the nausea is traditional, too!

I tell my mother I am going to the store and ask if there is anything she needs. She, instead, asks me what I'm getting. I recite a short list. Toilet paper, etc, etc. "Oh, and herring."

"Herring!"

"Herring."

"Get the kind in cream sauce."

For a second we stare at each other. "Ma, you've been forcing that stuff down my gob once a year since I was old enough to eat solid food. I think I know what kind to get."

Being Estonian is difficult sometimes. I think the meaning of this tradition is that you should not welcome change, because change means forcing yourself to eat over-salted dead fish in sour cream with onions. Maybe when they got Jesus they got the kind that was all about torturing yourself. Maybe the herring explains why everything else is so bland (vodka, potatoes) because they routinely torture their tongues. I don't know. Another Estonian proverb: It Could Be Worse. I have no idea what sort of culinary disasters they routinely get up to in The Old Country, and around this time every year I'm thankful to Antonia for that fact.

In other news, we have a misguided whale in the water.

Edit, about an hour later: I got my herring. There was a lady standing next to me at the grocery store, with a packet of some kind of Salmon Gone Wrong in one hand and something else in the other. Being that my non-resolution this year is to Stop Being So Goddamn Shy, I said, is it just me with the wacky eastern-European relatives who want fish for new year's? She laughed and said no, hers too. I said mine were Estonian; she said hers were Siberian. SIBERIAN! How badass is that?