Then, a totally unexpected meeting: Indra J. came up to me. „Vitaut! I recognized your voice!“ We’d not seen each other for almost 20 years, although she has sent me Latvian world bulletins. She still has that touching Good Heartedness, and Openness that move me. She introduced me to her hub, Andris, to another Lativan couple, Ä¢irts and Karlīna and their one year old, Sandrīna. Indra appeared genuinley pleased to see me, I being her “Latvian school teacher.“ She is very involved in Things Latvian. I still like her energies, but most of the Latvian stuff is of pale interest to me.
She talked about the importance of a sense of humor, how her mother doesn’t have one. (Hm. Out on the road Friday, there was a pickup truck in front of me at one point with a vanity plate that read: TIA…) I’d never viewed her mother through the humor lense, but it‘s true, she is quite lacking in this aspect. Which must be a part of her that always made her feel very Zaiga-like to me.
Ingrīda lived in Rīga for several years. On Antonijas, it turns out, by Elīzabetes.
I introduced F to her as my partner. There was not even a half-blink of an eye. At another point, Indra talked about how in college, due to her closeness with Aina, people asked if they were lesbians. "We’d say, 'No, we're Latvians!" She talked about having gone dancing at Tracks at some point, too.
The whole Gay Thing was one of the Big Thorns that festered in my side in the local Lativan community. Indra‘s mother was at the cutting tip of verbalized Homophobia. When I was teaching Indra, Inta reported Randy and Tia saying to her that they would never, ever tolerate a Mīkstais teaching their kids. Ironic, certainly, but that particular comment lodged deeply and painfully in my Heart. So, perhaps, now I can pull it out?
It is a beautiful irony that someone as Hard Hearted and hardened as Tia has such an Open Hearted daughter as Indra. Perhaps Indra‘s reappearance in my life is, for me, about healing some of my local Latvian world wounds … Not about necessarily rejoining the community, but cleaning old wounds, gaining my strength to be fully who I am, particularly in terms of my affectional life, in the presence of those folks. To not feel that I have to cower in the presence of such energies. …
I was interrupted in this writing by a phone call from the tow truck driver, who came and took away the Honda, my donaton to KVOD. It felt good to see that car go on its way, after our 21-year relationship. This was the last big item in my life from Elati St. House, piano, car – it‘a all new now. These are outward markings of the new look of my life. A life which feels a better fit than ever before. As I told F, my life is such that I look forward to getting up each morning.