Riga, Latvia I loved Rīga, as well as Tomass. The idea, however, of relinquishing my autonomy by giving up my life in Tartu, required serious consideration. I was at a crossroads. I spent weeks contemplating my options. Angelina and Savi wanted to make the move to a bigger flat and a bigger, more exciting city; although they had reservations about leaving their friends in Estonia behind. I liked the idea in the abstract. But when I actually began taking steps toward selling my Tartu flat and leaving my Three Musketeers plus Charlie life behind, I felt overwhelmed and unable to breathe, quickly abandoning the idea. The well-meaning encouragement of friends left me feeling even more confused and indecisive. Their advice seemed to reflect society’s beliefs about what women need; but not necessarily mine. Certainly a married—or at least paired-off woman—is more acceptable within American, as well as European society. But since acceptability wasn’t my goal, I needed to dig deeper for reasons to rearrange my life. I needed a more compelling reason than being part of a couple, to dissolve my identity of Hannah: Alone and Alive; and I wasn’t sure that love was enough. “I don’t want to own you,” Tomass said, one evening as we discussed my reservations. “I want our lives to be simpler and I want all of us to be more comfortable. Why don’t we buy a flat together in Rīga and you keep your Tartu flat for yourself? Maybe you can live in Rīga the majority of the time, but you’ll always have your own place to go to, when you want some alone time or you and the girls want to visit with friends. I have no desire to decrease your independence or rearrange your life.” “And if I decide in the middle of the night that I want to go to Tartu, how will you feel?” “Will you leave a note?” He smiled. “Probably.” I winked. “What more could I ask for?” “And who will cook and clean?” “Who cooks and cleans now?” he replied rhetorically. Between the four of us sharing household responsibilities and our cleaning woman Olga’s assistance, our life in Rīga was quite manageable. “What about you? It’s a big step, taking on a whole family—incorporating us into your life. Do you think that you can live with us full time?” I asked. He didn’t answer; at least not in words. He just looked at me and smiled. Within two months we bought the upper half of a house built in the Tsar Russian era. The day after settlement, Angelina, Savi, Charlie and I moved to Rīga; to my relief, God and Jesus had moved on. Initially, it was not exactly the home of our dreams. We had neither central heat nor hot water; the absence of hot water probably would have been more disturbing if we’d had anything resembling a bathroom to remind us of this lack. We did, however, have a small closet containing a toilet with a leaking tank and overhead pull-chain (that required a certain knack to flush), which we were thankful for. In spite of the many windows, brown wallpaper and dingy paint created a darkness that would not surrender to chandeliers nor fluorescent tubes. But we had ten-foot high ceilings, beautiful old ceramic wood stoves in every room and incredible views out of every single one of the broken windows. These were fair tradeoffs in my mind. Cracked window panes were easily replaced, a gas heater for heat and hot water was quickly installed, and two bathrooms with tubs and showers were built into spaces that had been deemed useless by the previous owners. Our bedroom windows overlooked a tram stop that could be easily seen through several huge trees that gracefully shaded us from the hot summer sun and sheltered us from the biting winter winds. Stripping walls of old paper and painting them cream and yellow, along with installing ten huge skylights, transformed the once dark, dismal rooms into celebrations of light and life. Paint stripper and a sander removed a century’s worth of paint and abuse from the floors, revealing beautiful golden pine boards, which shone like mirrors when waxed with beeswax and buffed with cheesecloth and old socks. In time it became our dream home. Overview Embracing Emily