Somewhere out on that horizon

Cities -- what awful places for little kids, this time of year. Vastik.

They don't know the difference. That puddle of black grit he's into up to his elbows could just as well be a pond by ye olde mill. That piece of rusty wire* he's found and toting could be a forked twig of hazel. He's looking for that underground stream in Tallinn.

No, now he's twisting it into a manhole cover, the lock of a Mercedes door. Well, that could just as well be a fissure in an old tree or stump.

He's seeing it all for the first time.

I'm the one who's overlaying the city in all its nastiness.

I hide behind a lamppost (tree), peek around to see if he's coming -- and I see my 2-year-old doing a perfect imitation of a factory worker stumbling home from the bar.

If only we had a place in the country, I think.

On the rare occasions that things come to a head and he's driving us up the walls, I think, "That's it, I've had it, we're all going to a puhkeküla -- a farm B&B." Someplace with nothing but woods and fields around. This is my solution to everything.

Apparently there are still good properties to be had in the south starting at $50,000. Something with an old farmhouse fixer-upper, a couple fieldstone outbuildings, cellars, sauna and a couple hectares. The Swedish bank'll give us a loan. If not, then the Finns.

Come spring, I'll start looking. After all, no one else wants to live there anymore. Post offices closing, general stores driven out of business... Schools, too.

We'll homeschool. We'll grow flax and hemp, too, if they allow it, things like beets of course. Just like in the old days. That's the ticket.**

* Literary license.
** Joke. With some grains of truth.