nightingales & rain

Last week a friend of mine from Toronto was here. She stayed at my mom’s place and we got talking about families and history and grandmothers and it turned out that her grandmother was a friend of my grandmother’s way back. Go figure! The world is so small, so small…

Last week it also rained a lot. It was a cold and wet sort of a week. One night, as the rain stopped pounding on our windows and the evening was approaching, my friend decided to hook up with some old friends and go for a drive out to a town called Tervete, where she used to work in a sculpture park of a sorts. It’s a large property with wooden and bronze statues that are made after characters from books by a Latvian author Anna Brigadere. She wrote a lot for children, fairy tales and stories… so, the sculptures are of the one foot tall boy “Spriditis”, the “King of the Forest” and so on…. But that’s really not important. So, she decided to go and invited me and Kaspar along. I could not resist. After several days indoors we both were dying to get out. Even if it was going to be a late night!

We piled into her friend’s car, tight like sardines at 8pm in the evening and drove into the sunset. Kaspar slept for the hour in the car, while we drove. By the time we arrived the rain began to sprinkle again, but that was not going to stop us. Armed with umbrellas, Kaspar in the sling across my shoulder we went for an evening walk. We stepped out of the car shortly after 9pm. It was still somewhat light out. Dusk. (Evenings are light, here! In fact, I think the night (as darkness) only lasts for about four hours right now.) We paid little attention to the sculptures, but went to all the beautiful nature spots in the park and listened to many stories about the park, many local tales and past love affairs with this place. My friend’s girlfriend’s husband is a local from Tervete. He had stories galore! Very interesting fellow! But the best part came around 11pm, as we were crossing a little meadow and approaching a creek with a little bridge across it, someone said: “Hear it? It’s a nightingale!” And sure enough, there were a couple of them calling out to each other across the field. It turned out that the interesting local fellow could not only tell tales, but do the nightingale call, too. By the end of our listening session we could not count the nightingales singing back to us. There were at least seven or eight of them singing back and forth to one another from every corner of the field. I had never heard anything like it in my life! A nightingale’s song is not all that special, when you listen to just one bird, but when there are many of them singing back and forth, it becomes an entirely different experience. It was magical. As the night started to come upon us, we hurried back to the car, but not before exploring the edge of the creek and finding a remnant, a piece of an old clay pot. I thought it was quite something. But the locals were not at all surprised. Somewhere, just up from the park are ancient burial grounds, never excavated… and the creek washes out smaller pieces occasionally. So goes the story!

But, that was not the end of our trip. We still had to stop by the mother in law’s place in town, where we got showered with hugs and kisses and were given freshly milked cow’s milk, a whole 3 L jug of it… and a whole lap full of lilacs, that she kept breaking more and more of, as we were starting to pull out of the yard. And it did not take us long to realize that my cousin is about to get married to a guy, who has grown up only three doors down the street from this lady and for many years has taken milk from her. I’m telling you…. This world is a very small place!

We drove back watching the night time sky and listening to an amazing mix of Islandic pop, a band called “Pink Martini” and some Latin American music. It was a perfect conclusion to the night. Kaspar had stayed awake on the whole walk and was in a great mood thoughout the night, but slept soundly in the car on the way back. I managed to pull him out of the car and carry him up to the bed, without waking him. So, our fine little trip came to a conclusion and the next morning we all slept in until 11 am. I love sleeping in until 11!!!

The picture of the field is the view of the creek, where we listened to the nightingales and the picture of Kaspar is taken in the car, just before we started driving back. Yes, he does look exhausted, doesn't he?