Even the gray days are colorful because of all of the yellow, orange, red, and purple leaves on the ground. I love to watch the moisture drip from the clusters of berries that hang from drooping boughs, see the white-gray morning frost on the glass and metal of the cars.
It is getting darker now, true, but this also is magnificent. The light comes in slow and leaves and it lingers. Such delicious sunsets these eyes have never seen, and they go on and on⦠In the courtyard below our balcony, the children play, and I love their names. They ride their bicycles in circles below me and I hear them call out through the fresh air. You can watch cartoons through the windows, even at 1 AM. A view of Tartu from Jaani kirik St. The girls play in the courtyard, too.
Sometimes they climb up to the top of the slide and pretend to have captured a sailing ship, loaded with treasure, like silly sinister pirates on the high seas. Her head dips to catch my English. Many Estonian children have learned English from watching Cartoon Network. She has to use the dictionary to translate an English word back into her mother language for middle school essays. And there it was again. And when I peeked over the barrier that encloses our balcony, I saw that little string bean of a girl standing like a haughty and merciless pirate from the top of the slide.
It was Mia Laura the Cartoon Network watcher, and she repeated it, so I tried to write it down phonetically. I liked it. It looked almost like a real Estonian compound word. I stared at the text on my laptop screen. There is a sparkliness, a dazzling charm to any new word, and the writers I admire best are the ones who coin new ones.
Six syllables, some eye candy umlauts. If the Icelanders could have them, and the Japanese, too, then why not Eesti? What would it look like? If Estonia ever did get its own volcano, there would certainly be a competition to name it, like there was with the home improvement store Ehitus ABC or the new shopping center in Viljandi β Uku Keskus.
