Hi, I’m Partsi, or Hanna Jalokallio, whichever you like to call me. I’m a mother in my forties, a multi-purpose machine in the cultural sector and a returnee.
I graduated from Siilinjärvi Upper Secondary School in the early 2000s, and after that I had to get as far away as possible. Well, I got to Mikkeli, but that was a beginning too. I enjoyed life out in the world for a little over 20 years altogether, and North Savo was a destination for quick visits on holidays, weekends and festive occasions.
For the last 10 years, at every turn in my life, I wondered whether now might be the time to return home. For some reason, the change felt really big, even though I had changed scenery before.
I thought that if I return home, then I will stay there permanently. I will get an allotment garden cottage and a dog and settle down to enjoy what is lovely and where peace lives. Still, the final decision always remained unmade, perhaps the restless adventurer was always still tempted by the world just a little.
Three years ago, I spent my summer holiday in Kuopio and sat on my mother’s balcony by Valkeisenlampi. Once again, I wondered how it was possible to feel so calm.
Is it because I am only ever here on holiday and, like Pavlov’s dog, have learned to associate a relaxed feeling with Kuopio, or can it really be that life just feels different here?
> Is it because I am only ever here on holiday and, like Pavlov’s dog, have learned to associate a relaxed feeling with Kuopio, or can it really be that life just feels different here?
In the evening I met my friend Saana in town, the sensible realist among my friends, who said that “if you don’t come now, then you’ll come when you retire”, and I began to add it up, that I will perhaps retire at the age of 70, meaning I would have to endure this longing for thirty years?! The child grows and grows, how old can they be before such a massive life change can no longer be sold to them as a good idea?
That was when I got myself moving and made the decision, because the fright of the dream not coming true made me roll up my sleeves. I wanted, with terrible intensity, to come here to live better.
I told work that take it or leave it, I am leaving now, and I started to arrange my child’s attitude so that next spring we would go.
I began furiously finding out which part of the city it is worth moving to (anywhere), where the best schools, running trails and views are (everywhere), and so the following spring the moving van brought me, my child, my houseplants, my armchair and my whole life from a small one-bedroom apartment in East Helsinki to this big home, where there are many rooms and where you can see Kallavesi and from every window nothing but forest.
So now I am here and I have an allotment garden cottage and a kind of basic contentment has settled into me, one that for years had been conspicuous by its absence. It was not caused by the holiday alone, but by the fact that I get to live here where the landscape is beautiful and the tribe is familiar. I am understood and met, among my own.
The writer is a forty-something decathlete of the busy family years, who relaxes by reading detective novels and text message columns.