The Sweetest Save

Toronto

Esteri Raskinen buckled herself into her seat on the plane as the flight attendant went over the safety instructions. She stared out the window for the last time at the beautiful country of Finland, a country that would no longer be her home after this plane took off.

Her father, Tuure Raskinen, looked over at his daughter and couldn't help remembering how he had done the same exact thing when he'd been moved from Finland to Croatia back in 1990.

"I know you're going to miss Finland greatly," Tuure noted. "I know I did when I had to move."

"You're right," Esteri confirmed. "I will. What's it like in Canada? I've only been there once."

"It's a beautiful place to live," Tuure informed her. "Toronto is a massive city, though. Millions of people live there compared to Savonlinna's thirty thousand or so, so it's going to be a little bit of an adjustment."

Esteri nodded. "I wish I didn't have to leave Finland."

"I wished the same thing many times," said Tuure. "It's okay to be homesick. I understand where you're coming from. It's totally normal."

Esteri nodded, and the two were silent for a while.

Suddenly, Esteri turned to look at her father. "Dad, can you tell me the story of the day you first met my mother?"

Tuure sighed. "There are so, so many things to say, Esteri. I remember it like it was yesterday, although it definitely was not. It was March 10, 1999, otherwise known as my twelfth birthday. My class had been told a few days before that we'd have a new student joining the school, that she was moving to Croatia from Finland. And not only was she from Finland, she was from my own hometown of Savonlinna."

"And that new student was my mother, right?" Esteri questioned.

Tuure nodded. "She was. When I saw her for the first time, I felt something like a tug in my heart, telling me that I needed to befriend her. So I tried and succeeded."

"What did you guys do that first day?"

"Well," Tuure recalled. "We hung out at lunch, and during our free period, we met up and travelled to the library together with the permission of our teachers. We stayed in the library that period, just looking at different books and learning more about each other. I found out that although she didn't necessarily believe in any conspiracy theories, she loved to research them and read about them. We met around the time that the anti-vaccination movement started to blow up, so she read things all about that."

"She told me before she passed that it's much bigger now," Esteri noted. "She told me to get my human papilloma virus vaccine as soon as I can and to trust the science."

Tuure nodded. "I'll get you that as soon as possible. It'll reduce your risk of getting the kind of cancer that took Anja from us. Speaking of her, she told me on her deathbed that she will love you forever and that you meant the world to her. She...she wanted you to know."

Esteri twirled a strand of curly dark brown hair around her finger and focused on trying not to cry. "Thanks for telling me, Dad."

Tuure blinked the tears away from his own eyes. He cried every time he thought of his now-dead best friend, and now there was this young girl calling him Dad, even though he hadn't been present in the first eleven years of her life.

The goalie wiped his eyes with his fist. "No problem, kiddo."

The flight was over half a day long, but it eventually arrived in Toronto. Esteri was asleep on Tuure's shoulder, so Tuure had to gently shake her awake.

Esteri looked out the window and smiled. "We're finally here, huh?"

"Yeah," Tuure patted her shoulder. After some waiting time, the two of them started walking down the aisle to exit the plane. They shook the hand of the pilot and said goodbye to him as they stepped out of the plane.

"It feels good to stand after all that time sitting," Tuure noted, and his daughter agreed.

"Well, here we are," Esteri looked out the window. "Toronto, Ontario, Canada. My new home."

"Your new home," Tuure echoed. "I can't promise anything, but I think that once you get used to it being your home, you'll love it here."

"It's not Finland, but it still looks like a nice home for me," said Esteri.

The two of them managed to go through baggage claim rather quickly, and soon, they were in Tuure's car.

"You'll like your new house," Tuure told Esteri as he drove away from the airport. "It's nice and big. You can choose the room that will be your bedroom."

"I have to be honest," Esteri started. "I'm a little worried about moving here. I know a lot of English, so there's no language barrier, but I'm going to have a new school, new friends, and I'm living in a whole new country. Honestly, I'm getting homesick right now."

Tuure nodded. "I get it. I did the same thing when I moved from Finland to Boston, then back to Finland, and then eventually here to Toronto. I moved around so much, and it wasn't easy at first. It did get easier, though, as time went on. You know, Toronto really feels like my true home now, and I love living here. I think you'll have a great time here."

"Thanks," Esteri stated. She sat in silence for a while before speaking up again. "Wait, what about my citizenship? Don't we have to go to the immigration center or something?"

Tuure laughed. "Yeah, but I'm pretty sure you're already a citizen here. You are the child of a Canadian citizen, and I believe that makes you a citizen as well."

"Awesome!" Esteri exclaimed as Tuure turned the car onto his street.

"Here is your new house," Tuure said happily, signaling to a large house with a long driveway. Esteri marveled at it, as it was much bigger than any other house that she had lived in previously. "It's pretty nice, yeah?"

"It's gorgeous," Esteri declared. Tuure parked the car and climbed out.

"Well, come on in," Tuure told his daughter. "You can explore some more."

Esteri followed her father into her new home. She saw all the rooms, including the one that she picked to be her new bedroom.

"We can decorate it any way you want," Tuure said after Esteri picked her room.

But as Esteri sat on one of the beds in her new bedroom in her new home, she couldn't help thinking that despite whatever she did to try to make it feel better, she would never stop missing Finland—her true home.