For those of you who are able to trace their ancestry back to another country...

[Wicked Blue]

51. I'm glad you had that wonderful experience

Do you speak Ukrainian?

My parents were immigrants from Estonia. They raised me to speak the language fluently. We had almost no relatives in the U.S. but my father kept in touch with his sister in Estonia. In my late teens, I became pen pals with my cousin there. Back then they still lived in the house my grandfather built.

Finally, after the Iron Curtain fell, I saved enough money to visit them. I stayed at the new house of my cousin and her husband, where my aunt also lived. It felt so amazing to actually have family, and to hear stories about my father's youth. (My parents were long dead).

They took me everywhere, introduced me to second cousins that I'd never heard of, and brought me to the cemetery where my grandparents and great-uncles were buried. We visited the old family home, which had been sold, and my aunt pointed out a white lilac tree under what once was my father's bedroom window.

We also visited Tartu, the city where my parents attended university, but never graduated because of the war. My mother's grandfather was an Orthodox arch-priest who was born in a tiny village (Nizhnyaya Olkhovaya) in Luhansk oblast, and educated in Kyiv. He had been chairman of the theology department at the University of Tartu and served as the university's acting record for a short time before retiring. My mother was born and raised in Tartu; her father was born in Kyiv.

In 2010 I managed to save money for a second trip there and pay for my brother's airfare as well. This time we flew to Helsinki, Finland and took the ferry to Tallinn, the Estonian capital. We once again stayed at my cousin's home and were taken to meet relatives. My cousin's husband drove us to the old family home town, Valga, which is on the Latvian border. We got to see an 80-plus-year old relative singing a solo at a community festival. My brother and I stepped over the border into Latvia for a few minutes, just so we could say we'd been there.

We again visited the cemetery. And in Tartu, my brother and I got accidentally locked in the university's Aula, the ceremonial hall where my great-grandfather had presumably presided, where my mother's father and uncles graduated, and where my parents probably attended convocations as students. A tour group that left a bit earlier locked us in by mistake. We escaped by yelling out a window to people on the street, who notified the reception desk. What a pair of dunces we were, probably mortifying the spirits of our distinguished ancestors.

Both visits were in mid-June, when days are so long in that latitude that it's never fully dark, just a sort of silvery twilight.

I wish I could go back again, but doubt that it's possible.