a potato-shaped babushka. Let’s take these complaints one at a time.

Culture Shock Item #1: The Lithuanian Buses

Some smell like toilets, some like locker rooms, and the best like ancient attics drenched in diesel fuel. If you ride them after 7:00 am, you have to stand in the aisle and hold on to a greasy pole overhead while natives, mostly elderly women who have eaten too many potatoes, shove past, even though there is never any space in the back of the bus either. As they heave themselves forward, they knock me, my school bag, and all of the parts I am not supposed to rub up against people up against people. I imagine shouting, as I am thrust again and again into my wincing bus-mates, “This is what you get for sitting down!” Just when you think that it can’t get any worse, the bus police climb aboard.

If you think that “bus police” sounds like the equivalent of a Midwestern mall cop, think again. They may be all older women, and they may look all puckered and sweet, but if you don’t have a ticket, they will swarm around you with their little billy clubs and they will take your non-ticket-toting ass down. They will whisk you off to a van with shaded windows where they commit unspeakable acts of God-knows-what, but I’m sure it involves a scene like in Roald Dahl’s “Witches.” Another slippery thing about bus police: you never know when they’re going to show up. One minute you’re just minding your own business trying not to breathe through your nose and the next they’re invading the aisles in a spontaneous rendition of Charlie’s Angels meets the Golden Girls.

My first run-in with the bus police didn’t go so hot. I was standing at the back exit waiting to hop off at the next stop when the bus driver pulled over and failed to open the back door. At such moments, my Lithuanian abandons me, so instead of calmly requesting the driver to open the door, I began pounding excitedly on the Plexi-glass with my fists and yelling the Lithuanian equivalent of “Please! Please!” in a hysterical voice. It was only then that I realized we had been infiltrated, that I was trapped, and that in my present position of banging and shouting maniacally, I looked the slightest bit guilty. I then decided to confirm this by plunging around in the folds of my clothing for my ticket as though I were being attacked by a cloud of bees.

I am not the sort of person who cleans out her pockets on a regular basis, so when I reached for my ticket, I dislodged a linty nest of yes, bus tickets, but also store receipts, gum wrappers, bobby pins, grocery lists, and, somehow, the head of a broken potato peeler, which, though it did look vaguely threatening, didn’t stand a chance against their faithful clubs. After trembling through the scrunched wad like a woman condemned to die, I handed over the five tickets that looked the newest and prepared for the worst. Wouldn’t you know it, one of the tickets must have matched because the woman rolled her eyes (either a universal gesture of annoyance or a secret signal to the others that they’d have to jump me later), handed my tickets back, and went on to sweetly accost her next victim.

Culture Shock Item #2: The Lithuanian People

I am grateful to the bus police for one thing: They at least confirm that I exist. Other times I walk through this city and I could swear I’m invisible. Doors close in my face, people walk right in front of me and then stop, and pushing a shopping cart through the supermarket is like playing a virtual reality version of Atari’s Frogger. Yes, I know I’m supposed to be tolerant and understanding and blah blah blah, but at this point I’m just going to be honest: If one more person gouges me in the gut with a shopping cart, I’m going to look that person right in the eye, scream “AT-SI-PRA-SAU!” (EX-CUSE ME!) and gouge right back!

Culture Shock Item #3: The Lithuanian Food

I was reading an article about culture shock and discovered that one tell-tale stage is when you become fixated on food from your own culture. Lithuania doesn’t do much to help its cause, let me tell you. If Lithuanians were what they ate, this city would be full of gray meat torsos walking around on potato legs with dumpling arms and sour cream dollop heads. Because I am now completely obsessed with American food, I have been cooking more. However, this doesn’t work so well because I still have to buy the ingredients at Lithuanian grocery stores. Last night I baked corn bread. I imagined my mother’s fluffy golden cornbread clouds steaming with melted butter. Instead the texture resembled yellow Play-Do that’s been left out all night with the lid off. I’ve been so desperate to taste America I even went as far as making chili. Scott, bless his poor American heart, has been speaking about hamburgers like old, dead friends, and he’s even gone so far as to microwave hot dogs, which he’s then cut up and added to macaroni noodles in a powdered cheese sauce. I’m watching him go slowly insane, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Considering all of this, it’s really no surprise what came next. Some would say it was only a matter of time.

That’s right. We went to McDonald’s. And what’s more, we relished each and every bite. Because at McDonald’s, a Big Mac is always a Big Mac and fries are always fries and the Quarter Pounder with Cheese, although here it’s called the McRoyal, still contains enough saturated fat to clog a small artery. Afterwards, we felt both more dead and more alive. As we waddled back to the bus stop, we promised each other that we’d never do that again. At least not until Thanksgiving.

The Anointing

I have been anointed in oil
by the bus that
runs too close to
the sidewalk on Manto
Gatve not only
oil but also
rain and whatever
the rain washed off
blood
perfume
piss
beer
smoke

in New York City I
once watched a man
bend back his head and
close his eyes and
smile and
take the whole sky in his arms and
spin

he smelled like I do
now
all of life is an
anointing all of life
is atoms suspended
in air my professor
said there is always
a chance however
small that you could
walk through a wall
there is also a chance
that the curtain of water
will pass right
through you

it’s enough to draw
the tongue from out
the mouth like
a dagger enough
to split you inside
out to throw back
your wings drenched
in blessing and
dance

Turgus Sriuba (otherwise know as Market Soup)

Every Sunday for 4 weeks now Scott and I have made a hearty pot of soup with whatever we can find at the Klaipeda market, which is still an endless source of fascination for me. The things one finds there! Outside, along the tables that stretch long-ways under the slanted roofs, there are mum fireworks exploding everywhere out of rusty, sawed-off plastic water bottles. Buckets upon grubby white buckets of orange mushrooms. Crates of raw red cranberries. Gnarled white parsnip fingers. Tumbling heaps of pink and green apples. Runty brown onions, peeling. Garlic in tubby ivory clumps. Wilting, lovesick bouquets of parsley, lovage, cilantro. Caveman clubs of green zucchini. The rare bell pepper, red or green or orange, small, often wrinkly, and deformed. And the people-the people! One man with a mouth like a rotten bathtub cut me a piece of pear, fondled the heft with his soiled hands, drew the knife across. In America, I would have run the other way screaming. As it was, I took the sample straight from his coal-black fingers, popped it in my mouth, and promptly bought a kilo. Best pears I’ve ever tasted.

Inside the market building you find the meats and eggs and cheeses. The ham section, for me, is like a car accident. I just stand there and stare until they try to sell me something, upon which point I get scared that I’m going to accidentally purchase Wilbur’s foot and move on. There are pig snouts and pig hooves stacked in piggy pyramids. Sawed-off piggy faces with the little piggy eyes, glazed over. Curling piggy ears, pink and alert. It’s like they would have just put the whole pig in there if they could have, but to make it fit, they simply chopped off the parts that stuck out and tossed them into separate piles. I wonder if they even killed the poor things first or if they just started lopping. As an American, I naturally feel that meat should be completely unrecognizable, even though I know that to wish this is to drown myself in falsehood.

Further on, there’s my chicken buddy who surprisingly hasn’t died of Salmonella even though she picks up the raw, rubbery pieces with her bare hands and does questionable things, like smear her fingers on her sticky apron or lick them thoughtfully to assist in separating plastic bags. One time I saw her drop a woman’s change onto a heap of raw flesh. My chicken buddy simply dug it out, wiped it on her grimy sleeve, and handed it over the counter. The woman looked almost as disgusted as I felt, which made me feel a little less foreign.

Then there’s the egg lady, whom I secretly fear, with a castle of blonde hair and lips like a two-year-old colored her with crayon. She will never allow me to buy less than 10 eggs at a time, even though I try obstinately to pretend I don’t understand her when she rejects, over and over, both my mini egg carton and my carefully rehearsed Lithuanian. “Sesi kiausinai, prasoum. Sesi kiausinai.” I’ve even tried calling her bluff by shaking my head and walking forlornly off with my empty container, but she is adamant. She knows she is the only egg lady at the market, and she uses it to her advantage. I’ve got to find another egg lady, one who understands that it would significantly raise our cholesterol if we had to eat 10 eggs before they went bad.

Once home, we pull out all the precious veggies and scrub off the thick clumps of dirt. Scott sets up shop at the dining room table with our only good knife and the cutting board while I boil water and fry up the chicken. As I mentioned in an earlier post, it is cold here and there’s no heat yet, so cooking a big pot of soup serves not only as sustenance for days but also as a furnace of sorts. Pretty soon the windows fog up with the rolling steam and we toss the onions and garlic in with the chicken. The pot becomes a veritable rainbow. Red tomato skins, white and orange parsnip and carrot medallions, khaki potato cubes, translucent ribbons of onion. Then, the finale, a heap of fresh herbs that glow almost neon green for a glorious minute, then fade to the color of autumn grass.

The Nineteenth Fall in a Free Lithuania

Fall has always been my favorite season. I adore wearing warm boots and thick, oversized sweaters. I luxuriate in harvest food and get a bubbly feeling in my stomach whenever I roast squash or sip cider or smell pumpkin pie. But the biggest reason is because I’ve always been a melancholy fool, even before I had much reason to be. Fall has always faithfully furnished me with plenty of opportunities to gaze out my window, wherever I am, and plunge myself into some vague delicious anguish while reciting poems from whatever poet I’ve been reading, especially poems about thwarted love, the passing of time, and, of course, death. This was most pronounced in high school after my 11th grade English teacher had introduced us to Alfred Lord Tennyson. I would sit out behind my parents’ garage on a fallen tree gazing abjectly out across the golden fields, smoking the secret cigarettes I had tucked carefully into my sock and imagining myself a modern-day Emily Dickinson. Oh, how the dying leaves wept as I recited!

“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depths of some divine despair
Rise from the heart and gather to the eyes
In looking on the happy autumn fields
and thinking of the days that are no more”

Of course, this anguish was paradoxically a delight, and I wallowed in it. As I have grown older, I have found enough in this world to make me sad without extra assistance. Though I still revel in poetry, I have read less and less to the changing leaves. I have come to realize that pain is not a rich and languorous passion. Quite frankly, it’s real and it sucks.

Here in Lithuania the autumn seems more ominous. It brings us warnings on the wind of the short gray days to come, warnings of entire months of half-lit darkness striped with the freezing streaks of Klaipeda’s incessant horizontal rain. The dying leaves here are not like the Michigan leaves that drop to the ground engorged with a furious blood. Most simply turn brown and crispy and unceremoniously fall. Here it is already cold and windy and wet. As I write this, I’m bundled up in thermal pajamas, two blankets, and duck down slippers because unseen forces control the housing temperatures, and it has to get really cold for a consecutive number of days before those forces finally cave in and turn on the heat. Already, it would be difficult to survive if you had to live on the street.

Before the weather plummeted even more, Scott and I decided to visit the capital city of Vilnius. It takes about 4 hours to get there by train, a train with compartments that delightfully resemble the Hogwarts Express. We arrived late Friday night and ambled through Old Town to reach our bed and breakfast. The next morning we visited a few ancient, breathtaking cathedrals and then arrived at the Genocide Museum, also known as the KGB Museum, as it is located in the building where both the Gestapo and the KGB used to operate.

Lithuania, as you can probably guess, has had a very volatile history. After the first Russian occupation, it celebrated about 20 years of independence until it was invaded by the Germans during the Second World War. During that time, hundreds of thousands of Lithuanian Jews were massacred. About 1941, due to a secret treaty between Germany and the Soviet Union, Lithuania was handed over to the Russians, and what would become a 50-year occupation began, not ending until 1991-not even two decades ago.

To enter the KGB museum, you walk along a sidewalk that looks like any other sidewalk. Then you notice the memorial. That very sidewalk is where the KGB used to dump the dead bodies of Lithuanian resistors whom they had shot and killed inside the building. From small windows in the basement rooms, guards would watch civilians walk past. If anyone passing the dead bodies showed signs of recognition or remorse, the guards would make a note of it, and the passer-by would be hunted down and taken to the basement of that very building, which was a high-security prison.

Our tour of the basement prison was enough to bring me to tears. English audio guides informed us of the atrocities committed there, of how 20 people would be kept in one room, not allowed to stand within 50 centimeters of the walls and never allowed to sit. We witnessed the padded cell furnished with the actual straight jacket interrogators had used, the long black ribbons of sleeves flayed out like bats’ wings. We stood inside the solitary-confinement room where prisoners were kept for weeks on end in order to break down their sanity. We peered through windows into the water rooms where prisoners had to stand naked on a stool for several days. When they drifted off to sleep, they would fall into the water. In the winter, they sometimes filled the rooms with jagged chunks of ice. Finally, at the end of the snaking corridors, we saw a collage of photographs, the dead bodies of men and women that the KGB had carted around town and propped up in different places in order to provoke the natural human emotions of other resistors and family members. Their clothing soaked in blood. Their faces almost comical, dazed. Their mouths half-opened, eyes rotting. This is where I thought about all those I love-about Scott and about all of you-thought about what that would do to me, to anyone, and I lost it.

Upstairs, on the 2nd floor, there was a different exhibition about the hundreds of thousands of Lithuanians-the elderly, the dashing young men, the pregnant women, the newborn babies- who had been shipped off in cattle carts to Siberia for years of hard labor in work camps. I was strangely reminded of Dr. Suess’s story about how the Grinch stole Christmas. Remember that? All the Whos down in Whoville lost everything: their Christmas presents, their Christmas lights, their food, even the logs for their fires. But the next morning, the Grinch heard singing-singing! They had nothing, yet they still held hands and rejoiced. In Siberia, Lithuanians made prayer books out of birch bark, rosaries out of thread. They made wedding cakes out of boiled potatoes. They gathered for Christmas Eve “feasts”, Easter “feasts”. They crocheted pillow cases. They wrote poetry. They played busted accordions. They danced! They hooked their arms around each other’s waists and smiled-smiled!-for pictures. One picture showed several women, some younger than me, wearing sheepskin coats and jumbles of thick headscarves. Snow whirled around them, the white flecks pelting their raw faces. They held heavy tools in their mittened hands. But they had all locked arms, and they were smiling. All of that, all of that, and still they were smiling.

To see that, to see what humans can do to one another, and then to see how that very same fucked-up creation can react is, itself, miraculous. The tendency when I hear such stories is to vilify one side and bestow the other with sainthood. The Soviets were evil, the Lithuanians were good. To do this is to miss the material point.

I had assigned my class to write a paragraph on an experience that changed their lives. One student, who is from Russia, wrote about a Russian friend of hers who had been caught in the middle of the recent Russian-Georgian conflict in South Ossetia. In America, we cursed those damned Russians and cheered on the underdog, the Georgians. But it was Georgian soldiers who changed my student’s life by shooting and killing her young friend. Whatever our intentions, war comes down to killing.

Now almost 20 falls here have passed free of Soviet occupation. Remarkably enough, the Soviets finally understood the Lithuanians to be serious about independence when Lithuanians from all over the country gathered in Vilnius around the Parliament building and the Television Tower on a frozen January evening in 1991 and held hands and sang. They sang patriotic songs, Roman Catholic songs. The Russians cut the city’s electricity, and the tanks rolled in. Still the Lithuanians stood and sang. In the dark, the tanks rolled silently, some over legs, arms, torsos. The swinging guns knocked protestors down and threw them under the rolling treads. The singing continued. With the whole world watching, it would have been folly to fire. After killing 14 people and injuring hundreds, the tanks withdrew. Finally, the Soviets packed up and left.

Now I see elderly men and women who never make eye contact and I finally understand why, because they have lived through that hell, through that fear. Now I climb the stairs to our apartment, an old Soviet building, and the concrete walls are the same dirty sea-green color as the walls of the prison, and I shiver and wish there were more light. But now I also teach students from Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, students who have just graduated from high school. I am teaching the first generation of college students here who has never, even in their earliest years, known Soviet rule.

We are here, and we are free and alive. Life itself has triumphed.

It’s enough to make you want to grab someone else’s hand and break out singing.

Me No Spleen

I had my first cold, which was drippy and exhausting enough to land my sniffly butt in the doctor’s office while I should have been teaching. I had unsuccessfully searched for the word “spleen” in my English-Lithuanian dictionary, as I don’t have one and felt the need to warn the doctor of this. Not finding the word increased my trepidation as I had already heard horror stories about the Lithuanian healthcare system. One of my friends told me that when he had stomach pains they’d folded him up in the fetal position and placed a wooden block in his mouth. It turns out that the block was actually just to assist in slipping a tube down his throat, not to prevent him from biting off his tongue in a paroxysm of pain while they amputated an unsuspecting limb or probed cold, pointy metal instruments into orifices unmentionable, but it sounded barbaric enough to scare the hell out of me.

Luckily, a friend who speaks a good deal of Lithuanian picked me up and drove me. She signed me up for my appointment, then took me upstairs to find our door. Here you sign up as early as you can, wait in a long line and then shove your way in as soon as the preceding patient exits. In this way it is similar to lines anywhere in Lithuania: at the grocery store, for example, or the public toilet. Had my friend not taken me, I would not have known that the Lithuanian woman with the grimacing underbite who followed us in wasn’t shouting “I’m going to bite you,” but was instead yelling “I’m next, you American idiots!” Nor would I have known that it’s normal for the doctor to have only one room with the door always opening and closing, and that it was apparently perfectly acceptable for the audience of sickos waiting in line behind us to get several fleeting glimpses of my bare, hunched back. Had she not been there, I might have mistaken my doctor’s visit for another of my messed up dreams.

The doctor “spoke English,” which I shouldn’t sarcastically put in quotes because she definitely had more English than I have Lithuanian. My friend still had to translate her English for me. Only after Robin had dropped me off at my apartment did I realize that the doctor had been telling me to “drink liters tea” and “lay bed long time.”

Somehow the lack of language increased my sense of the barbarity, as though we were pointing and grunting and gesturing with clubs. The cave-woman speaking match came to a climax when I tried desperately to communicate my lack of spleen.

“I have a stomach. I have a liver. I have kidneys. I don’t have a spleen.”

At least I didn’t switch completely over to Tarzan mode. “Me no spleen. Me sick no good.”

Now, ironically, thanks to “drinking liters tea,” “laying bed long time,” and “eating two pill day,” I am back to teaching students valuable lessons about prepositions and word choice. I am also back in my Introductory Lithuanian class, where I have happily resumed clubbing their language to death.

29 Is a Prime Number

I know that this is ridiculous, but 29 sounds a lot older than 28. And yet, my 29th birthday passed happily enough. Scott and I figured out how to hop a minibus and visit Palanga, the equivalent, it turns out, of a runty Eastern European Cedar Point. I was disappointed to find out that the rides were only for children; however, I was thankful that I realized this before embarrassing myself with the broken Lithuanian dialogue I’d been planning:

“How much game? Want one, please.”

For the dinner portion of my Lithuanian birthday, we decided to sample some more traditional Lithuanian food. At the restaurant, after two warm half cups of Lithuanian-style Coca Cola (no ice and no refills), I had my first cepelinai, which is a strangely translucent potato dumpling shaped like a UFO, stuffed with meat and orbiting the plate in a mystery cream sauce. It tastes quite good until it lands in the very bottom of your stomach like a boulder and makes it difficult to walk. Scott also ate another traditional edible boulder: a deep fried pancake stuffed, you guessed it, with meat.

After much groaning and belly rubbing, we dragged ourselves out of our seats and down the Palanga boardwalk to the Baltic Sea, where we walked out on the pier and then barefoot across the sand, all the while thinking wistful thoughts about age and eternity appropriate to the sea and the day.

Of course, there was really only one thought circling around and around my head: “I am 29. I am 29.” Now, I know that 29 is not old, and I know that many of you are going to read this and say “Michelle, honestly, wait until you at least have kids and age spots before you wax eloquent on aging.” That’s probably good advice, but I’m going to go ahead anyway.

In the United States, I’ve always been conscious of how much the culture worships the appearance of youth at the expense of reality and of how a woman is not considered truly successful unless she is also hot, regardless of her age. I’ve known women who’ve spent the best years of their lives in front of department store mirrors, cursing their tiniest flaws and all the while thinking of new, painful ways to punish themselves into a more socially acceptable shape.

But in the U.S., there is also the I-don’t-give-a-damn-so-you-can-shove-it constituent, the women who just let their hair go gray when it goes gray, who do not curse their bodies for growing slightly softer and rounder with age, who wear comfortable shoes even though they may not be the cutest style, who think a lot more about whether their buying practices are supporting child labor than whether the pieces are the most modern or the most flattering.

I have always admired these women, women like my mother who approach life with a healthy balance of stylish sense and graceful acceptance. Women who embody Anne Lammott’s longing to, as they age, earn a face of kindness and integrity. This is the kind of woman I want to be, and, up until recently, I had plenty of role models for that.

But if the superficial forces are still alive and well in the US of A, they’ve totally taken over the women of Lithuania.

I walk to and from the university each day, and each day I feel as though I am wearing a giant cardboard placard that reads: “I, Michelle Webster-Hein, have given up.” Mostly this has to do with my shoes. There’s no way in hell that I’m going to traverse 35 minutes to and fro in my cute teaching flats, so each morning I stab my vanity within an inch of its life by donning my beat-up sneakers over my tights and making the trek. One day last week I was wearing a pair of striped capris. With tennis-shoes.

“I look like a clown,” I told Scott as I gazed into the full-length mirror that morning. I was hoping that he would contradict me. He responded by humming the carnival tune and dancing around like a drunken marionette.

But it’s not just the shoes. It’s the whole damn thing: the make-up, the perfectly-styled hair, the matching handbags. The overwhelming number of stick-thin women who seriously look like they just stepped out of a Vogue advertisement. It makes me feel like I used to in high school shuffling back and forth between classes in my marching band sweatshirt. Only here it’s worse because here no one else even considered joining marching band.

I shared my observations with a friend who is slightly older and much wiser than me. She told me about her own Feminist-Marxist interpretation as to why Lithuanian women dress the way they do. Basically, they don’t have as many opportunities here as they do on our side of the pond, so they have to boost their “assets”. Fair enough. Another friend of mine claimed that they dress that way because, due to alcoholism and lack of male role models, the pickings are slim, and, as a result, the competition is high. Another valid point.

So why should this make me angry? Can’t I just chalk it up to cultural/personal differences and let it go?

Not yet, not until I say this and remind myself that I believe it: Society’s ideals of beauty keep women down. They keep us down because they are always asking of us the impossible, the impossible into which, to make others happy, we end up pouring so much of our precious time and our precious resources, all, ultimately, to no avail.

And, though sometimes I feel these young years slipping past too quickly, though sometimes I want with all of my heart to be that grand and ageless turner of heads, I will not be a part of it. I will seek true beauty, and the rest I will let go.

So now I am 29, a number divisible by nothing save one and itself. A number that makes no neat set of rows. A number that only fits into something as wild and wide and yielding as the sea around my fingers and the sand around my feet.

Lithuania is great; on the other hand, ...

Ok. Since I don’t have as much time anymore, I’ll give you the abbreviated version of the witty-yet-tender, pulitzer-prize-worthy entry I wrote earlier and accidentally deleted.

My students have been working on conjunctive adverbs (therefore, in addition, nevertheless, etc.), and I asked them to write 5 sentences, one using the connector “on the other hand.” One student came up with this:

“He’s a great boss; on the other hand, he’s a brutal dictator.”

Ah, duplicity. Which leads me to the title of my post.

Lithuania is great; on the other hand…
1) I ordered fish-eel soup (my own fault), in which were drifting fins and long bits of bone.

2) Scott has come down with a feverish cold and been out sick for three days. Poor guy. He’s feeling better now, but I think his two jobs are putting a major strain on his natural resources. I tell him to consider cutting back his hours, but he is dedicated to both endeavors and won’t hear of it.

3) Because Scott was sick, I went grocery shopping alone and got stuck in the rain dragging 40 pounds of food and cleaning products 10 blocks home along the already-muddy sidewalk. (This is actually a valuable lesson which also explains why people go shopping every day here, or at least every couple of days.)

4) Anyone who is reading this is most likely not here.

Yes, Lithuania is the experience of a lifetime, and we haven't once regretted our decision to come here. Still, sometimes even the shadows move differently across my ceiling at night, and, although I have propped up my chin with an unbreakable stick, I miss all of you. I miss my home.

First Days

September 1st, unless it lands on a weekend, is always the first day of school in Lithuania and, as such, it’s also a national holiday. The students all wear starched and pressed uniforms and carry handfuls of flowers to their teachers. Lithuanian folk dancers in traditional clothing spin out their patterned skirts in the public squares. The mayor gives a well-attended oration, and everybody cheers. It feels the way the first day of school was always supposed to feel had there been no bullies or puberty, just a promising year full of good books and good work and, at least for that day, the infinite possibility of knowledge taking you wherever you wanted to go.

All that possibility felt nearly palpable this morning as I crossed the bridge over the green-gold river and passed the men with their bristle brooms and reflective jackets spot-cleaning the sidewalks, the women with their kerchiefs and puckered faces setting out the wooden crates of pears and plums and, today, flowers at the roadside stands and, of course, the children, even a teenage boy with dirty sneakers and greasy hair but also with a crisp green blazer and arms full of roses.

It was in that wash of excitement and apprehension that I arrived at the school well before 8 o’clock and promptly set up shop in the lecture hall, about 30 minutes early.

At this point, it would probably be helpful to explain what exactly I’m doing here. I am one of the two instructors in the Intensive English Program, which is only one year old. We have a total of 30 students whose English is not yet high enough for university study. Our job is, in nine months, to get each student’s English to that point. My workload is pretty heavy for a professor: I have 16 teaching hours per week, and one of them is a writing class (6 assignments with 2-3 drafts of each!), not exactly a light prep. Although I will surely get tired and discouraged, right now I am head-over-heels in love with the challenge and all of the surprises in store. As evidenced by my showing up half an hour before class was supposed to start.

So, back in the lecture hall, I occupied myself by turning on and off the speakers (just to make sure they were working), turning on and off the projector, moving the whiteboard to the middle of the stage and then back and then somewhere in the middle, rereading my lesson plans, and reapplying my chapstick.

Despite fueling all of my neuroses, when the students finally started showing up, I behaved like a normal human being: I smiled, said “Welcome!”, and played selections from Bach’s Cello Suites over the speakers, partly to make sure the speakers were still working and partly to infuse the sense of calm, purpose, and poise I wanted so desperately to feel.

Though I worry myself into a blind panic whenever I have to stand in front of a classroom for the first time, I think that teaching will always be a part of my life no matter what I end up ultimately doing. As my students file into their rows with their new notebooks and planners and pens, their bashful glances, some of the boys in ties-one in a full suit!-I am overcome by this strange mixture of maternal adoration and concern for their well-being. I have always had this feeling when it comes to new students, and I have yet to decide whether or not it’s healthy. All I know is that I want to try my damnedest to 1) give them the best opportunities possible and 2) not look like an obsequious fool.

In this spirit of joy and quiet concern, my classes slid smoothly by. I found the teaching zone and stayed there. By the end of the day, I learned everyone’s names and, I hope, imparted a sense of purpose, hope, and goodwill. In other words, LCC was not my old high school, I did not get lost, my lesson plans were not covered in cartoon characters, my students were not students whom I’d failed before, and I lost no crucial pieces of clothing. And so, I believe I can, compared to my dreams at least, declare my first day teaching at LCC a success.

Three Dreams

When I'm stressed out, I usually can't feel that I'm stressed out. Not until I can't catch my breath anymore on a daily basis or I start waking up with my blanket clutched to my chest in horror, most often to prevent whatever jeering audience is in my head from looking upon my nakedness. Lately, I've been having trouble breathing regularly and last night I woke up in a panic three times only to nurse myself back to sleep and wake up again, this time in a different but equally horrifying scenario.

Dream #1: Scott and I were only halfway packed for Lithuania when we realized that our plane departed in exactly two hours. We threw everything we could in a couple pre-used garbage bags and jetted out the door.

Dream #2: We must have been successful in making the flight because the next thing I knew we were being taken to a creepy, rundown shack with no plumbing or electricity in the middle of the Lithuanian woods where someone was to pick us up daily in a Landrover, take us to work at the university, and then take us home immediately afterwards.

Dream #3: After being unceremoniously punted from the Landrover, I found myself at the "university", which turned out to be conspicuously similar to my high school. Although I was in familiar terrain, I could not find the room in which I was supposed to teach. I wandered up and down the main hallway, back and forth, each time losing a crucial piece of clothing, and finally found myself in my "classroom", which was filled with students I knew a little too well as they had all done poorly in my classes before. Although already shouldering a heavy and bitter defeat, I looked down at my lesson plans, determined to give the task my best despite the consequences. Of course, these plans consisted of a few pieces of loose leaf covered only in sketches of various cartoon characters. Their only redemption was that they were at least large enough to cover the key parts of my body which I then realized was much larger than I had previously thought and, you guessed it, completely naked.

Scott's response to these dreams was that my subconscious obviously doesn't think much of my interpretive abilities.

I think at this point it's safe to say that I'm a little stressed out. My classes begin this Tuesday at 8:30 am. I'll let you all know how the first day goes. Until then, wish me luck!

My New Office

Here's my new office, a view out the door, and yours truly pretending to be hard at work.

The Camo-Barbie Onslaught

Scott and I recently discovered that Klaipeda roughly translates to "dirty foot" in Lithuanian. Which explains the numerous mud-encrusted brass imprints of feet scattered throughout the city. It may also explain the tendency of women to wear utterly ridiculous, sometimes downright punishing shoes. But, let's be honest, it also explains a lot more than I would prefer. I can hear it now.

"Oh, you lived in Europe? I lived in Europe, too!"
"Cool! Where?"
"Dirty Foot."
"...Oh."

It's a great city, don't get me wrong. It's just that the city’s name sounds bad enough without knowing it’s been christened "nasty hoof." All I can hope is that Klaipeda is not, in addition, the name of some rank fungal infection, especially not one contracted by wandering around without shoes. Luckily, my Lithuanian will most likely never reach the level of identifying fungal infections. Thank God.

Regardless, the historic city of Dirty Foot is the one where now our own dirty feet tread, end to end, old town to university and back again. We’ve estimated that, on our short days, we still log about 5 miles and, on long days, close to 10. With all that plodding back and forth, something’s bound to happen. I knew, with the prevalence of alcohol abuse, that there was the chance of getting harassed by a drunken person or two. What I didn’t expect was what actually happened.

It was Friday evening, and Scott and I were walking back from a faculty dinner. We’d been told that it’s best to speak at a moderate volume and avoid eye contact with people on the street-with some men doing otherwise can be seen as a challenge-so we were minding our own business and trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. One thing that remains conspicuous, however, is our speed. With our long legs and capitalistic sense of time management, we pass Lithuanians as though they’re standing still. Not so, though, when we passed the inebriated flock of life-size Barbies in their skin-tight, camouflage tank tops and, of course, matching forest-green stiletto heels. At the precise moment of our passing, they erupted into riotous giggles, lunged at Scott with their pea-colored fingernails, and began chasing him around a human-sized shrub in the middle of the sidewalk. In the twilight, I watched his awkward dance from the other side of the tree as he side-stepped, ducked, jumped, and dove his way out of what has probably been, at some point, the impossible fantasy of many teenage boys.

At that moment, besides horror and confusion, I also experienced a deep sense of pride. I imagined us having the conversation back in the relative boredom of our apartment. “No, seriously, if, like, 10 beautiful women threw themselves at you, all at once, what would you do?” “Run away.” He’d been telling the truth!

Scott finally extricated himself from the roiling mass of beauty queens and came running at me full speed, his face full of a frenetic, terrified glee. Suddenly, out from the shadows, two Barbies pounced, one from either side, and caught hold. One held him still while the other brushed back his hair with her hand and planted a greasy, red kiss on the center of his cheek. Poor, bewildered Scott could not find his words. They were laughing and shouting something in Lithuanian. “Nekaulbu,” I said. “Nekaulbu Lietuviske.” We don’t speak Lithuanian.

The laughter stopped. The head Barbie spoke. “She’s getting married tomorrow. It’s tradition to give 100 men 100 kisses.”

Scott clapped awkwardly. “Congratulations!” he cried.

“What a strange tradition,” we remarked to each other as we continued home.

At least it had nothing to do with kissing dirty feet.

morning trip to the market

Here you have the door to our apartment, a sidestreet view, and two pictures of the Klaipeda market, which is open every day save in the winter.

My Second Childhood

It’s important as an adult to never forget what it’s like to be a child, to never forget how long five minutes can last, how terrifying the dark can be, or how exciting and overwhelming life can feel because everything is so new and often mysterious. That’s what it feels like here sometimes, it feels like a second childhood. Mundane things fascinate or horrify you. Simple tasks turn into undertakings that require a herculean effort. And sometimes you wish you could just pop your thumb in your mouth and tuck yourself behind your mother’s skirt or sit in front of the TV and watch an entire season of Blue’s Clues while eating bowl after bowl of Cap’n Crunch.

Case in point, the grocery store. Yesterday I sat down to my morning Muesli with yogurt and discovered I had instead purchased sour cream, which had been selected after a full five minutes of painstaking label comparison with other things that might or might not have been yogurt. And tomatoes. I bought a rotten tomato. Even though, come on, it’s obviously a tomato and all you’ve got to do is give it a little squeeze to make sure it’s edible. I was so desperate to put something recognizable in my basket, I didn’t even check to see whether or not it was good.

After wandering around the store for a good 20 minutes and finding exactly five things to buy, two of which were either inedible or something entirely different from what I had hoped, I lined up at the check-out. Here they want you to move as fast as is humanly possible. By the time the cashier rings you up, you’re supposed to have finished bagging your junk and have gotten the hell out of everyone else’s way. I knew this, so I immediately started shoving the scanned items into my bag. This is survival mode at the grocery store. Say “Labadiena” with a believable accent. Act like you know exactly what’s going on. Bag your stuff. Locate the total on the screen because you can’t understand spoken numbers. Pay. Say “Aciu.” Leave. And all the while, pray to God that they don’t say anything to you. Halfway through my believable ruse, the cashier spoke, and it was all over. My face, I’m sure, washed white with a blank and awkward stare. Maybe I grimaced. Maybe she thought I had a cramp. So she said it again, loudly and more slowly. And again. There aren’t a lot of foreigners in Lithuania, so the woman was probably confused. I wanted to say I didn’t understand Lithuanian. I even know how to say that I don’t understand Lithuanian. But I couldn’t. Instead, I just panicked and shook my head and grabbed my debit card and left. I still have no idea what she was talking about.

So we try fast food sometimes, which is better here than it is in the states, and slower. The other day we went for kababas. Kababas is like a kabob pita sandwich stuffed with a bunch of meat that’s been shaved off a spit, cabbage salad, onion, and four mystery sauces. It’s delicious. And, because I am in my second childhood, strangely fascinating. The spit is vertical and wrapped in a slowly-twisting meat tornado. The machine buzzes as it roasts. Flies swoop in and out through the open doors and windows. Happily for Scott, I remember the Lithuanian word for onions, which he hates. I also remember the word for no. When our turn comes, I try to be as Lithuanian as I can. I say “Good day.” I order two big kababas, one with no onions. Unfortunately, the “two” comes out French, and the “one” comes out German. My gig is up. When our kababas are finished, the woman hands them over the counter. She points to one. “This one has no onions,” she says, in perfect English. I thank her. Translated, I say “Very thank you,” which probably sounds just as bad in Lithuanian as it does in English. Despite my taking a sledgehammer to her first language, she smiles and nods. We take the kababas and walk home.

As we walk, I think about my students back in the states: the refugees, the single mothers, the young professionals, the teenage boys and girls. I wanted to come here for many reasons, but one big reason was so that I could better understand what they go through when they come to the United States either to study English or merely to survive. Already, I understand that each thing they experience is probably more consequential than it might seem to anyone casually watching. A patient bus driver. A kind cashier. A simple explanation repeated for the sake of clarity. A map drawn on the back of a receipt by a stranger. Small, simple kindnesses that may indeed be just that simple but are definitely not that small.

my nameplate

I am way too excited about this...

Thoughts on Process and Perfection

I know I’m not alone in the sense of accomplishment I reap from a finished product, from things being done. My gut tells me that this is a very American thing, the admiration of things in their perfect states, in the states after we have perfected them: supermarket packages lined up in gleaming, colorful rows, clean laundry tucked into closed drawers, a spotless floor, a living room that looks as though it hasn’t been lived in, cars that look as though they’ve never been driven, even people who look as though they have not lived their entire lives in their own skin. There’s a certain obsession with wanting things to be perfect, with wanting things to be done, with wanting things to look as though we’re not messing around with them. In other words, there seems to be an overwhelming desire for product and a shunning of the process it takes to get there.

I had the same realization about life my freshman year of college. I was standing in the shower and bent over to get something. The water hit the back of my head, trailed around my face and shot off my nose and chin in two perfect streams. I felt like a flesh-and-blood fountain. I’m not sure why that struck me then, but it made me think, “Here, now, this is not a hurdle to be jumped over, not just a block of time I have to get through before going on to something else. This is an experience to be opened up and enjoyed or, if not enjoyed, at least noticed.” Of course, I was in college, so that didn’t last very long. I hadn’t really thought about it much until last night, when I hung the laundry up on the drying rack.

The laundry here, as I mentioned, takes two hours to wash and a couple of days to dry, once it’s hung. We don’t have a car, so we walk the 30+ minutes to campus, then back when we’re finished. Food doesn’t last as long, so people go shopping every couple of days, again, usually on foot. If you’re not cooking, you’re ordering from a restaurant, which takes just as long, sometimes longer, because the restaurant staff isn’t in a rush either.

I think the reason that we Americans tend to be the way we are is because we can have everything so fast, so it makes us move faster, simply because there’s nothing to wait for. In the states, it seems ludicrous to lengthen processes that could much more easily be shortened. Why hang laundry on the line when there’s a dryer in the basement? Why bake bread when you can buy it at the store? Why walk to work when you can drive there? It just seems like bad sense. I try my best to fight it, but it does. Foolishness. You could get an extra job with all that extra time, or earn another degree. In the states, I struggle to slow down, to take notice of things. But here, so far, life has just sort of slunk along and done it for me. Outside the early whisper of fall in the crispy leaves, the sad, chilled-earth smell. The rain outside our window which sounds, I swear, like someone is pushing a broken shopping cart across the cobblestone. And inside Scott’s black socks, my blue, the sea-green towels, the brightly patterned shirts, all folded so carefully and slowly drying over the heavy lines of wire.

...and there was music

Yesterday afternoon, joy of joys, I spent almost three hours hammering away on a new Steinberger. And, happy madness of happy madnesses, this (grand!) piano is available whenever the lecture hall is not being used, which means I can practice every day without troubling anybody. When the Academic VP showed us how to request the key and unlock the door, I could have lunged around the stage singing undeserving hits from misogynistic musicals, I was that happy.

So I've decided that my basic goals for the year are to relearn Haydn's Variations in f minor and Schumann's Fantasiestucke, then try to work up Ravel's Menuet Antique (for Scott), two Chopin Nocturnes, and, of course, Bach, the Italian Concerto, because nothing I've found is ever as good for the soul as some good ol' Bach.

The Morning Realizations of a Reluctant Yuppie

In the morning I open the windows that face the square. The windows are tall and have no screens, so that I can bend out, like someone in a poem, and test the air with my arm. If I smoked, I would definitely lean out the window and exhale in slow, contemplative sighs, but as I don't, I'll content myself with simply breathing in and out while listening to the rumbling buses and shuffling feet on the cobblestone streets below.

I read and pray, practice Yoga poses to wake up, and then eat my Meusli with yogurt and drink my strange-tasting orange juice which I hope is actually orange juice. Then I boil water and make my coffee with the French press we found for 10 litas at the big grocery on the other side of town. I am in love with our French press.

Mornings here are as picturesque as a story book, but even while leaning out a window and imagining myself as a quaint character in some Eastern European folk tale, I am aware of a few less picturesque differences between here and home.

At home, I was able to both recycle and compost. Here there is no place to compost, which is not surprising, but I can't recycle either. My neighbor told me yesterday that walking your recycling to the containers located around town does no good because the country no longer has the money to collect and process it and, as a result, it all gets dumped in the trash. I cringed. Egads. So much for that. Scott and I will have to change our tactics and instead buy things that have as little packaging as possible.

It's more difficult to do one's part to take care of the Earth, but it's also more difficult to take care of one's body in the way I have gotten used to as an American. At home I am a bit of a health nut. I read packages obsessively and usually only buy things that are low in sugar, low in saturated fat, and have no hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, nitrates, or bleached flour. At home I know how to differentiate between the claims that different products make on their labels, and I know how to discern what is healthy and what is pretend. Here, I see a pretty picture of a tomato or a happy cow and I think, "Do I eat this or rub it on my face?" As far as I can tell, though, it's not only my lack of language that's the problem. The things I used to scour the stores for at home don't seem to exist here. In other words, I am starting to understand how much I have as an American and to wonder how much of what I usually consume is actually necessary for good health.

Now, just because those things aren't available here doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of good things going on that generally don't happen in the states. The obesity rate seems pretty low, and I think that's because most people walk or ride bikes instead of drive. Also, the markets are open every day until winter, when the market reduces its hours to twice weekly. The things people buy require less transportation, as they are more local, and they also require fewer preservatives, I think, since people go shopping every couple days and don't seem to cherish the longer shelf life that we do.

That's all for now. My coffee is finished, the sun is climbing, and I'd like to make the 30-minute walk to the university before it gets too high and hot for a comfortable jaunt. As to non-poetic technicalities, our faculty/staff orientation begins this Wednesday, and classes start September 1st. We are both excited for the working part of this adventure to begin.

Love to all our family and friends, and thank you for all of your comments! We cherish them.

Apartment Pictures

Here you have our carefully chosen selection of books, living room, dining room, and kitchen. Quite lovely, though I say it myself.

Top 10 tiny reminders that we are not in Kansas anymore:

1) the toilet button

2) the washing machine, which takes two hours and is the size of a shoebox

3) the laundry rack, on which our clothing dries to a crisp

4) the burner settings: 1 being the highest, 6 being the lowest (the acquisition of this knowledge requiring the sacrifice of 2 precious eggs and a slice of mystery cheese)

5) the pervasive belief that carpeting/area rugs/anything cushy underfoot is something for which only soft, dirty, foreign cretins feel the need

6) the mullet trend

7) the shopping cart deposit

8) the lack of blue jeans that aren’t vacuum-packed to young people’s gams

9) the woman at the sprawling Saturday market who pours fresh milk from a stained, green bucket that looks as though it must have, at some point, also hauled manure

10)the man down the street who, although he wears an American-flag-print headband, sings only Lithuanian songs so sadly it would break your bursting American heart

First Impressions

Labadiena!

We arrived in Klaipeda last night at around 6:00 with all of our luggage. This is good news. However, it does mean that I was unable to use one of my five Lithuanian phrases, “Kur yra lagaminai?” or, “Where are the suitcases?” which, it turns out, I have over-rehearsed, along with “Ar cia saugu plaukioti” (Is it safe to swim here?) and, to my chagrin, “Ar ju suprantita Lietuviske?” (Why would I want to ask anyone if they understand Lithuanian? So I could then ask them where my suitcases are?)

Instead, I should have over-rehearsed the politeness words: “please,” “thank you,” “sorry,” and “cheers!” Then, at the Ikiukas corner grocery, I would not have sincerely apologized to the woman who rang up our milk, nor would I have toasted a glass to the harried man whom I gouged in the stomach with my shopping basket. Ah, well. Such things come with time. So says the overly-optimistic, overly-enthusiastic American.

As to particulars, we have unpacked our clothes and books and settled happily in to our apartment, which is surprisingly homey despite that it is a former Soviet building. We have also made acquaintances with our landlord, a kind and patient man despite that we blew out the entire building’s electricity in one fell swoop, then accidentally stole all of the high speed Internet for ourselves. Today we are meeting our new friends (recruited by the university), who will help us trade in our dollars for litas, negotiate the daily market and bus system, and find light bulbs.

Thus far, I have found a few natural ways in which Lithuania resembles home. For one thing, here too the clouds are all flat on the bottom and heaped up on top, like a bunch of mutated meringues on a sheet of Plexiglas. (I’m sure that’s true of clouds everywhere at one time or another, but having noticed it as the plane dipped down, I couldn’t resist the description.) The weather here is also emotionally unstable: blindingly bright one minute, then darkly morose, then sobbing. The trees are the same as well: balding cedars, ubiquitous maples, tall and slender clumps of white-limbed birches, poplars with their whispering disks of leaves. Lithuania is remarkably flat, as southern Michigan is, with a brown water meticulously filling any and all depressions, be they mud puddles that line the roads in a beaded necklace or entire lakes. And that, so far, is where the similarities end. The infinite differences will be forthcoming.