Liis Tamm - 10

One ordinary day in the life of 10-year-old girl in Karlova neighborhood, Tartu, Estonia

Short Bio

Liis is a fourth-grade pupil who lives with her mother, Maarja, a payroll specialist; her father, Rasmus, an electrical technician; and her younger brother, Oskar. Fair-haired, with gray-blue eyes and two usually tidy braids, she is observant and quietly determined. She likes drawing birds near the Emajõgi (Mother River), skating when the weather permits, and practicing piano even when a difficult measure makes her want to close the music book. She is proud to be trusted with Oskar, although she wishes he would stop borrowing her colored pencils without asking.

Karlova is a residential district south of central Tartu, a compact university city in southern Estonia. Restored wooden homes stand beside apartment buildings, small businesses, bike racks, and streets lined with mature trees. For Liis, the neighborhood is not a backdrop so much as the map of her day: school, after-school care, the hobby school, and family errands are close enough to reach on foot or by bus. The nearby Emajõgi river corridor is where she has learned to notice gulls, ducks, and small birds in the shrubs.

Before the Streetlights Fade

Liis wakes at 6:50 when Maarja taps twice on her half-open bedroom door. Outside, the winter morning is blue-gray, and the streetlights are still on. Liis sleeps in the smaller of the apartment’s two bedrooms, in a narrow bed beside a white bookcase filled with animal stories, sketchpads, and smooth stones collected near the river. A paper snowflake from December remains in the window. She lies still for a minute, listening to the radiator tick and Oskar talking to himself in the other room.

The family rents a renovated three-room apartment near Tähe Street. It is comfortable but not large: two bedrooms, a compact bathroom, and a combined kitchen and sitting room where most family life happens. Their bicycles are kept in the shared courtyard shelter, though Liis’s has been there more than usual during the icy weeks. Rasmus has already left for an early repair job. Maarja will work partly from home and partly from her office, so her laptop and papers will take over one end of the dining table later.

Liis’s first job is feeding the family rabbit. She pours in pellets, adds hay, checks the water bottle, and sweeps a little hay from the floor before anyone can tell her to do it. The rabbit presses its nose against the cage door when it hears her, which makes the task feel less like a chore. Oskar claims he would feed it too, but he is usually in too much of a hurry to find his socks.

Breakfast is yogurt mixed with kama (a roasted grain flour blend), blueberries from the freezer, and a cinnamon bun split between Liis and Oskar. Liis likes the nutty taste of the kama; Oskar says there are too many “brown bits” in his bowl. Maarja drinks coffee while checking the day’s messages, then reminds both children to eat before discussing whether a rabbit could survive on cinnamon buns.

“Your indoor shoes?” Maarja asks as Liis reaches for her backpack.

Liis stops. She had left the blue sneakers under a chair after wiping mud from their soles. At school, children change out of outdoor boots, especially during wet and snowy weather, and arriving without indoor shoes means spending the day in socks or borrowing a pair from lost property. She finds them, then checks her pencil case, math folder, water bottle, library book, and lunch apple. She has a digital assignment later, but she knows technology does not excuse forgetting everything else.

The Walk to School

By 7:35, Liis is ready for the weather in waterproof boots, snow pants, a knit hat, and a reflective vest over her winter coat. Her bright backpack has a fluorescent cover even though snow is not falling. In Estonia’s dark autumn and winter months, reflective clothing is a practical part of walking near traffic, although Liis thinks it makes her look younger than some of the older pupils in dark coats.

Oskar walks beside her, one mitten turned partly inside out and his backpack hanging low enough to knock against his knees. Liis tells him to tighten the straps. “I know,” he says, with the confidence of someone who plainly does not know. Their routes overlap only part of the way because Oskar goes to after-school care before Liis collects him later.

The pavement is salted but slick in patches. Cars slow near the crossing, and a cyclist in a thick jacket passes on studded tires. Old wooden houses stand close to the street, their painted facades framed by bare lilac bushes and low snowbanks. Near a hedge, Liis sees a blackbird pecking at grit. She studies its round body and quick head movements, already planning how to draw it in the afternoon.

At the school gate, Oskar turns toward his group with a mittened wave. Liis joins Annabel and Mari. Annabel has a new purple phone case peeking out of her pocket, although phones are meant to stay away during lessons. Mari asks whether Liis has practiced the piano song.

“Only the difficult part,” Liis says.

“That means no,” Mari replies, and the girls laugh as they go inside to change shoes.

Lessons, Screens, and Lunch

Liis’s classroom has drying coats outside the door, student drawings in the windows, and shared devices charging in a cabinet. Estonia’s public basic schools combine exercise books and teacher-led work with digital materials, and Liis’s class uses school tablets when an assignment calls for them. She does not have to bring a personal computer every day.

The morning begins with Estonian language and mathematics. Liis enjoys reading, but she dislikes being asked to answer before she has organized her thoughts. In math, the class works through problems about distances and bus timetables. Liis writes the calculation in her notebook before entering an answer on the tablet. Their teacher, Kaja, walks between the desks and reminds them, “Check the question before you check the screen.”

Later, the class opens an activity from E-koolikott (Estonia’s national digital learning-materials collection). Liis enters her password correctly on the second try. Annabel, beside her, whispers that her brain is “on holiday.” Liis notices that Annabel has used a capital letter where she should not have and points it out without making a fuss. The login works, and Annabel gives her a relieved look.

At lunch, the cafeteria serves vegetable soup, rye bread, and a small salad. Liis eats the bread first, then remembers Maarja’s usual advice not to fill up before the soup. A boy offers her sour candy for the apple from her lunchbox. She is tempted, but keeps the apple. Fruit is not exciting, yet Liis knows her parents buy what the family is likely to use, and no one is supposed to waste food simply because something sweeter is available.

During recess, a few boys tease Mari for bringing a recorder for music practice. Mari rolls her eyes and says she has better things to do than argue with people who cannot read music. Liis does not join in. She is relieved when the bell rings, partly because she does not know whether to defend Mari loudly or simply stand beside her. At 10, some social problems still feel harder than fractions.

Oskar, Soup, and Piano

When classes end, Liis spends the first part of the afternoon in the supervised activity room while Maarja finishes work. She completes a science worksheet about winter birds, then begins drawing a great tit from memory, darkening the head carefully and leaving a yellow stripe across the body. Before leaving, she checks a family message: “Take Oskar home first. Piano at 4:30. Soup in fridge.”

At 3:45, Liis collects Oskar. He has made a paper robot with one eye larger than the other and insists on carrying it himself. On the walk home, he asks whether he can play her keyboard later. Liis says yes, but only after he hangs up his coat and puts his boots on the tray.

“You sound like Mama,” Oskar says.

“That is because you make people sound like Mama,” Liis replies.

At home, the apartment is quiet except for the rabbit rustling hay. Liis heats vegetable soup while Oskar adds wheels to his robot at the table. She gives him the larger bowl because he is growing, a fact he accepts as a compliment. They wash their own bowls afterward. Liis checks the clock twice, pulls her music folder from her backpack, and puts on her boots again.

Her weekly piano lesson is held at a city-supported hobby school, part of the organized activities available to children outside regular classes. The family is secure, but Maarja and Rasmus plan carefully for piano fees, winter clothes, and household costs. Liis understands that lessons are an investment in something she enjoys. Missing one without a reason would feel careless, especially when Maarja has arranged the afternoon around it.

Her teacher asks her to begin with scales. Liis plays slowly, keeping her wrists level, then stops when her left hand lands on the wrong note. Her face tightens. The teacher tells her to start again, not faster but more evenly. After the scales, Liis repeats a short folk melody and begins a simple arrangement by Arvo Pärt, the Estonian composer whose music she recognizes for its calm, spacious sound.

The same measure catches her once more. This time she breathes, begins from two bars earlier, and reaches the end without stopping. “Better,” the teacher says. Liis tries not to smile too broadly, but she does.

Evening at Home

Rasmus is home when Liis and Oskar return. He is checking a loose radiator valve in the hallway with a small wrench while Maarja finishes a work call at the dining table. Dinner is the remaining soup, rye bread, cheese, and sliced cucumber. On some Fridays the family orders pizza, but weekdays are planned around meals that are quick, affordable, and likely to be eaten without argument.

After dinner, Rasmus asks Liis to play the melody from her lesson. She hesitates because Oskar is tapping a spoon against his bowl, but she sits at the keyboard anyway. Oskar’s rhythm is unhelpful, though Rasmus nods along with serious attention. When Liis reaches the troublesome measure, she glances toward Maarja. Her mother notices and gives her a small thumbs-up.

Homework happens at the cleared end of the table. Liis logs into the school system, copies two English vocabulary words into her notebook, and completes a short online quiz. English remains a school language rather than one used at home, and she sometimes hesitates over pronunciation. Tonight’s words are manageable, but the Wi-Fi stalls while Rasmus checks something on his phone. Liis groans, waits, and reloads the page.

Lights Out

Before bed, Liis sends Mari a photo of her blackbird sketch using Maarja’s old smartphone. Mari replies with heart emojis and a complaint about tomorrow’s spelling test. Liis puts the phone on the kitchen shelf to charge instead of taking it to bed. It is a household rule, and she has not yet persuaded her parents that she is old enough for an exception.

She lays out clothes for the morning, refills the rabbit’s hay, and checks that Oskar has put his robot safely on a shelf rather than under his pillow. He asks whether robots could learn piano. “Not better than me,” Liis says. After a moment, he agrees.

In her room, Liis unties her braids and sets her alarm for 6:50. She thinks about the blackbird in the snow, the piano measure she finally played through, and Mari’s spelling test. Tomorrow will bring another dark walk, another school day, and probably another reminder for Oskar to fix his backpack straps. With the radiator humming and the apartment quiet around her, Liis falls asleep before deciding which bird to draw next.