Lace Weaver

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They say Estonia has five seasons.

Bitter winter. Pale spring. Autumn, when the forests are carpeted with mushrooms. Summer, with its blue cloudless skies and rich harvest of fruit. Lastly, my favourite: the thaw. That month of watery deluge when the ice floes break up to flood the land. In those weeks, it is impossible to get from place to place in the forest without a canoe or bog shoes to skim the marsh. The tide makes food scarce. One learns to get by on what exists in the pantry: lingonberry, gooseberry, juniper jam spread on thick slices of must leib – the black bread so prized by our people that a loaf, clumsily spilled, must be kissed to restore favour.

The pantry grows barer as the flood levels rise. The damp creeps into everything. And yet, I have always loved it. The isolation. I know that my granddaughter, Kati, feels the same. Forced inside, with the animals penned safely away and the outside chores impossible to complete, there is more time to be spared for the knitting of lacy shawls.

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