Marjukka Kenttälä

My first Finnish teacher was Marjukka Kenttälä, who taught the intensive language course levels one and two when I studied at Helsingin Yliopisto during the summer of 2000. She was one of the best teachers I have ever had. This course taught in the target language, so students were immersed in Finnish from day one. And when students still couldn’t grasp the concepts? Marjukka drew. She was a great artist, and if the Finnish language couldn’t explain things, her chalk always did. I still remember certain phrases she would use for certain conjugations and inflections. I have thought of her often, occasionally writing to her over the years. On this past visit, I finally got to see her again after 25 years. We met in the lobby of the main building at the university on Fabianinkatu on Monday, August 25.

When I entered the lobby she recognized me immediately. We hugged and were all smiles. Before we met, Marjukka wrote to tell me that she is recovering from a stroke that she experienced three years ago. She told us more about it when we met. She had been talking with a student at the university when all of a sudden her face became motionless and she was nonresponsive. The university environment meant there were a lot of people around and she was cared for then taken by ambulance to hospital.

She lost the ability to speak and was in the hospital for three months. After much therapy, she was able to walk again, yet still has pain in her arms and legs. We walked slowly with her, helping her with doors yet she didn’t want to surrender her heavy bags to us. Inside were some new books she had just bought and was dying to show us. Marjukka likes a (second-hand) bookstore as much as I do and we saw the purchases she had just made when we had lunch. She treated me at the university’s cafeteria.

Marjukka still struggles with Finnish and remembering words. She was soft-spoken and slow at times, but we communicated easily enough. She had a tender moment with my beloved pocket dictionary, with its onionskin pages and former sturdy cover now pliable like a towel. I had used this very dictionary in class 25 years ago and take it everywhere. I spoke to her as much as I could in Finnish, yet with Mark present we had to resort to English at times. I even did double-duty, talking to Marjukka in Finnish then translating for Mark. She was doing remarkably well–as well as I remember her speaking English–so she is on the road to recovery, able to separate her brain into different language compartments. She is currently studying Latvian at the university, so she is busy adding another language to her cerebral cache of foreign tongues.

After her stroke she continued to work part-time, but retired last year at the age of 65. We walked through the university, seeing its major reception hall and we found our old classroom. Marjukka told me that in the past 25 years the room numbers had all changed but our room unfortunately was locked. I told Marjukka that I have visited my former classroom before. In a prior trip (I cannot recall what year this was) I walked into the room where my first course was held and some students were already in there. A class was not in session, but a small group had sat down inside. They wondered who I was, and I just told them that I was retracing old steps.

Marjukka was heading back to the central railway station so I walked with her. While on the way we passed a second-hand bookstore, Antikvariaatti Sofia on Vuorikatu, where we had to stop in to look around and Marjukka could also rest a bit.

We are outside the university facing Senaatintori. Marjukka is holding a bag containing Purdy’s chocolates I had brought for her:

Inside the main entrance off Unioninkatu:

Marjukka on my last day of class with her, July 27, 2000. She always used a damp cloth to erase the blackboard, and she is standing in front of a shiny clean slate: