IN THE MORNING we had to leave Stockholm and go back to Estonia. It was me, Petra, our kids, and my mother and father. But everyone was tardy. Petra wanted some money from me, but all the coins I gave her were in some other currency. There was even that Danish 1 krone coin, the one with a hole in the middle of it. The children wouldn’t stop playing with the other kids in the courtyard. My mother started to make sandwiches. “But there’s a huge buffet on the ship!” I said. She kept cutting away there in the hotel kitchen, slicing up sandwich bread. My father meantime was upstairs lounging on the couch and watching MSNBC, his suitcase mostly unpacked. I quickly thrust some of my belongings into a bag as he just lay sprawled there, his hands behind his head. “You know, you should really get yourself some new pants. And a new jacket,” he said. “Look at me,” he gestured to his black Lacoste Polo shirt, “I still look cool, but you don’t.” “We don’t have time for this fashion shit, we’re going to be late!” Somehow I got them all into the transport van that would take us to the harbor. It was a balmy day in Stockholm, but with a slight maritime breeze that made the palm trees sway ever so slightly, or at least appear as if they were, and the Kungsholmen orange groves looked especially juicy with fruit. The van was overcrowded with travelers, and somewhere along Norr Mälarstrand a young man in a Hawaiian shirt disembarked and said he would walk the rest of the way. Somehow we made it, and with time to spare, and the white ship buoyed us in its sanctuary. Stockholm was more tropical than I remembered it being, with lush gardens and parrots singing from the verandas. It was all so different. It was fever hot.

BALTI JAAMA TURG, or Baltic Station Market, is a microcosm of the changes in the capital. It used to be this sprawling, post-apocalyptic, no-man’s-land of vene (Russian) putkas (booths) selling World War II leftovers (helmets, posters, pins), and big mama sellers weighing out kilos of potatoes and onions with a scale and making calculations with an abacus and a rickety giant calculator that even a blind man could figure out. “Kakzkyen krooni, palun.” And then they just razed it and built this monster thing. I call it Scandinavian, because I feel most of Estonia’s consumer culture is Scandinavian. It reminds me very much of Copenhagen, even more than Stockholm. There is that emphasis on everything being colorful, precise, well organized, and child friendly. We are Legoland people now, leading our Legoland lives. Indeed, Balti Jaama Turg is where the newly monied families of Kalamaja come to push their higher-end baby strollers and buy Italian and Middle Eastern produce. Some of the old sellers are still there, selling mounds of gooseberries, lingonberries, and chanterelles when they are in season. Some people lament that loss of the grungy post-Soviet ghetto element, but, you know, I was there, and I pushed a baby carriage through it in a whiteout snowstorm. Good riddance.

ZA TALLINNA, ZA RODINU. I saw a Soviet World War II propaganda film once, where the soldiers were singing, “Za Stalina, za rodinu,” (“for Stalin and the motherland!” in Russian) and so I think of this song when I come to Tallinn, mostly because as soon as I disembark at the train station, I am greeted by little clumps of ancient babushkas chittering away like city pigeons in Russian, the language of Tallinn’s sizeable linguistic minority. Tallinn is not essentially a Russian place though, so much of it is Scandinavian cookie cute commercial culture (the advertisement for the bakery Gustav painted on the trams, for instance, or even just the muted colors of the buildings, nothing loud anywhere, no neon orange or yellow, everything pastel this and creamy that, so mild and so restrained). There is this cartoonlike, childlike quality to the urban culture, it’s as if I am living in a life-size Christmas story of sorts, complete with the picture perfect Christmas fair in the Town Hall Square, or the indigent man mumbling to himself and sipping happily from a can of beer on the side of the road. There is also that brisk sea air chill, which you miss when you live inland, but which is unmistakable. I’m happy I have known this place and for such a long time. There are few other places I have known as long, and with such repeated interaction. Even cities I have spent a lot of time in, like San Francisco, those visits are in and out in a flash, I see some trolleys rolling by, have a look at the Golden Gate, visit the Haight maybe, get lost in the Presidio, and then it’s done. Or Reykjavik. I take the bus from Keflavik, check into the hotel, buy food from the Bonus supermarket, have a swim at Sundhöllin, interview Kári Stefánsson, buy some autographed Sjón books at Hús máls og menningar, and it’s over. It’s not like Tallinn and me. We go way back. We’ve got stories.

THIS WAS BACK when I was working for Dale, who was a kind of stubby, stocky boss, heavy on the Long Island accent, of Irish descent, and a drinker therefore, naturally. We were working on an old house up Briggs Avenue, shaded by trees, last one on the left. The whole interior had been gutted, and it was me, Rocky, and sometimes Bobby and Angelo would show up to help out. Dale was a generation older than us and the radio was always tuned to Kool 96.7 broadcasting out of Norwalk, Connecticut, with the signals being carried over the water. But not always. Sometimes we listened to Oldies 98.1, maybe when Dale tired of Jay and the Americans and wanted to hear some Who’s Next. That was a New York station. This I knew because every five minutes or so, the governor would come on and warn of severe consequences for anyone caught hiring illegal workers. I barely paid attention to these announcements, busy painting and sanding and carrying buckets of debris. It was a hot summer, and I could easily drink four liters and sweat it out. I only noticed the announcements on the day that Dale asked me to pick up someone named Benito and his crew. “He’ll be waiting for you at the Farmingville 7-Eleven,” Dale said. “All you have to do is drive up there, ask for Benito, and take him back here. It’s all agreed.” It seemed like an easy enough job. I was about 21 or 22 then, and comfortable with driving the interior. I took the highway and made the turn off for Farmingville. This was a more newly developed part of the island, where suburban homes seemed to be popping up in clusters like a bad rash, dotting the roadsides where once stood pristine woody pine barrens and nature preserves. Finding the 7-Eleven was easy, but finding Benito was a challenge. This is because about 100 or so Mexicans and Central Americans stood gathered in the parking lot, waiting for a day’s work. I parked my car, an old Volvo station wagon, and started toward a man on the corner in a black LA Raiders hat who kept looking at me. “Are you Benito?” I asked. The man didn’t answer but looked at me again and shrugged his shoulders. Then several other migrant workers approached. “You looking for Benito?” one said. “I’m Benito.” “I too am Benito,” another one claimed loudly. “I’m Benito from Guadalajara,” a third said. When I turned back to look at the car, I saw that three men had already crawled in the trunk. “Let me guess what your names are,” I said to the trio. “Benito,” one said and shrugged. “He is Benito too.” There I was, besieged by a parking lot of Benitos. I pointed to the five who had claimed this name and left the one with the LA Raiders hat behind. He was clearly waiting for someone else. On the way back, I put on the radio, then tried to make conversation in Spanish. Several of the Benitos were from Mexico City. Then there was Guadalajara Benito in the back, and then there was another Benito from Guatemala. They seemed like nice guys, god knows what would bring them to mill about in parking lots on Long Island in the heat, or sleep 10 to a room in one of those Farmingville crash houses, where they all slept. That must have been godawful horrible, to wake up in a room of sweaty Benitos and hear one fart, or get up to take a leak, or to cry out his wife’s name in a moment of sex-starved agony. “Magdalena! Magdalena!” What empathy I felt for these characters with their dark features, bushy mustaches, so removed from the peach fuzz of the upwardly mobile aspiring white family. Some of them had ancient Aztec features too, the faces of Monteczuma, the warriors of Tenochtitlan, the temple priests dripping with the blood of human sacrifice. They were the originals, the first people. What a dreadful lot, to have your land stolen by greedy gringos and then be forced to work for them, all so they could gaze with pride at a well-tended patch of green lawn that could rival the neighbor’s. But it wasn’t so bad. When we arrived, Dale was there, whistling in his joyful Irish mood along to the radio. It was Jay and the Americans again. “In a little café, just the other side of the border.” Dale never seemed to tire of that song or any other. Then the broadcast was briefly interrupted by the governor’s announcement again. “Anyone caught hiring illegal workers will face severe consequences.” Dale paid it no attention, as if it was just another radio jingle. Five men got out of the car and Dale looked each one over and then back to me. “What the shit is this?” he stormed. “I gave you a simple job. I told you to drive to Farmingville and pick up Benito. Benito just called me before. He said he’s still up there waiting.” “He’s also Benito,” I said, nodding to the Guadalajaran. The one with the bushy mustache. “They’re all Benito too.” Dale looked at the five Benitos, nodding as he mulled it over. “Alright,” he said, extending his hands. “You’re hired!” He paid them $100 each for a day’s work. That was more than me or Rocky or even Angelo made. They earned it. They were they hardest working men I had ever seen.

SOMEHOW I BECAME a teacher again, but I have only one pupil, thank god, a boy who is learning both Finnish and English in school. He’s taken to Finnish. “It’s so easy. Yksitoista, kaksitoista, kolmetoista, neljätoista!” In Estonian, these are more or less the same, üksteist, kaksteist, kolmteist, et cetera. In English, he has to make odd unfamiliar sounds like the ‘th’ in thing and the ‘th’ in that, which used to be þ and ð, but were changed by some genius along the way. Terrible language, English. Even the days of the week are bizarre. Wednesday? What the hell is that? Today I explained the origins of the English days: Monday (moon day); Tuesday (for the Norse god Tiw, ruler of mortal combat); Wednesday, for Woden, the English equivalent of Odin; Thursday for hammer-wielding Thor; and Friday for the goddess Frigg (some say Freyja). “So many gods?!” the boy stared at me, wide eyed. Now he was paying attention. There is also Saturday, for the god Saturn, and then Sunday, the day of the sun, or päikesepäev. But there is one link to Estonian, their word for Friday, Reede, which also honors Freyja. Laupäev, their Saturday, also has Scandinavian origins, from the word for washing oneself. Even today, little bits of the Scandinavian world inform almost every aspect of our lives. They deserve to be credited alongside the ancient Greeks and Romans. Even the word from which Laupäev, the Estonian Saturday, is derived, laug, can be seen all around the Nordic world, where it signifies bathing, like my favorite pool, Vesturbæjarlaug, in Reykjavik. This is all rather hardcore nerd stuff to share with an 11-year-old kid who plays sports and such, but maybe relevant in some way, as if we could just realign our minds to the old pantheon of the Norse gods, we might regain some command over our astray systems and what we do each day as we spin around the sun. We have retained the names, but lost the knowledge. I still think he likes Finnish more than English, but that’s okay, so do I, kid. Yksitoista, kaksitoista, kolmetoista. Simple! Helppoa!

THESE HAVE BEEN rainy, dreary, gray and weary, despondent, doldrum days. In the Tartu Town Hall Square or raekoja plats, they are erecting an ice skating rink for the winter holidays. It was there in lovely, lush, backlit Pierre, a French café, that I met with a lady from Reykjavik a few days back who wears white skirts, drinks her espresso with cream and honey, and has two homelands (!) She speaks Estonian with a gust of an Icelandic accent too, and gets excited about sounds, words, phrases, and expressions. Her eyes get excited as well. We used to have a mutual acquaintance, but I haven’t heard of or thought of her for months now. Our mutual acquaintance has drifted out of view and, perhaps, does not wish to be thought of, by me, or located, by us. For a long while she was really deep under my skin, and my outpourings to her could have filled several volumes of a psychologist’s field journal or been serialized in The Saturday Evening Post. But she’s gone, I must admit, floated away. Like a cloud. Tonight, I went to see M., the witch down the street, and she made me tea, and even let me use her restroom, which is through the bedroom. She doesn’t like to let clients in the bedroom because all the comings and goings might interrupt the natural positive flow. I spoke a lot, and then we held hands and prayed, or rather reprogrammed my mind. M. sent me away with pockets full of apples. These are the women of my life, and, you know, I cannot say they are boring. I suppose I will eat an apple now, and plan my morning espresso with honey and cream. I have a few volcanic rocks I stole from Iceland the last time I was there. Maybe I will set them out at breakfast to set the mood, like a little Icelandic shrine.

BEEN HAVING A CRACK AT IRISHNESS recently, or trying to understand or grasp it, reading about the mishaps of Eamon de Valera, that troublemaking New Yorker of dubious origins. Michael Collins couldn’t have been such a saint. He died, and that’s why he’s been sainted, I think, and there have been many books and some films about his heroism and passion. He may have been as close to perfect as an Irish revolutionary can be, embodied all that is good, mighty, glorious and true about the emerald motherland. Still nobody is a saint and while not as cunning and calculating as the long fellow de Valera, I think some of the hero worship is born out of his premature death. He didn’t live to take part in the dirty dealing part that most newly born nations go through (Bolshevik Russia and its bloody purges, the most extreme example). Ireland and its politics give me great discomfort, they leave me quite cold. The car bombs, the assassinations. I can’t understand all of these nuances and factions and brigades, these revolutionaries gesturing with pipes. I understand the Italian mental terrain a bit better. Yes, in my soul, I am an Italian, I suppose, but not quite, not wholly. For I recently found an Emigrant Savings Bank record dated 1857 for a spry retail shop owner named Edward Byrns in Manhattan, formerly of Knockane, County Limerick, and his wife Mary Hartigan and his parents John Byrns and Honora Hooper. There they were, eking out a living on East 31st Street, selling goods. This was my great grandmother’s great grandfather. He came to New York aboard the ship Great Britain in July 1847, which meant they were fleeing the blight. Grey Atlantic waters, lapping at the wharfs, speaking teangacha Gaelacha. Irishness in there somewhere, casting long shadows, like those purple shades of buildings blocking out the rare white sunlight down Leeson Street Upper or Sráid Líosain Uacht in Dublin. There is a comfort there, in Dublin, the lilt of the women’s voices, the buses moving up and down its streets, the university buildings, the green parks, the Dublin of Joyce’s Dubliners in the window panes. There is something soothing and familiar about it. I can’t place my finger on it, but it’s there.