Does amber have magical properties, whereby it can capture and hold one’s soul as it does ants, bees, and flies?? The movie “Jurassic Park” certainly made us all think that one day it just might be a possibility to obtain minute quantities of DNA from the animals and plants trapped inside amber for up to 60 million years. But can it hold the soul of a person??
Amber is fossil tree resin and has been known to be up to 90 million years old. So why would I associate this old, semi-precious stone with my soul?? Possibly because 80% of amber comes from the Baltic region, washing up in large and small pieces all along the shores of Latvia. There isn’t a single Latvian, anywhere in the world, who doesn’t have a drawer full of chunks, necklaces, cuff links, cigarette holders, paper weights, bracelets, rings or anything else imaginable that could be made from this semi precious stone. Every single time my eyes alight on a piece of amber, whether it be set in a beautiful piece of jewelry, or is shoved in a drawer along with so many necklace strands, my heart aches, just that little bit. My soul stirs, like it wants to move to another time, and memories come flooding back. Not just my memories, but also those of my parents, and their parents and their parent’s parents.
It seems my love of the color yellow is not only limited to the beautiful wattle that graces the eucalyptus tree, the golden hills of California, but the rich and varied hues of amber as well. My home resonates the love of the earthy golden color, soft oranges and opaque, pale yellows of amber. In it’s own way, the magic of amber really has captured my soul.
Latvia is a very long way from Australia, not only in distance, but in the way people lead their lives and adapt to the elements. “Land of the midnight sun”, where one can experience 24 hours of daylight on mid-summer’s eve and almost 24 hours darkness in mid December is the land of my family’s origin. These harsh weather conditions and changes differ so greatly to the easy going lifestyle of Australia, where the climate is very temperate, there is virtually no snow, except in the higher elevations, and the inhabitants have a very laid back attitude to most things. The old adage “She’ll be right, mate”, said with a grin and a stubby beer, has epitomized how Australians are viewed the world over. My parents arrived into this different world as Displaced People, DeePee’s, in May of 1949. They had suffered greatly during the war, watching as the Communists took over Latvia, then the “Liberators” the Germans, and finally again the Communists. They lived in Germany for four years, firstly as students completing their doctorates in their respective fields, archeology and law, and secondly in camps in the French Sector of a divided Germany. They starved, being forced to steal from a field of raw onions and eating until they cried, whether from the onions or having found some food, they never really knew themselves. After arriving in Australia they vowed they would never go hungry again, nor ever throw away any food. They stayed true to both these ideals and in later years I had to check that the rotting, green things in the back of the refrigerator, were thrown away, lest they try to spread it on their black bread and say that a little mould never hurt anybody!
This then was the strange world I was born into and how my soul became a little confused. I was brought up as a little Latvian, yes, with all the amber and fur trimmed clothes. Perfect Latvian had to be spoken at all times, etiquette lessons, holding a knife and fork correctly, a “demi tasse”, a champagne glass, curtsying and generally living as one would have in Europe. I spoke Latvian, German and even Russian with my paternal grandmother. And then one day I had to go to English school…………
One would think that a child who spoke no English on the first day of school would have just a little trouble in an English speaking country. Not so. My parents had prepared me well with all the other languages and figured that an extra one would not be difficult to pick up easily. And for whatever reason, I did, even “jumping a grade” because my parents thought the school was holding me back. Young children are so adaptable, and there were so many of us “Balts” and “Poles” in the school system at that time, that we all managed to make ourselves understood and eventually speak English well. It was much harder to explain to the Australian children what dark rye bread was or why my grandmother knitted stockings for me to wear. I will be eternally grateful to the Italian and Greek immigrants who came in droves around 1956. They brought with them their wonderful Parmesan and feta cheeses, which we so love today, but way back then, the smell was just too strange but deflected nicely from my bread and stockings!
An absolute must for any young Latvian child in the fifties was to go to Latvian School on Saturdays. Now, this was not a school that we could walk to like English school. Those early émigrés knew that if they wanted to keep the Latvian culture going at all, they had to provide schools, churches, camps and places where the community could gather until the original “Evil Empire”, Communism, collapsed and we could all go back home. Until then, they worked hard at providing Latvian culture, whether we wanted it or not, by buying buildings and turning them into schools in a fairly central position for everyone to reach. My Saturdays, from the age of about 6, involved walking half an hour to the railway station (uphill both ways, as I remember it), riding the train for a whole hour, getting off at the other end and walking another half hour (not all downhill either), sitting through interminable lessons of Latvian grammar, geography, history, literature, singing and dancing, walking back to the railway station, riding the train, then walking uphill back to my home. As a reward, my dear mother had always prepared something special like a lamb roast, or veal with bay leaves and cream sauce over mashed or roast potatoes. (I might mention that as an academic, my mother was not the greatest cook, but my mouth always watered when the aroma of her roasts reached my nostrils). Often my father met me at the station and bought me an ice cream cone - one cone cost 3 pennies and I can still remember the special flavor of the ice cream, vanilla, so rich, so creamy, almost a forbidden taste. No one worried that it would spoil my appetite for dinner, as I still had that uphill walk and would be starving by the time I arrived home. And, of course, there was all that homework for the next Saturday! What a grand place Melbourne was in those early fifties, where children were safe to ride the train, walk for hours, and generally travel alone all day with no fear of attacks or violence. In all the years of going to Saturday School, I never heard a single incident of harm coming to any of the children.
So, yes, amber can capture a soul and make it soar to places that other people can only imagine. It is so much a part of me and who I am today, along with the eucalyptus tree with it’s beautiful yellow wattle flowers, and of course, the bald eagle as it soars to unimaginable heights looking down on us like ants trapped in a piece of amber.
