Childproof

When I was a child what I wanted most in life was a pet monkey. My mother said no, not because it was probably illegal or because we already had three dogs and two cats, but because “monkeys swing on the drapes,” she said, “and I’m not about to have one destroy my house.” At the time, I really didn’t understand, but mom did most of the housework and was hostess and homeowner, so I respected her wishes and so did not independently purchase a pet monkey. Not that I would have known where to buy one.

Just last week my American friend Patricia showed up for a visit with her two children, and before I knew it the eldest had used a ballpoint pen to add to Liina’s favorite Paul Allik painting. The second child, a bit younger and therefore lighter, had actually climbed the drapes halfway up the wall. I spotted him just before the curtain rod gave way and he tumbled a meter to the floor bawling. In that split second before he hit ground, I thought back to my childhood desire for a monkey and empathized with my mother.

“Oh, geez,” said Patricia, grabbing her screeching child and pulling him to her breast. “You should really childproof your house.”

Why? I wanted to ask but didn’t, since I was engaged trying to imagine what items I could leave in the house that could not be destroyed by her simian primates. I couldn’t think of a single one. Childproofing would literally require the house to be gutted, removing drapes, paintings, books, hiding our toothbrushes. I tried to imagine what Patricia’s home looked like. Perhaps it was nothing more than a padded-wall cell. Maybe the adults had surrendered and moved out.

Seeing her drapes destroyed, Liina clearly wanted to take my 12-gauge off the wall and blast Patricia’s kids in the ass with a load of rock salt. Liina was aghast at the implication that we should childproof our home, as if Patricia had no obligation whatsoever to restrain her children. “This is what you get with kids” was what Patricia’s resigned face communicated. Liina’s face resembled that of a passenger on a jet airliner just before it crashes into the ocean at over a six hundred miles an hour.

As I’ve been led to believe, many parents today don’t punish their children by physically striking them. This may be a good idea, even though my parents certainly trotted out the hickory switch in instances of Major Child Crimes. Today, American parents punish their children with something called a “time out,” which means the kids are supposed to sit still in a corner until they’ve calmed down. But why can’t the kids be calm all the time? Or at least when they’re at my house?

Sure, within reason, my mom allowed us to run wild in the Vikerkaar household, but we were strictly forbidden from doing it in someone else’s home. And when there were adult guests present at our house, my brother Villu and I were required to follow simple rules about interacting with them: Don’t interrupt a conversation; Say “yes sir” and “no sir,” or “ma’am” as the case may be; All intelligent questions are welcome, even encouraged, but no gaga babytalk was allowed under any circumstances. Villu and I ate at the same table with the adults, used knives and forks with our elbows held in, and we chewed with our mouths firmly closed. And we, never, ever, climbed on the drapes. Destruction of the home was beyond consideration.

I’d like to think Patricia’s case is an isolated example of child mismanagement, but it hasn’t proved to be.

Not so long ago, I loaned a friend a signed copy of Raise High the Roof Beam by J.D. Salinger. (The reclusive writer had visited Tallinn, had drinks at our house, and so I asked him to sign his book.) It was the only copy I had, and my friend wanted to read it. It was a first edition, and I suppose that fact, combined with the signature makes it worth good money on eBay, though I’ve never cared too much about that when it comes to books. Until, that is, my friend emailed to ask: “Do you want it back in good condition?” I replied to ask if she was using it for archery practice. “No, but it’s hard to keep it away from my toddler.” Just how is that? I wondered. The toddler is exactly how tall? And a signed first-edition cannot be put out of a child’s reach? Particularly a borrowed, signed first-edition?

Yes, I rant to Liina, the world has indeed gone to hell. The modern “vaba kasvatus” has backfired, and the peasants are in full revolt. There’s only one way to quash it, and that’s with blood on the square. Liina agrees with me, though she says she’d stop short of guillotining children.

“Oh, but you’ll both feel differently when you have kids,” people tell us. But, no, we won’t. I can guarantee you that my child will never swing from your curtains like a rhesus macaque. He will not add his signature to artwork in your home. He will not mine boogers from his little nose and deposit them in your salad. And should he, by some wild chance, say, drag a dead, bloody deer across your new white carpet, then I will return to clean it spotless, dear host, after I take him outside and spank the living daylights out of him. Our kids will behave because it’s the right thing to do. And because we don’t believe behaving well is too much to ask of a human being, regardless of his age.

After we cleaned up the collapsed curtains and the potted plants the child destroyed on the way down, Liina took Patricia’s child in her arms. She told him that accidents happen to everyone and that she wasn’t angry. “Would you like me to read you a story?” Liina asked the child. “Oh, yes,” cooed the little one. “A story!”

Liina reached behind her and took a book off the shelf. She opened the cover and read Jonathan Swift’s first sentence: “A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country...” And onward she read to what turned out to be a very attentive little person.

***

Read it in Estonian in Postimees.

Missed Opportunity

The Russian child recently abandoned in Estonia is by far the greatest missed opportunity for Estonian propaganda writers.

But I’m willing to help.

The abandoned Russian girl’s name is Svetlana. Little Svetlana. Poor, little Svetlana, symbolic of all the greater problems Russia is suffering. As their stock market collapses and the formerly nascent middle class withers, their lower class grows, and young mothers line up at the Ivangorod-Narva border with babies in their arms begging for an Estonian family to take them, feed them, give them a life they can’t have in Russia, where the average male will not live longer than 59 years and the average female will do little more than watch him drink himself to death.

Some of the Russian mothers, the truly desperate cases, many of whose dacha gardens were ruined by the wet summer weather, prostitute themselves to truck drivers, who then strap the infants to greasy truck axles and carry them as far as Estonia’s first Statoil, where they remove the child under the cover of night and prop her against diesel pumps to await the arrival of a cheerful morning worker. The smiling, uniformed employee arrives, changes the infant’s diapers and feeds the baby, all with goods from the store’s own inventory which she pays for out of her own abundant salary. On a recent Tuesday, Statoil turned over two dozen infants to Estonian social services. (No babies have yet been left in front of Lukoil.)

Ethnic Estonians, unselfish and kind-hearted, form a line at social services (twice as long as the Ivangorod line of mothers, by the way) in hopes of adopting one of the children. “I’ll raise her bilingually,” pledges 28-year-old Liina (not my wife, by the way), who also promises to teach the child a fair and balanced view of history, including the Russian textbook version of The Great Patriotic War.

Secretly, the Estonian government contacts Russia, but the Kremlin remains silent. While there is money to buy Putin’s dog a satellite-tracking collar, there is not enough to feed little Svetlana and the thousands like her. Better for Russia, better for the children, that they make their way to Estonia.

“We will do what is right,” says President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, “regardless of the cost.” Ilves appeals for calm on the rainy Russian side of the border. A bullhorn in hand, he stands atop a Red Cross truck on the Narva River bridge and tells Russian mothers that Estonia will feed their children. Canned goods are dispensed to Russian soldiers who promise it will be delivered to the queue of mothers. “You may keep one of those for yourself,” President Ilves tells a hollow-eyed soldier. But the recruit does not speak German, and so Ilves can only pray the lima beans find the right hands. “Sigareta?” the soldier begs Mr. Ilves. But the president doesn't even carry speechki.

President Ilves speaks to his European colleagues and tells them how these fortunate infants will successfully integrate into a New Europe yet retain their own culture and identity. They will love French wine and Italian cars, use Finnish tech, (and perhaps carve Kalevipoeg figurines from juniper branches), but they’ll be the best balalaika players in their schools. They will grow up to be software engineers and professors of philosophy and have little need to emigrate to Brooklyn and Brighton Beach. They’ll make their home in Estonia. And they’ll be grateful for it.