There is so much rattling around in my brain about yesterdays' trip to the western part of Latvia (Kurzeme) but the main purpose of the trip was to see the town my mother lived in until she fled Latvia during WWII.
Armed with copies of old papers I found when she died, including translations of her birth certificate and confirmation certificate, Susan and I headed into Ventspils after visiting Kuldiga. Ventspils was nothing like the rest of Latvia we'd seen, and although I knew it had been greatly changed during the Soviet times, I was a bit unprepared for how different it was than Riga, or the other smaller cities we'd been to. Cranes, derricks, ships, warehouses, ships all along the riverfront, very industrial.
We had opted for the Latvian GPS unit for our rental car and so we input the closest thing we could find to my mother's home address. Her papers all said "12 Plostu iela" and the unit did not find it; however it did return a "12 Plosta iela" so we headed there. On the left we found more industrial buildings and machines along the river. Across the street on the right hand side, a most beautiful but neglected Russian Orthodox church, with vacant lots on both sides. The church is a at 16 Plosta iela. If this was my mother's street, her home would have been to the left on one of the vacant lots.
Next we walked to the Latvian Evangelical Church mentioned in her confirmation documents. The church still stands, and in fact Friday evening church services were just starting as we arrived. It has been well preserved, painted a lovely yellow and was stunning to our eyes against the clear blue sky.
The church's threshold was worn with the hundreds of years that people have crossed it. While the church was not as ornate as the Catholic ones to which we've been here, it has a beautiful dome reaching to the sky, topped by a cross.
It's difficult for me to express what it was like to see the church that my mother had attended in her youth and young adulthood. Even more difficult to think that I may have seen the place of her home on Plosta iela. I spent a bit of time trying to imagine all the derricks and steel buildings gone, and what the street might have looked like in the 20s and 30s. I stared a long time at the church threshold, imagining her coming through the door.
Although some of the streets between 12 Plosta iela and the church (at 6 Tirgus iela) have been closed off, it's possible to walk toward the water from the church and see where the connection between the buildings on Plosta may have been in decades past. It's a bit harder to edit out the ugliness of the industrial structures that exist there today.
If--as is likely--my mother's address was either wrong in the documents, or changed during the last 60-70 years, then I saw where she lived. It's near the river, and next to the huge Orthodox church. I imagine it in her time, thinking of nearby river and how lovely it might have been then. A few streets away were piles of timber, and in her day, those were likely there, as her father worked in the timber industry, she told me once.
I have many gaps in my knowledge of my mother. She never talked much of her life before the war or even in the Displaced Persons camps, prior to coming to the US. But going to Ventspils and exploring what I could of the town, and seeing the church where she was confirmed, has filled a long time yearning to know more than I did. I don't really have any "answers" but I do believe I understand more now.
It was a very special day.
The empty lot at 12 Plosta iela, in Ventspils.