Apr 27, 2014

Throwing up a legacy

When I first saw them I didn’t even react. It was some years ago and the fall rain was dark. He sat on the wet sidewalk in front of a downtown store with a mug in front of him. I’ve seen this before, it was familiar to me. Only, this wasn’t Seattle, this was Umeå.
The reason I didn’t react was the dark afternoon fall rain tricking me. It transferred me to Seattle where I was used to people in need on most every downtown corner, neighborhood grocery store and highway onramps. Once it was new to me, a scary uncomfortable picture for a small town Swede, but I became a Seattle citizen and learned how to handle this every day situation.
My mother had an aunt Rut. She was mean. There is no other way describing her in an honest way, she was simply mean. And the family let her have her way. No one ever confronted her when she spread her bad behavior and made people upset and sad, even scared. It was a normality and she got away with it. I have been thinking about aunt Rut this last week. For a reason.
Today panhandlers are a reality even in Umeå. They are mostly Romanies from Rumania and they come here to make a living. Their situation in Rumania is very difficult. Begging is the only way they can get a few pennies even in their home country, but people rather throw abusive language at them than money, they are spitted on and chased away. They rather make the long journey to a cold city way up in northern Europe to get a few dollars for sending back to their families. At least here they are not spitted on.
Until this week.
We don’t have the political system with mayors in Sweden. But every city has a top politician who is the public face and with quite a lot of power. In Umeå his name is Lennart Holmlund, and just to make it simple, let’s call him the mayor. This week the mayor of Umeå spitted on the Romani panhandlers, now a part of the Umeå picture.
On his blog (he is a very frequent blogger) Lennart Holmlund accused them for being a part of an organized business, shipped in to Umeå in BMW and Mercedes. People who looked disabled during their panhandling pass, miraculously rising up in the evening stealing high quality beef in the supermarkets. Information he had by hearsay. And there was more. Opinions you would only associate with racist parties. Lennart Holmlund is a Social Democrat.
As I said, the Umeå mayor is a frequent blogger. He has strong feelings against media and prefers to spread his word uninterrupted on his blog. And this is not the first time he is throwing up opinions making you wonder if the man is in his right mind.
What’s interesting though is that we are letting him. He is reelected time after time. And in the same time, he is kind of a joke. He is presenting himself as straight forward, impulsive (in a good way), speaking his mind up (in ways other politicians don’t have the guts to do), and he is building his politics on his daily strolls on the downtown square talking to people. Pretty much the same people every day is my guess. It’s like Mayor Ed Murray would act on a daily chat with the venders at Westlake Mall.
So, every now and then his vomits get public and we shake our heads and he makes the headlines in the news for a while, but hey it’s Lennart, what can we expect?!
And this week he threw up on the Romanies, sleeping in abandoned cars and elevators six hours south of the Polar Circle, eating what they can find or being given, and yet finding that better than staying in Rumania. 
And I am thinking about my mother’s Aunt Rut. How her family let her spit out whatever mean thing that popped up in her head. Because that’s who she was. That’s Rut. Lennart Holmlund, the most powerful politician in Umeå, has a behavior that’s been normalized in our city, to the point that we are hardly noticing it.
This time though, he crossed a line. He went so far even the national media reacted. The Social Democrats in Umeå, in the county and on national level makes it very clear the party is not behind his statement. In this Lennart Holmlund is alone.
Is that a problem for him? Not at all. He stands by his blog posting, making no excuses and no apologies.
Aunt Rut was mean. I’m sure there were reasons for it, we are all carrying our luggage, but what came out of it was malevolence. Is Lennart Holmlund mean? No, I would say he most of the time knows exactly what he is doing. It’s politics, he does his thing and as long as he is not passing that line he gets away with bad headlines for a week or two and with being “such a character”.
Then why would he trespass at this point? I don’t know. But maybe because he is about to retire from office. Although we get the impression he is never thinking twice about all the absurdities coming out of his mouth, he might. Maybe this time he didn’t edit himself though. This is him. The election is coming up in September and he will not run for his current position again. I can’t help wonder about his legacy. Does he? 


Apr 20, 2014

Six shades of red

Could there be a better way celebrating Trouble 1 turning 28 than going for a fika at his grandpa’s coffeeshop?!
They say it’s hard to figure out what’s happening when you are in the middle of it. It’ s not until you are on the other side you can really see it. I have spent this long bedridden winter on my couch. During the days I am working. Kind of. I am doing what’s possible for me when it comes to my profession. At dinner time I am allowed to put the TV on. Watching the news, favorite TV series and films. While I am knitting.
I took up knitting again some years ago. I love the yarn running over my fingers. The clicking sound of the needles. The creative process. The meditative state of mind I am entering when my hands are doing their dance. The sweaters, tops, hats and handkerchiefs becoming the result of my evening hobby.
I have this big wicker basket filled with yarn since earlier days. I’ve been very close to throwing it all away, when would I ever knit again? Last fall I decided I wasn’t allowed (that word again, I am very strict with myself as you can tell) to buy new yarn before I’ve knitted up what was in that basket. And that’s how it came I spent all this winter making a sweater out of wool yarn I tinted myself in the seventies.
Six shades of red wool. What would I make from it? I was thinking a sweater. A seventies sweater. Striped in six shades of red. Not me at all. But maybe Fay? Fay is Trouble 1’s girlfriend, and I was thinking she might be the right person for a hand tinted six shades of red seventies sweater.
Now, I didn’t really have a pattern. And I had no idea if the yarn would be enough for the sweater I had in mind. So I made a pilot. I knitted the back, the two fronts and one arm before I could tell. Then I unpicked it (is that the right word, my vocabulary is limited in this area?) and did the whole thing over again plus one more arm. Yeah, that’s how I do it.
As I am only knitting in the evening, the light hasn’t been working with me. It’s been really hard to tell the shades from each other. So, I’ve been unpicking and unpicking (if that’s the word) over and over again when realizing the shades didn’t come in the right order. And it’s been impossible to tell if my creation would look any good at all. The whole project turned out to be very difficult, and to be honest, not even fun.
And then, there was the pain. This sunny Easter Day afternoon, closing my eyes, sensing the now gone winter, I see a dark mess of immobile unbearable pain and six shades of tangled red yarn. No, it hasn’t been a fun winter.
This week I stitched the parts together. Well, maybe it might work after all. I found some buttons in my special button box, inherited from my moms aunt. The buttons were reddish, and seven, that’s what I needed. I have been on these buttons many times before. I even remember them from my childhood, they used to be in moms very special button box (does all women have button boxes, or is it just a me kind of thing?), but they never worked for me before. Now, finally, they were exactly what I needed. They found their purpose. They lit the whole seventies up, and the sweater was suddenly…perfect! What about the size then? Audrey became my manikin (Audrey and Fay are the same size, very petit), and yes, it was a good fit!
So, Trouble 1 turned 28 yesterday. The plan was we would all go for a fika at my dad’s coffee shop in Nordmaling, the small town south of Umeå were I grew up. My dad is gone but the coffee shop is still there. Oh how I wanted to do this! I have been having some better days the last two weeks, so I was hoping badly for one of those matching Trouble 1’s birthday.
And it did! Well, it wasn’t like a good day, but it was a day possible to be in the car for a while and sit at a table for a short fika. And I am so happy and grateful. Since I had to drop the Capital of Culture inauguration I have had to drop everything being in my calendar. It’s been more than 2,5 months in my dark mess of hopeless pain and red yarn.
So, it’s Trouble 1’s birthday. I finished the sweater the day before though, and Fay was presented with a gift too. It felt good. And I felt good watching her picking up the unexpected present.
Then of course I couldn’t help myself. I started babbling. Went on about all the pain and dark knitted into that sweater. Which of course was the wrong thing to do, and I tried to save my bad behavior with the “you can’t see what you are doing until you are out of it, and this turned out to be pretty”, and hoping the sweater would work like a warm shield for her.
This is so me. I don’t know why I am doing these things. It’s like I have to tell the full story which is totally unnecessary and often out of place. 
I woke up this morning wanting to call Fay and make it right. At that minute, she called me! On a complete different subject. And it gave me the chance to apologize at once, letting go. Very grateful for that.
So the mess of yarn became a pretty sweater. And there was no way to tell before it was all done. I have stopped looking for purpose of my periods of unbearable pain though, they have been too many and too long. During this winter I have felt like that knitting project and me being tied to the couch would have the same duration. I really hope I was right. And that the Trouble 1 birthday fika at my dad’s coffee shop was the start for me being a little bit a part of the world again.

Apr 13, 2014

The comfort of a yellow life savor

I am placing it on my chest. Sticking the head under my chin. It’s a perfect fit. I am holding it, caressing the back. My hands are remembering every inch, every cavity and every nuance of the surface under my wandering palms. My chest knows the weight of it. At the beginning, it must have reached down to my knees. Today just above my belly button.
It is yellow and was given to me when I was one year old. The part between his eyes is still dark, thick and incredibly smooth, like it is untouched. The right arm is broken, just holding together by the skin on the back of it, the straw that makes the interior coming our of it. The right leg would be falling off it wasn’t for the the thin yellow sewing cotton trying to keep it attached to the body, not managing very well. What did I do to that right side to make it so worn out?
And the eyes. Looking right into my heart. Still. How is it possible two dark brown glass buttons with a black center, tucked away in yellow fur are looking right into my heart? Saying I am here. I am listening. I know you inside and out. Every little secret. You don’t need to hide anything from me. You can tell me everything. I know it all all ready. I will help you. Oh this fur, absorbing my tears. Buckets of tears. Lakes of tears.
I think it was my parents who gave me my teddy bear, but I am not sure. I know for sure though they gave me a new, identical one for Christmas when I was thirteen. Yellow fur. Same size. 
I don’t know if I had survived my childhood without my teddy bear. It is not something I am easily saying. Putting on paper. But looking into those eyes today  again, feeling the body finding it’s place on mine, sensing the comfort of his ragged creature next to mine, I know it.
I slept with my teddy bear and it was always with me on trips and sleep overs. When the straw started falling out of that arm, feet and hands, my mother didn’t want it in my bed anymore. Well, she wanted to throw it away actually. And that’s when she tried to replace it with a new one. Where did she find an exact same? I was thirteen.
13. A teenager. With a teddybear in her bed? Yes. But it was at that age too when I started to keep a journal, for real. There are pink girly diaries from 11 and 12, casually kept, but at the age of 13 I started writing every day. Every single day. And my teddy bear(s) got some relief when I added my journal to my very little circle of life saving friends. I am wondering now, were the bears a he? No, I think they were an it.
My mother’s replacing trick kind of worked. I didn’t let her throw away my first one though. Looking at it now I am amazed of how I tried to repair my beloved comforter. Where did I find leather to cover his feet and hands? And those tiny tiny stitches with the yellow thread through the thick leather and firm and impassable straw, how did I even do that? And that repair is still holding up, 45 years later.
Now, my two yellow teddy bears live in my guest room, the Honey Chamber. Teddy bear nr 2 is a bit ragged by age too, you can see it filled it’s purpose. They are sitting together, like two siblings who have been through quite a lot. Occasionally though, they move in to my bed room.
There are times when my journal isn’t enough. When a paper is a too flat of a receiver. When writing chock, despair and pain down is just writing it down. When that ritual doesn’t close the day and gives me the peace to fall asleep. When the situation makes the night unbearable and the morning to come something to dread. That’s when my teddy bear moves in with me. It’s rare, but over the years, it has happened.
It’s been a very emotional week. And the other evening I didn’t know how to make it through the night. Then I remembered my childhood life savor. And he looked at me with those eyes, full of eternal wisdom. And I placed my teddy bear on my chest, the head under my chin. Hugging his firm and soft body. My hand holding the back of his head, lips kissing his fore head. His yellow fur absorbing my tears, once again. On my side later, in fetal position, it found it’s place in front of me. My arm around, knowing exactly where to be. Like we’ve never been apart. And it took me through the night.

Apr 6, 2014

Given a second chance. And here I am.

It is Christmas Day and this day in April. My two most difficult days of the year. Christmas Day, an empty house which used to be filled with husband, wife and little sons. The prime day for grieving my family, such it once was. The day in April is my yearly cancer check up.
2009 I went through treatment for breast cancer. Surgery, chemo, radiation. One year of fighting fear, pain, loneliness, nausea and loss. Fighting for life.
I am actually still on treatment. Five years of hormones to keep the estrogen from my body. Six months still to go, and I am counting the days now. I have gained about 25 pounds (which makes me extremely unhappy) since the cancer, and some of it (I hope a large part) is due to the hormones which makes me swollen.
Anyway, this year the cancer check up happened Monday. It is a full day of fun. And the fact that I can’t really walk or sit or get around doesn’t help. I needed physical and mental support. People are tied up with work on a regular weekday though, and in my mind I browsed friends and family trying to solve the problem. In the middle of all that Maria P happened to call me, and she was the one coming to my rescue!
Maria P is Trouble 2’s girlfriend Audrey’s mother. She opened our phone call with telling me how much overtime she had been doing these last few weeks and ended with offering me spending a day of the free time she therefore was entitled to at the hospital with me. Wow. I can’t say how grateful I was. Not only because the practical problem was taken care of, but because I knew, in spite of the circumstances, it would be a nice day.
First stop at the University Hospital is the department for Nuclear Medicine where I am injected with an isotope which needs three hours to run through the body before I am spending about 30 minutes lying in a scint camera checking through my complete skeleton for abnormalities. I am not fond of this situation. Lying there, knowing the nurses can see things which are hidden to me makes me very uncomfortable. Same thing with the mammogram.
I have a yearly date at Nuclear Medicine though! Agneta, a childhood friend from the small town where I grew up works there, and to be welcomed in this uncomfortable situation with a so-happy-to-see-you-again hug really helps. We also take the time to actually sit down and update each other of our lives. Which, sadly, through these five years mostly have been distress and sorrow for the both of us, even so this time. Still, that moment of sharing is warm and rewarding, and we both feel a little bit happier when saying good bye for this year.
It’s funny, the University Hospital in Umeå is the biggest hospital in northern Sweden with about 6000 employes. Yet, also my oncologist is from the same small town as Agneta and me, and we are all born the same year! Birgitta and I were even in the same class in junior high. And Birgitta is the last stop for the day.
Maria P and I have had a nice day. Lunch at her place while waiting for the isotopes to do their job. A fika (a sit down coffee/tea with a little something) having my favorite Danish in the Cancer Center cafeteria while waiting for the labs and different body shots to reach Birgitta.
In the waiting room though, waiting for my oncologist (because that’s what she is in this moment), I am telling Maria I need to focus. On why I am there. I have had such a nice day, I am not sure I will be able to take in negative news. So, entering Birgitta’s office, sitting down in the chair, saying hello to the young intern who is there to get a Check in the box for breast cancer check up on his chart, then running off for the next box to get a Check.
Focus. Breath in. Breath out. Birgitta tells me everything looks good. Really? Yes. The labs. The mammogram. The scint. Can I see? And I am looking at my skeleton on Birgitta’s screen and I can tell it is okay. I have been in this room watching a big black spot in my hip once (more about that some other time), so I know the difference. The dense parts are where there should be and bilateral. I am well. Big sigh. I am cancer free. One more time. Thank you Birgitta, and we hug and will see each other in a year again.
Maria P is relieved too, to hear the good news, more hugs. It’s still afternoon and she asks me if there is something I want to do. I am so used to everyone helping me out being in a hurry taking me home as fast as possible, so at first I can’t even think of something fun to do. And I can’t walk. But maybe one more fika? 
And then I am treated with something lovely! I haven’t yet been in the new inside square on the back yard of the Grand Hotel (Stora hotellet) facing Väven, the building for cultural arts that’s about to get finished any month now. Kulturbageriet (the Cultural Bakery) is the place for the second fika of the day, and I am so happy that I get to wrap up the day and celebrate in this place that has happened while I’ve been stuck on my couch. And there are people to say hello to and I get to see new and familiar faces and I have a weird feeling of temporarily peaking out from the bubble where I am spending my life.
Back on the couch in the evening I am happy. Most of all because I am cancer free. But also because I could do the day without a wheel chair. It wasn’t easy, but I did the little walking I had to do, supported by Maria. I saw two old friends, I had a lunch and two fika, and I got to experience the current talk of the town. And I actually did have a full day of fun thanks to Maria P, for which I am forever grateful.
I felt a surge of energy. And I am thinking that it’s kind of absurd that a day at the hospital finding out if I have cancer or not is a shot of energy. And I don’t know if to cry or laugh about it. But it’s mostly sad. Cause, the thing is, in my stranded couch life there is so little input from outside, a day at the Cancer Center makes me feel like I have been out in the world.
The days and weeks after one of my two worst days of the year usually bring euphoria. Not this year. I am grateful of course, truly, but sad. I am a survivor, as they say in the U.S. I got a second chance to live. And I know exactly what I would like to do with that life. What I would like my life to be. But a stupid state of complicated pain condition involving mechanics, muscles and nervous system is keeping me trapped and tied down while the years are passing. While the life I again was given is passing.
But. Yesterday I was taking a fragile few step stroll on my front yard in the spring sun while Trouble 2 was putting the snow shovels away for the year. And pain wise I have had the best weekend in a very long time. Maybe?