The geography of an eight-year-old

So I live in a small Finnish town (or relatively big, in Finnish standards) of about 85.000 people, of whom perhaps half live in a somewhat urban landscape. The urban area here does not consist of skyscrapers or highways; you can walk through the central part of the town in less than half an hour. That’s walking slowly. This is a safe country. I have lived elsewhere and know it is so.

I spent my childhood in a smallish, suburban village right on the edge of the countryside. It was okay for my parents to let me walk or ride a bike on my own to the other side of the village, and by the time I was in my teens it was fine to get on the train and ride to the capital as well. Helsinki isn’t exactly comparable to better-known European metropols, as sympathetic and cute as it is, and in the mid-nineties it wasn’t any busier. Yet it was really cool to know that if I wanted to, I could go nearly anywhere on my own. I had been able to do it before; the scale just changed as I got older. Sure, I was anxious when I moved to live and work in Paris when I was 18. Moving away from your childhood home isn’t supposed to be a piece of cake anyway. I have travelled a lot on my own. I have seen and met and made friends and acquaintances with many kinds of people. Hence, for all of my adult life I have been aware of certain aspects of humanity, in good and in bad. I know we are good and we are bad. I would never blindly trust anyone, but then neither am I able to judge someone by their appearances. I only have trouble accepting people who are stupid enough to be willingly insincere or evil. But they are few and far between. (Although sometimes you get stuck with some, I have to add. The only way to cope is to see them as a life lesson, which maybe, after you’ve learnt what they have to teach you, will disappear. It must be so.)

Anyway, I just wanted to brag a little. I felt so much happiness today when I was walking home from the acting post office with the three-year-old – the good half-a-mile per way took us about half an hour because she was riding her balance bike, which had something wrong with the engine every few yards, and she had to fill the tank too, using some branches that had fallen down from the trees, and when she finally got her bike going it/she made such a loud noise in such a speed I had to run to and stop her to explain it isn’t nice to scare people with her engine noises – when my eight-year-old suddenly appears from behind the corner. We waved at each other as she continued across the street to meet two of her friends, who were taking a walk down the other side of the same esplanade I and Kerttu were slowly progressing on. Veera, my eight-year-old, is the subject of her own life. They had called each other up and agreed to meet out there, which is fine by me. Because this country and this town is safe enough for me to let her do that.

She walks to school by herself, or with a friend, every morning, and then back home. The school is a mile away. We’re now discussing her perhaps being allowed to go alone to her music school, which is closer, but behind this roundabout that has heavy traffic for about seven minutes a day, at the same she comes home from her lesson. She wants to get her own bus card so she could take the bus on her own to go swimming after school. It might not be a bad idea.

I have such a smart and lovely daughter and I live in such a wonderland I’m not sure I can tell you about it. Is it a spell that might break? Don’t think so. At least I hope from the bottom of my heart that when my daughters have daughters they will still be able to have the same freedom and safety to feel capable of doing anything.