Parallax

On the internet, as usual, one thing leads to another. Somewhere in the vicinity of two in the morning (locally known as Oh Dark Hundred and/or Stupid O'Clock) I found myself on a website where I had been collected and indexed like some kind of trading card or exotic bug.

What I found is a website dedicated to Everyone, Ever, Who Is Connected To Kasmu In Any Way. I'm there, and my mom and grandma, and her cousins and wacky world-travelling talking to herself Laine and Hans with the boats and the being shipwrecked repeatedly, and old Antonia whose sewing machine my mail gets left on where it sits quietly until I find it a week later. We're all there. All these people that I know, and tell crazy stories about.

The stories aren't there, though. That makes it all feel weird, and sort of sterile, because that's how we keep track of each other. Potholders, herring, boats, clarinets, the basement at Macy's, embroidery, Lucky Strike, cameo pins, potatoes, Hummels, the devil's rock, sunburn, embassies, shortwave radios, carpentry. It's like Trachimbrod in Everything is Illuminated, the stories and clutter (mental, physical) are what we use to remember.

The stories I know are mostly on this side of the Atlantic. What I know about Kasmu isn't much. I know that's where everyone came from, and that they built a lot of boats. I know that you went to the sauna (which has a gnome in it) and then jumped into the lake in the middle of winter, because .. ok, I never found out why the hell they did that. I know there were cows and fish. Lots of lucky herring. Vodka. I got the idea that Kasmu could be translated from Estonian as: "small bump on the coast where you build boats and go sailing because there is fuck-all else to do except get drunk in the sauna and tip the cows over." I've looked at it on Google Maps and it has something like four intersections.

( I know these are my people because they're all pale and rounded and grumpy in the old photos. )

So: the whole point to this is that I find it hilarious I've been collected and indexed by some stranger halfway across the world. I feel like an action figure. One of the really random and useless ones, like the thing that was only in two scenes in Jabba's palace, that I spotted, begged for, and got at a toy store when I was maybe three. How I still have that, I don't know. Or why my mother got it for me. Why I wanted it is easier: if given the choice between a fuzzy Ewok and a weird-looking lizard bug flatworm thing, I go with the lizard bug flatworm thing.

Wonder what kinds of interesting lizards and bugs and worm things I could find in Kasmu....

I will now share with you my favorite Thanksgiving story of ever. Ever.

My grandmother, as you know, grew up during the Great Depression. She operated a little differently than most folks did in the consume-and-dispose eighties. She'd rinse and reuse butter tubs, she'd save twisties from bread bags, she'd melt down little withered slivers of soap into a mysterious jar of soft soap that never hardened. (She took that trick to her grave, wish I'd known how she did that.)

The turkey on Thanksgiving was my mom's job, most of the time. After the day's demolition of the feast the remains all went to Grandma, who put them to good use. She'd strip every shred of meat from the bones, then put the carcass in a caldron-sized pot and make stock out of it. We'd have soup and sandwiches for weeks until nobody wanted to even think about turkey again -- but by then it was time for herring, so the turkey didn't seem so bad.

Well, most years we had soup and sandwiches. One year we didn't. Grandma did, and we didn't, and we never told her why.

Memory is funny. You don't remember a thing, you remember telling the story of the thing, to yourself or someone else. I know I was at school when this happened, although I can see it in my head as though I was there. I don't remember my mom telling me this, although I know she did. I just remember what I'd envisioned when she told me, and if I think about this I can see it happen, even though I never actually did.

( You see, what had happened was... )

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?

All this time I thought it was an elaborate joke.

So. This Gogol Bordello song - 'American Wedding.' Starts thus: Have you ever been to American wedding? Where is the vodka, where is marinated herring?

I went: Where is the wait a minute WHAT?

Ever since I can remember being able to eat solid foods and stay up until midnight, we had an odd tradition for New Year's. Herring. My grandmother, who tended towards superstition (no shoes on tables, no umbrellas opened under roofs, salt over the shoulder and knock on wood) swore up and down that, for an Estonian, it was good luck if the first thing you ate in the new year was herring. I can tell you right off that nine tenths of Estonian traditions involve food, and nine tenths of Estonian food involves fish, so logic says it's because that's what they always had to hand. But Grandma swore it was luck, and wanted us to eat it. So we did, by the bucketload, it seemed. This. Every year. I haven't had any in ages, but I can still taste it. The first bite is fantastic, the next three or four are all right, and six or seven in you're ready to throw the jar across the room -- so you pass it to someone else, and they do likewise, and in February you find the three-fourths-full jar in the back of the fridge, get nauseated, and pitch it. So it goes. But it's a tradition, and Grandma only wanted us to have good luck, so either we do it and feel mildly urpy, or don't do it and feel guilty. (Ah, guilt. The true cornerstone of all familial rituals.)

Where is marinated herring? There's got to be a tradition behind that, and I bet you it's for luck. Since when was this not just my family being nuts?

( Later, I decided to get some background on this. )