Oct 29, 2017

Me too/part 2

Meanwhile the world is flooded with Me too-stories, more prominent men with famous faces is dragged out of their dark hidings. Some are not that surprising to me. Others, the kind of homegrown the-boy-next-door family types a bit more chocking. One thing is clear thoguh, they are everywhere. And we haven’t even seen the top of the ice berg I am sure. 

A while ago a young woman close to me told me about her latest visit at a club. Her stories made my jaws drop. 

She had been at this club with a girlfriend and they had been dancing. Because that’s what you do at a club. The two of them had been dancing together. Men had been circling them coming up from behind getting way to close. The two friends told them they weren’t interested and tried pushing them away. That didn’t help much. They fought to save each other from those intrusive males, and they even had to save women they didn’t know on the dance floor!

At one point the young women were sitting together at a table and two guys in their forties (my friend is 25) were approaching them. Started some kind of odd conversation. Again, my friend expressed they weren’t interested in their company and tried to ignore them. The men didn’t waver. Just stood their. And then one of them started licking his lips while looking at them.

I was absolutely stunned being conveyed this image from a club in 2017. Is this how it is now?!

In my youth I wasn’t a big club girl. Well, it wasn’t clubs, it was disco, of course. I really loved dancing and I knew all the Staying Alive-moves. I wasn’t comfortable in the environment though. I was tall and skinny and shy and nobody wanted to dance with me anyway. I was the one sitting in a corner at the table taking care of all my friends handbags while out on the dance floor. It wasn’t that much fun.

So, I don’t have any early experiences of being approached in inappropriate ways dancing and bar hopping. And I haven’t had an opportunity asking any of my more outgoing friends my age about their experience back then. Is this the way it has always been?

I don’t think so. As girls do, we always shared our stories and I don’t remember anything in the neighborhood of what I am realizing is going on out there right now.

What I am hearing today, is men/guys acting more or less like animals in a public setting. I don’t even have words for it. Is the world spinning back words? I can’t even say: has nothing changed? No, it seems things have changed in the wrong direction and for the worst. It’s outrageous. And you men out there heading for a night out, if you don’t start acting like respectful human beings you will be looking at a future with only men on the dance floor, are you sure that’s what you want?

No, we haven’t even seen the top of the ice berg. But what we see and what we hear now is actually causing repercussions in the society. But we have to continue telling our stories. Dragging every single (in this sense) dysfunctional male out of the dark. Being persistent. Raise our sons to good men. I want that ice berg to melt all the way down and make room for a solid ground where respectful men and and safe women can build an equal and good world together. Let's do it.

Oct 22, 2017

Me too

It wasn’t until I one evening suddenly was overwhelmed by anxiety and the need of a shower poring over me that I realized what had happened. I had the urge to sit in a bathtub scrubbing me down to my bones. Images I’ve watched so many times in movies. The classic scene. And I was thinking, is this what it feels like? I was 58 years old.

Until only three years ago I felt estranged from stories I heard from colleagues and friends of men approaching them in ways making them uncomfortable. It had never happened to me. And I had never been in a situation where I had been scared of a man. Not even on the street. All alone in Seattle or elsewhere.

I thought the reason was I was so unattractive it wouldn’t even cross ones mind to approach me. I know, of course, that sexual harassment is about power and nothing else. Yet.

Being a teenager I was the tall and skinny girl in a group of already highly developed curvy friends. I looked like a boy. Flat breasted without hips. Guys didn’t look at me twice. And that’s the image of and feeling for myself I have been carrying all through my life.

When I was a journalist I was stunned by female colleagues describing male co workers giving them inappropriate proposals or comments in editing rooms or out on a story. These were thick skinned, vociferous and highly competent women as active as any man in the conference room, always fighting for their story. Yet, somehow, this happened. I didn’t get it. It didn’t happen to me. And the only reason why, I figured, was: as a woman I was invisible.

Now. Some years ago a person crossed my path. We got along and I enjoyed his company. He entered in a time when I was in an extremely vulnerable place. He offered a supporting hand and a warm embrace. I liked the way he held me. It did me good.

He was very volatile though. One day he wanted to be my boyfriend, the next he had a different opinion. Now and then he kind of  jumped me and kissed me. It happened so fast I was startled and didn’t quite know how to react. I just kind of let it happen. And felt weird.

Until that day when we had The Talk. And he announced he wasn’t interested in a relationship. And then jumped me and kissed me. And I kicked him and shouted THIS IS WHERE YOU STOP!

It was that evening the anxiety kicked in. I felt dirty and wanted to crawl out of my skin. Or scrub it away. And I was thinking: so this is what it is like. This is where they have been, all the women in the movies. This is how it is to have your body kidnapped. How can I get it back and make it mine again?

Now, expressing this, I do it very matter of fact. And I am not giving a time frame. Only two people know about this and I have never formulated it in writing before, except to my journal. I need to keep some distance in this moment. 

Of course, this is nothing compared to what women go through. But to me, who during my 58 years of living never had experienced anything along these lines, it was major. Someone had crossed my borders. And I had let it happen. So why?

For one thing, in the beginning I really liked him. The other things was, if I had not been in that vulnerable place I don’t think it would have happened. I was just the perfect prey. In need of comfort. So easy for him to say, hey come here, we’ll figure this out. So easy for me to go there. I was taken advantage of.

There is also a third reason. I was a virgin in this situation. I didn’t reed the signs. I had no idea what was going on. Which is kind of cute, considering my age.

A male friend of mine and me have discussed this a lot. Why it hasn’t happened before. He is not quite buying my idea of being so appalling men would look in a different direction finding someone else to harass.

Instead he says: Maria, you have such body and personal integrity it wouldn’t even come to ones mind to approach you in an inappropriate way.

This is interesting. If that’s true, why is that? The only thing I can come up with is my father. I had my father’s eye, but he never treated me like his princess. I would say he raised me his equal. Moving in this world, I think I see myself a lot like him. Well-dressed and a head taller than everyone else. And I am not defining myself first as a woman. I am defining myself as me.

Why have I not talked about this incident before? Shame of course. And how much was I a part of it? It didn’t happen on the street. I know the criteria is when your body says no. But it took a while for it to do so. It’s those fine lines, the blurred borderland, so difficult to navigate. When a young boyfriend gets a hard on at every hug and you don’t like it. When you are having sex with your husband because it’s passed a month and you really should although you don’t want to.

So, what has this incident done to me? It has harmed me. The “feeling dirty” anxiety is easily trigged. A hug from someone I don’t know that well. Or someone taking an interest in me. I am damaged. And to that, this person is forever guilty.

Immunity. The insight I am not immune to this plague. That’s a shattering realization. This person deprived me of my immunity. Not too long ago someone made me a sexual insinuation. Has never happened before. I was so stunned I couldn’t even respond. Again, the need of that cleansing shower. Is this how this works? When you have once being robbed of your borders they aren’t visible anymore?

I feel like someone snatched away the protective mantle I have been wearing through my life, and at 58 I started wandering the world naked.

Oct 15, 2017

My fall recipe - and a belated P.S.!

P.S. I am so sorry if I offended anyone buy questioning your authenticity as a reader! The thing is, I have such a hard time imagining people being interested in the thoughts and reflections from my little corner of the world, especially you being far away, on a different continent even. But to you who are, I am honored and grateful you are taking  your precious time reading my stories. I will from now on try picturing you as human beings of flesh and blood with your own stories, not annoying heart lacking robots. Thank you so much! And oh, I would love to hear your stories, please tell me, let me get to know you!


As I have mentioned before the northern Swedish summer 2017 was cold, windy and wet, actually the summer with the lowest highs since 1862! A record I quite frankly could live without. But it so happened my life happened when that happened…

Then there is always September. Now and then September delivers. Sun, breakfasts outside, even an Arnold Palmer in the afternoon. So how about this year? Nope. The month was the least sunny September in 30 years. I mean, come on!

If you have followed me through the seasons for a while you know I am not a fan of fall. The light falling makes me panic, so does the cold. So what do I do to survive?

I add light.

It started many years ago with the spotlights under my grandfather’s old apple tree, shooting through the greenery, and in the winter up the snow. It’s really beautiful. 

Later I (read my sons and their cousins) put light chains in the two small maples we planted next to the picket fence. I wanted to create the feeling of Holiday Westlake Park in Seattle here in the woods. Ah my impossible ideas…  But it worked for me! I used to sit at my kitchen table dreaming about Seattle, feeling a little bit closer. Now, the maples grew taller and light chains don’t last forever, so they are gone by now.

I live at the end of the road. And that’s something I am enjoying. My next door neighbor is on the other side of the grove behind me, I can’t see the house but I know he is there. In front of my front yard to the south there is forest, to the east another grove and fields, to the west fields stretching to Torrberget, Dry Mountain.

I I would turn all the lights in my house and garden out it would be completely dark here, except for a street light at my carport. And I would see some lights from the next road across the fields to the east. That’s how it was when I first moved here 36 years ago. One lamp over the front porch of the house. That’s it. Looking out the windows on a winters night you didn’t see anything at all. Pitch black. Great for northern light spotting though!

We added a lamp at the coach house/wood shed, oh a light out there! Then one at the door of the baker’s cottage, that’s nice! A lamp in the cottage window made it look like a little gnome lived there, cute! And the lights framed this place at the end of the road, made it feel welcoming and cozy.

People often ask me if I’m not afraid of the dark. No, I’m not. I often feel lonely. And depending on how severe my back pain is that loneliness can be very scary. But it’s not the dark that scares me.

I don’t like the dark though. And that’s why I am chasing it away with lights.

Some years ago I extended the garden with spotlights shooting straight up the tall pine tree at the ditch marking the border between the front yard and the fields south of the baker’s cottage, wow, what a change! I treated my dad’s big ash tree - which once was a small plant he brought here from southern Sweden - with the same recipe. He was a big plant thief my dear father. The 64th latitude isn’t the natural habitat for an ash tree, but somehow it acclimated and now constitutes the south east corner of my garden, lit up in the dark.

I also have a spotlight directed to the old outhouse at the edge of the forest ending my place to the south. And then there is the big rock in the middle of my mother’s sea of lupins in front of the outhouse.

The latest addition to my garden illumination happened last fall. I had been thinking about it for a while. There are two lilacs guarding the baker’s cottage, one at each front corner. Wouldn’t it be nice to have them lit up? 

Yes it was! I quite don’t know how to express the feeling as my inner image transforms into reality when it comes to illumination. To turn the outer switch on is to turn my inner switch. My soul expands and glows!

So am I happy now? Content? Happy yes, but content, no way! There are more inner images waiting to come to life. Next year, hopefully, my new cherry trees will be lit up. They mark the border of my garden to the west, and I can't wait see those sparkling, fulfilling the illuminated framework of my place in every direction!

There is one downside to my obsession of illuminating the dark here at the end of the road though. Light contamination. The Milky Way isn’t as clear as it used to be, and the Northern Light sometimes first catches my eyes on Facebook… 

Oct 8, 2017

Six years and an increasing audience - or are you all bots?


I am looking out my window and the view is exactly the same as it’s  been for months and months. Low overcast.  No shadows. An even grey that’s actually perfect for B&W photography. During my years in Seattle, working on my photo exhibit commissioned by Nordic Heritage Museum, I learned there was more photo chemistry purchased in Seattle than anywhere in the US. The constant overcast made the city a heaven for photographers. Grey days out shooting, sunny spending them in the darkroom.

It’s been six years this week that I have been telling the stories from my two cities Umeå and Seattle. Over the years my life has blurred the initial intention, and personal stories have sneaked in to my original city planning intentions. I hope that’s okay.

My first post was written in the lovely little mother in law apartment I rented from Dita. It was located just a block above the Portage Bay house which was me and my family’s home for a year 1996-97. This was a peculiar coincidence.

I was writing this post on Dita’s beige couch. Because my back was out. I had no idea at that time it was the start of my future. Lying on a couch. Writing my blog. And I only would return to Seattle once more. If I had known, the project would have died there and then of course. The fundament was I would spend time in Seattle.

A year ago, in the 5-year anniversary post I mentioned I might finish up Home is Away, Away is Home when I cleared out my Seattle storage. And shipped my Tempur Pedic mattress back to Sweden.

Well, the storage is now empty and closed. Trouble 2 and Audrey evacuated it in May for me, and a lot of my things found new homes with my Seattle daughters Becca and Zoe. And my car is only a memory now. Through a long drawn ordeal taking the toll out of me as well as Trouble 2 and David who has co owned my beloved Dodge Stratus with me, I finally manage to sell it. So no car and no storage. That’s a major change. The mattress though has found a corner at Matt and Elizabeth’s on Capitol Hill though, so I still have a pinky toe dipped in Seattle.

I can feel I am letting go though. A bit. Chances are slim I might return, so it’s the healthy thing to do. Well, is this the end for Home is Away, Away is Home then?

No, it doesn’t feel like it. I am quite addicted to my Sunday routine. And something weird has happened during this last year.

It used to be four people reading my blog in the US. And I know Randi and Debra are two of them. A year ago - according to the Blogger graph - my readers started increasing and have done so through the year. In the US but also in Sweden. And by some reason, French people have found me. The graph is constantly pointing at higher numbers, which of course is nice to watch.

I am thinking though, it can’t be real. I don’t have any followers. You can subscribe, and those I can’t see and they might be a few. But how do they find me? It’s probably just bots doing their job, right? But those five in Brazil? It started out with just one (I have scattered showers all over the world which I don’t pay much attention to), but then there showed up one more in Brazil, and one more… Those few seem kind of realistic.

The funny thing is, over the years, whenever writing about politics or city planning the numbers have decreased. But last fall starting expressing my concerns about Trump, Americans started reading me. And that’s when the French came along too. Or is it only bots?

The grey overcast has changed into misty fog here now. Even more Seattle-like. It might be though that I in the future won’t cling as much to Seattle as I have done, a sanitary choice of mine. But I hope you still will want to follow my thoughts and reflections from my little life here on the couch on the big life out there. Because Home is Away, Away is Home. And I would love to hear from you, Americans, Swedes, Frenchmen and Braszilians! Or are you all bots…?

Oct 1, 2017

My three cherry trees!/The times they a-changing

They are standing like three red-dressed guardians posted along the ditch separating my front yard from the fields. Mission Completed making me as incredibly happy as I am proud!

My body can still sense the feeling of finding the footing climbing up the one where the tree house was when I was a young girl. And I can hear the characteristic sound of the one closest the bakery cottage stretching it’s branch over the tin roof, itching it. And oh the feeling of hanging wet laundry in the summer afternoon on the clothes line connecting the six mountain ashes. Those my grandfather planted when my mother was a little girl.

As you know by now, my relationship with trees is special. The loss of a tree affects me mentally as well as physically. Whenever I have to cut out a tree I have to prepare. Often for years.

My grandfathers big mountain ashes has guarded my place for about 90 years. Looking after my grandparents, my mother and her siblings, me, my sister and cousins, and then my own family. Trouble & Trouble’s feet and hands know the tress as well as mine does.

But mountain ashes don’t live forever, their life span is pretty short. I’ve known for twenty years their time would come and I’ve dreaded it. When did I take out the first one, the one itching the baker’s cottage roof? I don’t know, maybe 2010? Some years later the second one. Then the third. Last summer there where three left and they didn’t look pretty. And I came to the decision to take them all. It was on the Swedish National Day June 6. That’s one way to celebrate it.

The hole the loss of those trees created in my visual atmosphere was immense. My eyes lost its fixing point to the west. My front yard tipped over to the east. My soul was a void.

I greeted the sun which now reached the west wall of my house giving me the spot for sun bathing this place never had. And the front yard was sunny all through the evening, that’s kind of nice! I adjusted to thinking this new scene was a good thing.

Then suddenly, photos showing up of how it used to be and from nowhere I bursted out in tears! So, apparently I wasn’t doing as well as I thought…

My mind started searching for a solution for my inner and outer loss. I came up with an idea. But, as often when it comes to my ideas, would it even be possible?

I felt very strongly I needed to replace my mountain ashes. But I still wanted the sun. So, it had to be trees which wouldn’t grow too tall.

To plant new trees, consequently you would have to take out the old mountain ash stumps and roots. This is where the “would it even be possible?” entered the story. Because they were huge. And six of them.

I called my second cousin Roland. He is the one to call on impossible questions. Of course, he said! He lives in the village and the day before Midsummers he and my neighbor Erik came with their huge machines - yeah, they are the kind of men equipped with that kind of tools. In a couple of hours the roots were gone and my ditch and parts of the lawn looking like a crater. 

During the winter already I had started my research for what kind of new greenery I would add to my life. I was desiring something blossoming like crazy in the early summer! Like cherry trees… But would it work on latitude 64°?

Well it turns out that sweet cherry don’t like it this far to the north of course, but some sour cherry do. And my choice fell on Prunus Sargentii. It’s a tree which says to be overloaded with pink blossoms in June and that’s what I am dreaming of!

Now the plan was to have the trees planted the week after Midsummer so that I could start enjoying them this summer already. That didn’t happen though. In short, the company that took on the job didn’t deliver. Yeah, those things always sucks.

Some weeks ago, finally, it happened though. Taking photos of trees rising is so much more fun than trees falling! To watch the three trees taking their posts along my ditch was magical! There they were, looking as natural as I had pictured them. Starting their job balancing my front yard and guarding me, welcoming the lost birds, making my eyes happy and my soul sing!

Most things I do here at my place at the end of the road, I do for the future. I take care of things the best way I can so they will be here for my sons and presumptive grandchildren if they so wish. 

But these cherry trees I did for myself. I bought them big enough so that I could start enjoying them right away. Waiting for trees to grow is a tedious work of mind. And I don’t have that time. So it was a happy discovery the trees are treating me with insanely red fall colors! I am praying they will survive the winter, make the sky pink in June and complete this change of time I have been working on for twenty years!