Past lives: Andra Putnis on uncovering family secrets

When I think back, it was the life I started to make away from my family that led to my decision to seek out my Latvian grandmothers’ stories.

After studying law and history at university and working for a few years for the public service in Canberra, I moved to Darwin in late 2004, wanting to learn more about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and cultures.

I worked initially for the Northern Territory government, but soon moved into advocacy, spending most of my time trying to get more funding for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ranger groups working on environmental and cultural protection projects.

I lived in a share house with my now husband and other flatmates; we were all trying to figure out where we fitted and what we wanted from life. I learnt about Country, land and sea rights, and started to think more deeply about my place in the world.

Being more than 4,000 kilometres away from my family gave me space to forge my own way and then turn around and look back at where I’d come from. Darwin is a place that strips people bare. All that sweat and unrelenting humidity makes pretence difficult and helps people see parts of themselves that may have been previously hidden. In the heat, I slowed down and started to wonder about my family’s past.

I began reading books about Latvia and the Second World War. This led to nights lying awake on top of sweaty sheets watching the ceiling fan stir the heat, wondering whether it would be crazy to dedicate serious effort to finding out how my grandmothers survived the war and what my connection to Latvia really was.

Back then, I felt almost completely Australian, with little claim to Latvia. I’d grown up on a seven-acre block on the outskirts of Toowoomba, looking up at tall gum trees swaying in the wind and attending a small local school where I’d stood on the parade ground each morning to sing the national anthem before filing into class.

“Latvia was a faraway and mysterious place to me, despite my connection to the country through my grandparents.”

Andra Putnis

Most weekends consisted of adventures in the bush with my sisters, Liana and Mara; picking our way through the long grass to visit our chooks and horses, ducking under barbed wire fences and running down the gully to the trickle of a creek at the back of our place.

Sometimes we’d visit the Jondaryan Woolshed for hayrides or go to the local pub, where we’d successfully wheedle from our parents the purchase of multiple packets of Samboy chips and pink lemonades.

Latvia was a faraway and mysterious place to me, despite my connection to the country through my grandparents. When I was very young, I thought it was a made-up fairy country.

It took months of reading books in Darwin to build up momentum and courage to the point where it seemed like finding out more about my grandmothers’ lives was the inevitable way forward. I didn’t tell my parents.

I felt too exposed and imagined their many possible reactions—all of them bad: Why would you dredge it all up? We left it behind us when you were born. We’ve given you everything, the freedom to be anything; and kept you away from stories of starving people and crazy soldiers. Why would you drag everyone through it? You aren’t really Latvian, anyway!

I sometimes woke after dreams about running from disintegrating mediaeval stone buildings in some far-off European city, my parents lurching and sleepy behind me, unable to keep up. My fears were pushed back by the hundreds of books I’d read over my life, extolling the virtues of mythic quests and the power of stories—some real and others fantasies.

I remember the first time I read The Lord of the Rings; I was eleven or so, tucked away in my room, eager to get inside the tale. I went forward through ancient forests, boggy plains and under and over mountains, taking it all extremely seriously with my heart in my throat.

At the end, when Frodo left Sam for the Grey Havens, I cried so hard my eyes closed up into small slits. I was not so crazy as to think that in learning more about my grandmothers’ lives I would become some sort of Frodo. Yet the diet of books I had fed myself over years reinforced the importance of stories, propelling me to wonder whether fully discovering my grandmothers’ stories might be a noble quest, a chance to face the past and reckon with it.

As the eldest of three girls, I had always sat at the table the longest, listening to the adults and finding out snippets about Latvia and my grandmothers’ lives. With a fair amount of naivety, I suddenly felt it was my task to press pause in the forward rush of my life and look back before it was too late.

I already had parts of Grandma Milda’s story, shards and fragments revealed throughout my childhood before she passed away when I was 19. The urgent task now was to go and visit Nanna Aline. I thought there was a good chance she would tell me her story if I finally, and properly, asked for it.

I resolved to set out on the journey and worry about my parents later.

“I don’t just want the facts in the history books. I want to know your story.”

At my first interview with Nanna Aline in February 2006, we sat down across from each other at her small kitchen table in Argenton, the room warm with the smell of bacon and sweet onion left over from breakfast. Nanna’s row of pale yellow and orange 1950s flour, sugar and salt canisters sat above her stove.

In fact, her whole house seemed preserved like a comforting diorama, so many things just as they had been when I was a child.

After we’d fussed around each other, eating and talking to re-establish our connection, we got down to business. Nanna changed tack and started sizing me up in shrewd fashion to get to the bottom of what I thought I was doing.

“So, you want to know about Latvia and the war?” She stared at me over the top of her glasses. I could hear a lawnmower a few houses down and took a deep breath, telling myself it was just a normal Tuesday outside.

“Just some stories from your life, Nanna. The ones you want to tell . . . I want to find out more about our whole family. Grandma Milda’s story too . . .”

“You are lucky she is not here to see you poking around! Our story is just like all the others—Polish, Hungarian, Ukrainian. Read a book!”

I felt flat-footed and underprepared.

“I don’t just want the facts in the history books. I want to know your story.”

Nanna nodded as if she’d caught me out. “I used to want to talk about my life. Nobody wanted to hear it. Now, I am not so sure. I know what people like your grandma Milda said behind my back!”

I squirmed on the vinyl kitchen chair.

“All right, then. I don’t remember everything. But I have my own point of view. Some old Latvian women go on about how wonderful things were before the war. How they used to help their mothers collect mushrooms in the woods and weave by the fire. How the boys were strong, helping their fathers chop the wood. You heard these stories? Well, it was not always like that.

“Not all the boys were good and I was not as kind to my māte as I should have been. If you want that story, you are talking to the wrong grandma.”

Nanna paused and I put down my pen.

“You see, Milda always thought she knew best. She was much older than me. She thought she was the proper Latvian. A Lutheran. That was the main religion in Latvia. My family were Catholics. That was a big thing. We were in the minority. Catholics were looked down on. My mother mostly spoke Lithuanian and Polish, she wasn’t even a proper Latvian. People thought we were unsophisticated, you know? Your grandma Milda thought that about me.”

“No, Nanna . . .”

“Yes, she did! I remember the first time I saw her was at a Latvian concert at the Broadmeadow Rotary Hall here in Newcastle. I could see straight away she thought she was in charge. She had on a dark-green dress with pearl buttons and was organising the food. My legs were wobbly under my plain skirt. I had brought some pīrāgi but they were burnt. Of course, Milda had made a proper chocolate torte. It stood almost a foot high.

“It’s not as if she came from a rich family back in Latvia. Her father started out as a timber worker. I once heard he had to stand on the logs and use his feet to sort and send them down the Daugava River to the mill. He had permanent bruises from getting his feet crushed. Her mother worked as a housekeeper for German families. Your grandma Milda was born out in Dole. She only moved to Riga when she was a young woman, but she acted as if she’d lived there all her life. Definitely turned her nose up at the sight of me.”

Nanna spoke slowly, her voice rising and falling at the end of her short sentences, often pausing to punctuate them with self-admonishments and conclusions. Still, my head spun trying to keep up with her.

I hadn’t imagined we would start with all this stuff about my grandma Milda.

“We don’t have to talk today, Nanna . . . if it’s too much,” I offered, attempting to buy myself time to get back some control.

Nanna waved her hand as if shooing me away.

“You think I haven’t gone over my life many times? Okay, now we will start from the beginning.”

I vowed to just stay quiet and listen.

This is an edited extract from Stories my grandmothers didn’t tell me by ANU graduate Andra Putnis (Allen and Unwin).