Stations of the Crossing (Notes on Estonian Grandparents)

Raised Catholic, I was captivated by the Stations of the Cross: 14 scenes depicting Christ's Passion, his final hours on earth culminating in his death on the cross. At Easter, Catholics (usually older) pray before each Station, completing a devotional cycle meant to strengthen a believer's belief in Christ's sacrifice and to inspire the faithful in their own struggles. My fascination was with the form of these heroic, iconic scenes, not their didactic content. I saw the Stations rendered in wood, oil, or ceramics. Each scene was self-contained, but was also part of a sequence, a larger story. I regarded them with the same fascination I did ViewMaster reels and museum dioramas.

I've borrowed and modified the form for this purpose, the Stations of the Crossing. Here are 49 meditations on a major movement, a labour, in the lives of two heroic, iconic figures in my life: my maternal grandparents Jakob and Laine Suksdorf, Captain and the G.

They crossed two oceans to get here. To get away from Estonia, their northernmost Baltic home, or, more accurately, to escape what was being done to it by outside occupiers during WWII. The Soviets occupied the country in 1939-40. Then the Nazis between '41 and into '44. The Russians roared back in September '44, advancing while the Germans retreated. Some 80,000, or eight percent of the populace, fled.

That's where this writing begins: the time in between two occupations, the constricted space between two occupiers.

Actually, there's a prologue, a brief meditation on my own (dis)connection to Estonia, that half of my heritage. Then it's down to business.

Estonia is a tiny country of roughly 1.4 million people, about the size of Nova Scotia. Latvia lies to the south, Finland across the gulf to the north, water to the west (eventually Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia) and Russia to the east.