The Last Week, Part I

 The Last Week Part I

The end of things is always hard.  I’m not the first person to discover that.  But as our time grew to an end, we definitely knew that the last week would be confusing emotionally.  We were excited to return to our home and family and friends.  But Tampere had become home as well.  We weren’t ready to leave yet.  But we knew we would have to.  And we weren’t sure what that last week would feel like.  But we knew we had to make it special.

So we did.  Jyväskylä took up two of our days.  And for the rest of them we tried to do all of our favorite things one more time.  We went back to TnT and Aloha Ramen.  We went back to the Labor Museum and Vapriikki.  

We walked in the Pynnikki and hiked up for munkki.  

We did some new things too.  We went to a movie (The Wild Robot) and cried because it was such a good movie, and because our time here was ending.  

While we were waiting for the movie to start you could log into an app with your phone.  Everyone who did got to play a collective soccer video game on the big screen.  The MVP (measured by goals scored) won a free Nachos from the concession stand.  Seriously why don't we do stuff like this here in the states!?!

We brought a lock with us and we decorated it and locked it to the bridge between Finlayson and Tampella.  

We tried to osmose as much of Finland as we could and hold on to as much of it as our hearts could carry.

It was also a time of preparation.  We bought another entire suitcase to accommodate all of the new stuffed animals that our kids had bought during the trip.  We returned most of our things to the library.  We started meal planning from the end of our trip backwards to minimize the amount of food that we had leftover.  We rationed our booze, about which there was considerable protest.  From me.

Our transition was helped by the natural changes around us.  The weather had grown substantially colder.  For the first five or six weeks of our trip we wore shorts most days.  Then for another week we wore long pants.  And for the last week and a half we wore gloves and jackets and hats.  You could see the town preparing for winter as well.  Seasonal shops all closed for the winter, and the beautiful red flowers all around Tampere were dug out and presumably transferred to a greenhouse for a winter.  

So much of what we knew and loved in Tampere was leaving, and we knew that it was time for us to get ready to leave too.

Our entire time in Finland I had wanted to try a public sauna, but had never got the gumption.  Amy finally just booked one for me, and Milo decided he wanted to come with me.  He and I had been using our private sauna for most of the trip.  He liked to go in and out a lot, which was fine at home, but I was a little worried about how he would act in a public setting.  I shouldn’t have been.  He took the heat a lot better than most of the Finns there.  Because he has sisu.

The sauna was a place called Kuuma.  It was a beautiful traditional smoke sauna right on the bank of lake Pyhäjärvi.  

There were maybe six other guests there with us.  We had ninety minutes.  We would stay in the Sauna as long as we could, and then run and jump in the freezing cold lake.  

Then we would sit in the sun for a few minutes before heading back to the sauna.  We repeated the process three or four times.  There was also an indoor lounge area where you could buy food from the main kitchen.  We didn't spend much time there, but it looked cool.

We talked the whole time about the things Milo likes, and the fun video games we had played in Finland, and ideas that he had for board games to invent when we got home.  After our time was up we got dressed and headed outside where there was bar.  I got myself a cocktail (which was heavy on Lingonberry) and got Milo an orange soda.  

After all of the talking we mostly drank them in silence, and smiled at each other.

When I was a kid my Dad worked a lot.  He came to all of my sports games, and read books to me at night, and took me to movies and bumper cars and all sorts of fun things.  But I think my favorite moments were when I got to step into his world.  At the athletic club, or golf course, or watching a basketball game with his friends.  They were places that I was too little to be, so it felt like I was sneaking in.  Like that feeling you have when your parents let you stay up past your bed time.  And the other grown ups there would smile at me, aware of my trespass but tolerant of it.  His friends would ask me about school like they talked to each other about work, and laugh and egg me on when I said a bad word.  My Dad would usually buy me a snickers bar, or a milkshake.  And he would talk about the things that I was interested in and mattered to me.  Those moments always felt really special to me.

Our language has too few words to capture all of the different sorts of love you can feel and show to people.  I don’t know what the word would be to capture the feeling a son feels when his dad lets him into the special parts of his life.  But I was lucky enough to feel it.  And I hope that Milo felt it too during our Sauna and drink.  Being on the other end of it now, thirty years later, I learned that it feels just as good when you are the dad as it did when you were the son. 

Actually I think it feels better.

And maybe I was wrong.  Maybe we shouldn’t have a word for that feeling.  Maybe it is bigger than a word.

Hei Hei