Not my Parents' Estonia

I have resigned...... and will be leaving Estonia sometime in the new year.

And I can't tell you how profoundly painful this is for me. How conflicted I feel. With a sense of failure all around me. This is not my proudest moment. I am not a quitter. And yet, this is the right decision. This is what I need to do, and I know it.

I have come here looking for answers and found them. Just not the answers I expected.

Much of the conflict in me is that I am abandoning my parents ancestry and heritage. That I am turning my back on them. But the truth is .... this is not my parents' Estonia. This is an Estonia that my parents escaped from... for a better life... in a new country... where my brother and I were able to grow up free, happy and as Leaf fans. :-)

My parents knew nothing of this Estonia. And I guess, as their son - here and now in Estonia, I'm happy for them... and the choice they made way back when... I realize that their decision was the right one.

This stark realization hit me on Saturday, while standing on an old electric trolley bus heading to a hockey game. I was squeezed in there like the proverbial sardines, trying to watch the plain grey buildings go by in the fogged up windows, listening to the squeaking of shock absorbers, vibration everywhere and the high pitched squealing of the brakes. This bus was from the 1960s. Heck, they all are - the trams, electric trolleys and the gas ones. They have not been upgraded at all. It's been fifteen years since Estonia has been liberated and yet, it still feels quite occupied. Not that I pretend to know what it was like to be here during those dark 50 years. But on that Saturday, on that creaky bus, it didn't feel like 2005. It felt like 1965. And as I looked at the faces of the older people on the buses - Estonians and Russians, dressed in older clothes, I wondered how different are things really? Have things really changed that much in 15 years?

Perhaps it takes a little more time for 50 years of repression to lift.

Depressing thought #42: I wonder what this country would have looked like today, without the 50 years of Soviet occupation. I wonder what beautiful busses they would have had? I wonder what beautiful buildings would be in place of the many grey Soviet ones? I wonder what might have been...

Plan forward:
1> Leave for Canada on Sunday for Christmas (2 weeks) . I haven't seen a Leaf game in 2 years!!!
2> Back to Estonia for January to wrap up this chapter of my life.
3> And then.... God only knows...