The Loom
8 May, London
I’ve been thinking since last June about what I might write, or where I should even begin. Part of me waited for you to write a letter to your own mother first — but knowing you, that may well take another year. So I shall begin from the loom, naturally.
It felt like a small hint when you mentioned you were assembling your mother’s old loom. I remember puzzling over it as a child: that strange pile of pale timber leaning against the barn wall. A mix of smooth surfaces, heavy pegs and white hanging threads, all patiently waiting for someone to put them together. And yes, that someone did arrive — decades later. You told me on the phone how you and dad tried to piece it together, how the heavy parts refused to sit in place no matter how you twisted and turned them. Until you noticed your mother’s handwriting on one of the parts: “this side up”. And slowly, piece by piece, the solid frame of the loom rose before you.
You’re left‑handed, a true artist — that’s how I’ve always seen you. “Vastarannan kiiski,” as we say in Finnish: someone who instinctively swims against the current. A school friend called me that once, tears in her eyes, after I’d made yet another sharp remark. Perhaps justified, but not necessary. Feeling different and lonely at times. The unpredictable currents of friendships among girls. I remember the same search for space, the same defiance and the same regret in Musi’s — your mother’s — diaries. That sharp tongue that on good days makes people laugh, and on bad days cuts in the wrong direction.
You once joked that you hadn’t given me ‘the right kind of example’ of being a woman, referring to your own refusal to fit into certain roles. When I was a teenager, I typed up your mother’s memoirs. She stood beside me with her drafts in hand, slightly nervous, and I felt we were touching something important: the necessity of self‑expression. I believe you understand what she went through — and what she was trying to say. The feeling of balancing many beloved, yet sometimes exhausting roles, some of which take up far more space than others. And how sometimes we give in, not because we want to, but because it’s easier. How many roles a woman is expected to hold.
I think about my own path from a girl to a woman in a household that was male‑dominated and, let’s say, conservative. I’ve had to question many supposed truths and make difficult decisions on my own. Apart from the odd princess game as a child, I don’t remember ever dreaming of a fairy‑tale wedding or children. Perhaps I simply assumed it might happen one day. But in the end, I think I ran from that fate all the way to London — and now, at 34, I feel genuine excitement about beginning my music therapy studies in September at one of the world’s leading universities, and about slowly, tentatively piecing together the elements of an album. You’ve supported my desire to study and spoken about the importance — and the independence — that further education brings.
I’m still assembling the loom of my own life, with many helpers along the way. Currently I’m learning to take instructions, to offer help when heavy frames need lifting, and to apologise when I force things — and in the wrong direction. Fear and nervousness, which I wish would loosen their grip, still sit on my shoulders like two dutiful companions. When I cry, I feel it in my bones, and it never feels like mine alone — more like a sorrow released across generations. The strength of being sensitive, of feeling something fully before letting it go. My sensitivity and inner world have never been dismissed — on the contrary, they’ve been protected and encouraged from the beginning. That world is something I share with you.
Do you remember waking me one summer morning? You said, “Quick, now.” I sat in my pyjamas at the kitchen table, and you squeezed a piece of orange peel so that the sharp juice sprayed into my eyes. Wake up, you said. Outside, beneath the swing, you pointed to the space between the linden trees. I squinted, and saw the dew‑covered webs, glistening like ribbons in the morning sun, sparkling like a thousand tiny diamonds. You taught me how to see.
Yours truly,
Räpä täti
Written by Emmi Vaara