Maija and Dag in the garden in Riga
Maija, my older sister, takes me around the garden of the home where I was born. The daisies are almost as tall as I was then. A year later my family fled Latvia and the delicate balance of my earliest years was splintered by a world event I was too young to understand.
My mother in Riga, 1932
This photo is of my mother before the war. When my father found us in the displaced persons camp in 1945, he must have been alarmed when he saw my mother. In her drab clothing she hardly resembled the elegant wife he had left behind in Riga.
With my sisters
I’m in the back with Maija (right). In front are Livija (left) and Valija.
My father, an accomplished photographer, took countless pictures of my sisters and me when we were young. He captured our childhood and our emerging personalities.
Dag in the classroom
School started. Classrooms were set up in a low wooden building next to the displaced persons camp’s entrance. Teachers were recruited from among Latvian refugees.
Dressing up
My father’s photos of his four daughters reveal happy children doing typical things—walking in the woods, playing musical instruments, dressing up. They open up a vault of memories so that my sisters and I can relive our childhood. Father’s gift to us.
Dag, age ten
I was ten when my family arrived in Gettysburg, Ohio. In the fall my sisters and I enrolled in school. I was in sixth grade but could speak only a few words of English.
Dag with robin
I cared for a baby robin that had fallen out of its nest. One day I found the bird motionless at the bottom of the box, cold and stiff when I picked it up. For a long time, when I thought of the robin, I sensed a strange emptiness, like hunger that persisted even after I ate.
The music lesson
Music lessons for my sisters and me was a dream my mother had never given up. The love of arts was something the traumas of war could never take away or crush. She believed that we would discover the beauty of music and it would define our lives.
Dag at the piano
Upon returning from school one day, a surprise awaited my sisters and me. Against the wall in the living room stood an upright piano with an antique swivel stool with legs that ended in quaint bird claws clasping glass balls.
Dag with violin
Twice a week I walked many blocks for piano and violin lessons. In the evenings, while my family watched TV, I secluded myself behind the sliding doors and practiced.
Amphitheater in Sabratha
I sat in the amphitheater in Sabratha as if suspended for the moment between my past and a future full of optimistic expectations. I felt that right then was the beginning of something new and significant.
Stuart in Khartoum, 1963
Dag in Libya
One weekend we headed south along the eucalyptus-lined road through the grasslands of the Gefara plains. The fertile land gave way to stunted trees, scrub brush, and esparto grass. Berbers with goatskin gourds herded thin sheep and goats.
Askale with Nick and Jen
Askale, our nanny in Ethiopia, took care of our children. She had been married when she was fifteen and had five of her own. I often wondered who was taking care of her young ones while she cared for ours.
Land Rover trips in Ethiopia
The tents were secured on top and gasoline-filled jerry cans strapped to the front. Every space inside was crammed with containers of water, boxes filled with food, and anything else we might need for the four-day trip exploring Ethiopia.
Street in Sidi Bou Said
In Sidi Bou Said, a thick, sweet jasmine scent trailed me down the narrow, centuries-old cobblestone streets, the stones worn to a slippery sheen. At the end of an alley I caught an unexpected and breathtaking glimpse of the Mediterranean Sea.
Bangkok, Royal Palace grounds
Orange- and green-tiled temple roofs glittered in the sunlight. Even the haze of the city smog couldn’t dim the dazzle of the golden spire of the Temple of the Emerald Buddha in the Royal Palace grounds.
Wedding ceremony in Bangkok
As guest of honor at the wedding, I took part in a white thread ceremony. The thread symbolically joined the couple and linked them to a larger whole. As I held the thread in my hands, I became aware of the absence of connecting threads in my own life. I had severed them time and time again.
Dag in Bangkok
When it came time to leave Thailand, I had the sense that its mystery had not yet been revealed to me. That I had missed the essence of it. Had I penetrated its meaning, it could have changed my life. Perhaps imperceptibly, it had already changed—I just could not yet know it.
Horseback Safari
Never having spent an entire day, and certainly not three, on horseback, I had misgivings about my riding abilities, but the chance to see Kenya from the back of a horse instead of through a dusty windshield was too tempting. The incessant insect drone and blinding glare of the sun melted time. Nothing around me reminded me of the twentieth century. Hour after hour we rode through the pristine landscape.
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