Ship ahoy!

Oh how I loved being in Seattle during the Holiday Season! Just loved it!!

The Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Westlake Mall! The lit up Downtown, crazy with Christmas shoppers! The ferries filled with dressed up people going to Christmas parties! The neighborhoods competing about the most insane over-the-top light displays! But most of all I love the Christmas Ships!

For many years I made sure getting my dosage of Seattle Holidays. I packed my bags in December with an assignment of a story for Swedish National Radio or Television as an excuse and headed over for a week-ten days in a rainy city making the lights even more vibrant in the reflecting puddles.

I shot Seattle Men’s Chorus in Beneroya Hall and the Dreamliner Virtual Rollout, I reported about the different ingredients of the American Holidays and about The Washington Software Alliance. I told the story of the Cool House, the new city public library and I interviewed the author Russel Banks on a Seattle December visit. I also spent days sitting at the Blackbird Bakery on Bainbridge Island working on the texts for my photo show Away is Home, Home is Away. A couple of times the visit was postponed to right after Christmas, making me spend New Years in the Emerald City!

The Holiday memory I treasure the most though is the year we stayed in Seattle. Cause there can’t be any better place for a Holiday experience than Portage Bay overlooking the Montlake Cut!

Our place for the year was a small house that didn’t look like much from the outside, but was such a wonderful little home for my family. It was on Boyer Avenue about five blocks from University Bridge, and Portage Bay was the best entertainment all year round. I used to have my afternoon tea lying in my cushy cream colored love seat watching whatever was going on down on the bay through my big panorama window. I never got tired of that view! All those boats in different shapes and sizes! Trouble & Trouble and I had our different Argosy cruise ships favorites. Come to think of it, Trouble 2 and I actually agreed on the same preference.

This weekend is the opening for the Christmas Ships in Seattle. And I know exactly what Portage Bay looks like this evening! A parade of lit up, dressed up, spruced up boats glittering and glimmering in the dark night! And some of them have music, choirs singing on the black water!

Trouble 2 and I could sit for hours watching the floating lights waiting for our ship. Here it comes, there it is! Let’s just sit here forever and enjoy this! Oh how I miss that! And where did that little boy go?

Actually, he and Audrey are down in my kitchen making dinner for us. He is right here. In the woods at the end of the road. The opposite to Portage bay. No water for ships to sail on. I am doing what I can to lit up the dark though. Strings of lights in my maples guarding my gate. Light curtains from the roof of my front porch. Spotlights shooting up my dad’s ash tree down in the corner and the big pine next to the field.

There is one ship though! My grandfather’s old apple tree is lit up with spotlights and along the round wooden deck underneath sits a string of lights. Another string is attached to the rope tied around the stem at the crown of the tree and anchored in the ground some feet away in the lawn. That device actually looks like a backstay and in the summer I even connect a light piece of fabric to it, which makes you think of a sail.

It’s been snowing today. In the snow there is a lit up apple tree that in wintertime looks like a space ship. No, I don’t have any waters. And there are no ships sailing here. I might be able to arrange some singing though. On my space ship in the woods at the end of the road.

Italian like a delicate pencil drawing

A little more than half way through now!

I took German in school for six years. Spanish for one, we didn’t get along. But I’ve always been attracted to French. Like we would be a cute match.

Language studies were my thing in school. It came easy to me. I don’t think I have ever been more devoted to my studies than when I trained for being an assistant nurse. This came as a surprise to me as I wasn’t really on for the profession. But I figured out why. Learning every bone and organ in the body in Latin was nothing less than language studies and I just couldn’t help myself being bent over my books late all night!

Winter 2002 was a hard one. I was working on a documentary project for the European Broadcast Union and it was absolutely killing me. Spring came, I was finally out of it, and I laid my eyes on an ad in a newspaper offering language classes abroad. Studying French in Nice, of course, of course!!

Well, it turned out that taking Italian in Florence was less expensive, and hey, why not?!

I had never even glanced at Italian before, but here I was suddenly, late April in Florence, trying to learn a language I didn’t know a word of in a small group of German, Canadian, Japanese and American students, even a guy from Seattle! Our Italian teachers didn’t know any English, so this mix was quite an adventure.

The class was running extremely fast. The morning hours were every day filled with new grammars, and in the afternoons I was sitting outside the Dome, next to Ponte Vecchio, or at Piazza della Signoria going through my notes, trying to make sense of everything squeezed into my little head.

My roommate was a Japanese girl who didn’t know a word of English. Since my Japanese wasn’t quite there, there was no way for us to communicate what so ever. Although I, of course, kept speaking English anyway, I don’t know why, I could have walked around the apartment speaking Swedish for all that I know! Anyhow, at the end of my two-week stay we could actually communicate in three word sentences in our now common language Italian, and it’s actually hard to express the feeling when that happened. Pure happiness! We had conquered a giant obstacle, and this has to be how children feel when they get through to their parents in words instead of noises and cries!

When I left Italy after two extremely intense weeks, I felt like I had been run over by a jet plane. But I had really grown attracted to Italian. I loved the sounds, the speed, and the passionate way of expressing the most ordinary things.

The years to come, I took some evening classes to learn more. And then I found another ad. “Learn Italian like a child does!”

This was a self-studying course. Perfect! I had been thinking about that for a while. The ad was a little bit funny though. It looked like something from the Fifties. A pencil drawing with a text. But there was a website that looked a bit more promising. I ordered the class and some days later a brown card board box arrived.

In 2008 the Fifties arrived on my desk. The box was packed with stacks of thin yellow booklets. They looked like something I would have found at my bakers cottage attic, left there by my mother’s aunts. I opened them up. They were filled with text (and I mean filled), top to bottom, only once in a while interrupted by tiny delicate pencil drawings, a perfect image for that time and age.

It was interesting though. The text was only in Italian. No translations. And under the text lines phonetic transcriptions. You learn the language by a text where words are repeated in different contexts until you actually get it. There is also a dictionary following the chapters if you get stuck. And a manual, which explains the purpose of each chapter, what you are supposed to learn.

Boy, was this funny! The complete course is 50 chapters divided on 16 booklets. If you are an ambitious student working through one chapter a week you are done with the course in a year and you have a vocabulary of 4000 words. But I tell you, that’s a lot of work! This class is as intense as the one in Florence, although different.

The Fifties design and approach was a concern to me though. I checked with my dear friend Agneta who is an Italian teacher: am I learning a kind of Fifties Italian here? She looked through the first chapters and approved of them, quite impressed by the grammatical ambitions.

So, I took my assignment on! I was aiming for a chapter a week, but then I found a tumor in my breast and made it one chapter per chemo treatment instead. And after the 6^th and last treatment my brain shut down and I was incapable of any kind of studies.

My yellow booklets had a rest for about a year, and then I started all over again, repeating everything from the beginning. Summer 2012 I was back to where I was interrupted and decided on studying five minutes a day. Yeah, that’s not a lot, but I figured that’s something I could actually do.

And I have. Five minutes after writing my journal in the evening. The last thing I do before lights out is filling my brain with Italian words and grammars. That’s my daily brain-workout. At midnight. Some do Wordfeud, some sudoku, some cross words. I am learning Italian.

Now, five minutes a day doesn’t add up to a chapter a week. It’s more like a chapter a month. So it took me a while to get back to my Italian support Agneta for a check up. And when I did it turned out that Italian had changed from the Fifties after all… I am now finding out that I am learning an Italian that is only still spoken on Sicily and in the southern parts of Italy. The most conservative areas of the country. If all.

I am laughing long and hard at this. I find it quite funny. I learned how to play bar chords on my grandmother’s old hard stringed guitar. On that foundation every guitar thereafter was a piece of cake. I am fantasizing my Fifties Italian will work the same way!

Agneta, who besides teaching Italian, French and English also has a head for numbers is telling me five minutes a day makes half a high school course in one year. That’s not bad! And since my late night class actually varies between 7 and 15 minutes, I guess I am in fact doing one full high school course a year!

So, 50 chapters. And I am just now finishing up chapter nr. 26. I do not have a head for numbers, but at the speed of a chapter a month doing the math tells me it will take me 24 more months to finish the course. Two more years before I have a vocabulary of 4000 Italian words. I wonder if I will know how to put them together? Will they still exist? And will I put them together in a way that not even Sicily or the most conservative southern parts of Italy will understand in 2015? Will I come across as a delicate pencil drawing?

Missing Thanksgiving

It’s Thanksgiving and 4^th of July. The two days on the year when I miss Seattle and the US the most.

It might have been 1998, my second Thanksgiving in Seattle. Visiting with my family, living a hotel downtown life. My sons and their dad headed back to Sweden when dad was done with his work, and I stayed for another week or so to get my job for the Swedish National Radio done. This was the regular pattern for our shorter stays during a lot of years.

It was perfect. Family time with family friends added on with time for myself in the big city.

Only. My sons and their dad departing Seattle leaving me behind was the worst. I loved staying at what’s now Homewood Suites at Pike Street. I loved my downtown life. I loved doing my journalist freelance work. I loved the feeling of temporary freedom. But I hated the moment for separation from my family. I knew I would be fine in a day or two, but I just couldn’t bare them leaving me. Yet I chose to go through that, time after time.

So, 1998 (or was it -97?) they kissed me goodbye and headed back to Sweden on Thanksgiving. I was deserted. Downtown deserted. I cried. I cried my eyes out in my Homewood suite. This was my choice and I cried. Knowing that nice people would surround me in just a few hours didn’t help. I cried.

When it was time for it I crawled out of my self-inflicted misery, put some casual nice clothes on and made my face. I drove my rental through a quiet city and in a little while I was welcomed into a warm house by warm people. Close friends, friends, and friend’s friends. It was Thanksgiving.

My inside was still grieving. Knowing that Trouble 1 would be in pain on the long flight, his ears all clogged up. And maybe Trouble 2 was a little bit sad going back home without his mom. I don’t know how I was perceived that evening. Distracted. Uptight. Shy. Rude. Not quite there. Everyone was truly friendly and nice to me though, making me a part of their Thanksgiving spirit, which was still fairly new to me. The table was long and at my turn, saying the thanksgiving, made it a very special evening.

Late that night I drove back to my downtown home. I’ve never seen the usually 24-7 lit up Seattle skyline that dark. Understanding that most everyone at that time was sitting at a table somewhere surrounded by family or friends. And that some had a very lonely evening. You are never as lonely as when you know you are not supposed to be.

This year I am watching my playwright friend Elizabeth posting video clips on Facebook. Act 1 is already in the morning, someone starting preparing the food. The clips and different acts moves through the day at Grandma Betty’s house in the Catholic part of Capitol Hill where about 30 people from different generations are getting together.

Oh how I miss them. Oh how I miss all my Seattle friends on a day like this. I miss how they are loud and warm and crazy and witty and fun and smart and caring and… I miss them so it hurts. They are a part of me.

And I miss the little bit of American life that I once had. And wanted a lot more of. During those years when I was commuting between US and Sweden I often got the question: so where would you prefer living? A tricky one to answer. I remember responding that if I had to sell my place at the end of the road in my village to become a Seattleite, the choice would be very hard.

For many years though, I had the best of both worlds. But I always wished for more of Seattle. And that’s what I also always pictured. I can still hear myself driving my routes across University Bridge, Downtown, Arboretum, down to Lake Washington, Montlake Cut, Wallingford and U Village, saying out loud: someday I am going to live here! For real! Tanning in Gasworks Park, power walking around Greenlake, watching the sun set in the skyline from Kerry Park, strolling among the house boats in Portage Bay feeling it deep down in the core of my body: someday I am going to live here! For real! Just watch me!

In 2007 I took a first step for more Seattle life. Trouble & Trouble were 19 and 21, big boys already, and I felt that the stretches in Seattle could be extended. I bought a car! Yes I did! I would have my own car waiting for me whenever I landed in The Emerald City! And I invested in a storage unit for my Tempur Pedic mattress, my special Seattle clothes and other essential necessities, which until then had been dragged between tolerant friends basements. The storage even had a view of the new light rail! Yayy!

But life had different plans for me. And today I am thinking that I might have to find a way bringing back all my things to Sweden. It is not likely that I will be able to come back to Seattle. Even if I at some point could do the trip, I couldn’t do it by myself and I couldn’t stay by myself. If I am very lucky maybe my sons will go with me and visit if my body can do it. But a life in Seattle, as it once was and even more as I pictured it, longed for and wanted, no, my hopes for that is buried deep down in me.

So, hearing Elizabeth’s voice and laughter on her Thanksgiving morning makes me sad for myself. I know, it’s not a pretty feeling. But I love that laughter and miss it so much! And only hearing the North West Coast American English that happened to become my language is unlocking a piece of myself, (yes, go ahead and laugh my friends, I am aware of my accent and all my quirky slips, it is still one of my languages!). And I want to be in that language! I want to share 4^th of July with 30 000 people at Gasworks Park (yes friends, laugh on, I will still love it!) and I want to be a part of Thanksgiving, I want it to be one of my Holidays.

I have tried introducing the thanksgiving into one of my Swedish holiday traditions. Not the turkey, the stuffing or the pumpkin pie, but the thanksgiving. I am finding the ritual everyone around a holiday table expressing their gratitude one of the truly most beautiful. My efforts, so far, hasn’t been glorious. But maybe I just have to be persistent. Maybe I need to give it a few more years. If Maria won’t come to Thanksgiving, then Thanksgiving must come to Maria.

November 22 1963/On a brown sofa bed next to a teakwood furniture radio

I was having the midmorning coffee with my colleagues at The Institute for Ecological Sustainability when the Swedish Secretary of State Anna Lindh died from being stabbed in a Stockholm downtown mall. It was September 11 2003.

In bed a Sunday morning February 28 1986 I read how the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot and killed during the night. I had been celebrating my brother in law turning 30 while Olof Palme died. I was going to be a mother in 1,5 month. It was cold outside. That’s how I remember it.

The couch in my childhood living room was dark brown. Flat and firm. It was actually a sofa bed. The texture of the fabric was rough. I can feel the marks in my hands when moving my palm over it. Right beside the sofa was a radio. A big peace of teakwood furniture standing on the floor. It was actually a gramophone combined with a FM AM radio. There was a cabinet in the furniture filled with my parents Long Play records.

That’s where I was sitting 1963 November 22 listening to the news. The president of The United States of America had been shot. He was dead. I was seven years old.

The picture is very clear to me. Next to the living room is the kitchen. That’s where my mother was. I am guessing the radio was on all day. Newscast after newscast giving updates. Telling the same story over and over again. The president had been shot and killed.

I can’t put words on the feelings harboring in the little girl that day next to the radio, more than very uncomfortable and a vague frightening fear. And those feelings were probably my mother’s, not mine really. I was only seven, after all.

It wasn’t long ago that I was struck by the fact that I was born not more than eleven years after the ending of World War 2. Eleven years, that’s nothing! And that explains a lot about the general feeling about the world and life as a scary place when I was a little girl.

My mother was an anxiety-ridden woman. In her mind there was always a catastrophe lurking around the corner. We would all die in a car accident, the house would burn down, me and my sister would be kidnapped or someone would come into our house and kill us while we were watching TV in the basement. These were the ordinary day catastrophes that could happen at any time. And then there was the World War 3.

The World War 3 was hovering over my childhood as a constant brownish-yellow nuclear cloud. Until most recently I imagined every child growing up in the sixties had that experience. I was perplex finding out that wasn’t always the case. Some, I am sure, but not everyone.

I watched the movie JFK not too long ago. And this weekend the mini series Kennedys. And I am peeking into my childhood of teak furniture, cigarettes smoked indoors and Jackie Kennedy dresses. And I am seeing my mother. And coming to understand her better than I have done.

In my mother’s condition of general anxiety it isn’t strange the sixties was a constant fear of the World War 3. The Bay of Pig’s happened when my dad was building our house. We moved in to the new and shiny red brick home of two floors and a basement right before Christmas 1961 but my mother was crying. She couldn’t be happy about the house, World War 3 was coming and our lives and the house wouldn’t last. My parents lived there until they died 2004 and 2005.

I was five and of course didn’t know anything about world politics, but I knew my mother cried. For some reason I didn’t understand. On that brown sofa bed two years later November 22 1963 there was something in the fear that I could understand. I knew there was a president in America and his name was Kennedy. I knew his face. And the beautiful wife my mother so admired, her dresses, hats and purses. There were also two delightful children, a girl only one year younger than me. And the most adorable little boy, a baby brother. He had the same name as his father. The TV in our basement let the world come into our lives. I wonder if that helped or hindered my mom.

The Cold War made us freeze. Sweden at that time was literary in between the two super powers. Norway was NATO allied. Finland was through history and border close to the Soviet Union. Sweden was a tiny neutral skinny piece of land squeezed in between. If the balance tipped over ever so little we would be crushed like a summer mosquito under an annoyed hand.

The fact that Sweden was geographically close to Soviet made us feel more threatened by The Eastern Block. There was always The Russian. The image in my little girl mind was a big brown roaring bear wondering over a snowy field, a smoky breath from his nostrils. He wasn’t that far away. He could be close.

The small town where I grew up is located on the coast of the Bothnian Bay. Finland only four hours away by the ferry. And across Finland was the infinite and until the end of day cold and dark Soviet. What kind of impact on us was it growing up at the water facing the east? I wonder how children growing up in the Swedish mountains next to Norway feel about this time in history.

When I was twelve Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were dead two. The years up to my teens were lined with the most tragically political drama and I was covered in my mother’s anxiety.

They say Sweden lost its’ innocence when Olof Palme was assassinated. Anna Lindh was a beautiful highly liked and skilled politician who was bound to be our next Social Democrat prime minister, and someone stabbed her. Just like that. The February Sunday morning in bed, the midmorning September coffee at work, these are memories that will forever be stored in our collective memory and we all have our individual stories connecting us to the trauma and to each other.

November 22 1963. A seven year-old girl on a brown sofa bed next to a big teakwood radio. Her mother in the kitchen. A little girl is defenseless. Therefore, I think, the murder of President Kennedy is the political assassination that has affected me the most.

I was in Seattle when John F Kennedy Jr. died in a plane crash on his way to a cousin wedding. He was the pilot. July 16 1999. My family walked around Greenlake with friends that afternoon. It was overcast and a bit chilly. There was a tennis ball. We tossed it between each other. I was to be divorced. We had burgers for dinner at Red Robin next to the University Bridge. That’s what I remember. What did I do in the evening? I don’t know. This is how I remember it.

It's been a year now.

I am making me a warm cave under the down comforter on my couch. The house was mysteriously quiet when I woke up, the way it is when everything running on electric power is suddenly off. A storm chased through the northern part of Sweden during the night and the power was out, making my home unusually cold. 30 years ago, when I first moved out to my village, those things happened all the time. Nowadays it’s very rare, not at all like Seattle, which is a lot more vulnerable when it comes to weather situations and power outings. Anyway, the power is back and my house will be warm again soon.

On my couch, yes. Lying down writing. I am having a bad day body wise.

Today, it’s been a year. Since that November Sunday morning 2012 when I in despair called around to find someone who could help me through the day. And the night. Agneta S came and fixed me breakfast. Maria B brought me dinner. And Trouble 1 stayed over at night. Dear friends taking turns helping me out, Trouble 1 carrying the heaviest load, followed the week.

Week nr two a new chapter of my life started. I had to accept that I couldn’t get around on friends and family. I had to accept taking help from strangers. Taking the City home care into my house was a relief that I was grateful too and hated every second of. In a month 35 persons walked through my kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. They got me out of bed, helped me shower and fed me. Still my kitchen drawers are a mess from everyone putting their fingers into my orderly life.

Then came Peter. Peter from the small home care company Civil Care, which I switched to at Christmas. When Peter entered my house it was like a storm eased out. I was safe.

So, it’s been a year now. And this is an anniversary that makes me very sad. Neither Peter nor I imagined this scenario. He pictured me being up and running in a few weeks, I was slightly less optimistic. But I never ever imagined this situation being infinite.

The fact that summer came with less pain and body restrictions made me hopeful. I could still only take very short walks, but I lifted my dumbbells giving me my nice looking arms back and on good days I was actually driving when having a co driver. My friend Eva and I even saw Sting in concert! I started trusting a recovery. I started saying it out loud: I am doing better. I am doing a lot better!

Now, it’s all gone, and I don’t know why. Can it be that my body is happy when it’s warm? When my bare feet can feel the grass and my wooden floors? When my arms are kissed by the sun? When outside and inside is a floating condition trough open doors and windows? I don’t know. No one knows. We just know that it happened. And although I have occasional pain windows (which have miraculously coincided with days when I really needed them!) I have basically been doing worse by the day during fall. Or more accurate: I am doing worse by every other day. It’s different in that sense: I am on a veritable roller coaster.

My very skilled and patient chiropractor Michael is frustrated. All through this year he has been able to lift me up even when I have felt down and discouraged. He has seen progress although I couldn’t always feel it. But now he is frustrated.

My physiotherapist has given up on me. It’s as simple as that. He shook my hand. Said good luck. And let me go. I felt deserted.

So, it’s been a year. At 57 I am a little (175cm) old lady with a walker next to my bed to get me out of it, help with the basic things in life and no way to get myself from one place to another without having a ride. I am still holding on to my new strategy of not giving in, going for what I want and planned, but often it totally takes the toll out of me and sometimes it’s frankly not worth it. Other times, it’s simply not possible.

I shouldn’t complain though. It’s just pain and immobility. Things could be so much worse. And I am very well taken care of.

My two free spirited sons who are struggling to make a future and living in art, music and film are both now hired by Peter and Civil Care. Their mother’s misfortune has given them a part time day job, which was exactly the fortune they needed, and I get to see my sons most every day! It actually works surprisingly well and so my lying-on-the-couch-life has become a win-win situation for everyone involved!

Well, that is, looking beside the fact that there isn’t a lot of winning in lying on the couch for me. I hate it. It is not the life I want.

Two hours later

Trouble 2 locked my door behind him when he left. Turned the lights out downstairs. Let my cat out although she didn’t ask for it. It’s set so I won’t have to go downstairs again tonight. It’s set for me moving around as little as possible.

Trouble 2 was here fixing me a nice salmon for dinner. I could hardly sit up in my couch eating it. I turned acute while he was here. Shooting pain in my right side. Shooting pain is the worst. It makes my body and me terrified. It makes me need the bathroom not knowing if I can’t get myself there. It shuts my brain down.

Trouble 2 just called. Telling me he and Audrey will be coming here staying over until tomorrow. I am closing my eyes trying to convince him that they don’t need to. I know, he says, since you didn’t ask me, but it feels better. I am saying I hate them needing feeling better for my sake. I know, he says, but it feels nicer. It’s not a sacrifice.

I let go of some built up moist in my eyes.

It’s been a year now. It’s a very sad anniversary. I don’t know how to get out of this physical misery more than a day now and then. I don’t know how to reach some stability to trust. I don’t have a clue. And my physio has given up on me. But I know there is a caring son and a girlfriend on their way over here. What more can I ask for?

Persistence X 2 = film

In Seattle there is Paul Allen. In Umeå, Krister Olsson.

As a storyteller and documentarian I have some dream projects. One is telling the story of John W Nordstrom, a Swedish shoemaker who emigrated from Nederluleå starting a shoe store in Seattle 1901. When I first came to Seattle 20 years ago there were 54 Nordstrom stores (which in modern days is an upscale fashion retailer) in the U.S. Today the number is 252 stores. Nordstrom is still widely known for their shoe department and their customer service, the head quarter is still in Seattle and oh how I would love to tell that story!

In Umeå, the dream story is the one about Krister Olsson.

Krister Olsson is the Paul Allen of Umeå. The main developer. The person who pictures the opportunities in a piece of land. Who has the visions, the economical resources and the persistence to follow them through.

They are also the persons who sometimes make politicians and public uncomfortable. The Swedish and American cultures are quite different when it comes to being successful, wealthy and powerful. Those three words are the American Dream in a short story. Sweden, as a basically homogeneous country where we are all descending from farmers with a couple of cows, some acres of land and at best a horse, is in general skeptical towards people who are making noticeable peaks on the national culture codex scale.

Therefore, it is interesting and a bit surprising noticing how the discussions and reactions to Paul Allen,Vulcan and Krister Olsson, Balticgruppen are very similar. Although Seattle is a fairly big American city and Umeå a smaller Swedish one. It seems like there is something about the size of the place and the dimensions of the developers’ acting. When the developer’s footprint gets big it turns intimidating. He (there isn’t a lot of female developers) simply takes up too much space, land wise, economically, and strategically. And this makes people worried.

Krister Olsson and his company Balticgruppen is involved in most every developing project happening in Umeå right now. I am crossing the Umeå River entering Umeå from the south side where my village is located. This fall has been the most beautiful I can remember in my grown up life. The birches and maples have been on fire reflecting in the river. And the flat red brick downtown silhouette has been added on with new buildings rising above creating fresh reflections in the wide and streaming river.

Downstream there is the Art Campus (Konstnärligt campus) and the Art Museum (Bildmuséet), boxes in various sizes out of Russian Lark designed by Danish Henning Larsen. In the city center the Winn Hotel blue and white cross-striped floors emerging from out of the Forsete block, and at the waterfront the Norwegian Snöhetta designed building for cultural arts Väven, busy with getting dressed in the black and white glass exterior inspired by the graphic stem of the Umeå birch, the tree synonymous to the red cedar for Seattle. Balticgruppen is the common denominator for the new Umeå skyline.

In 2004-2007 I made a film-documentation for Balticgruppen, covering a different project. Back then we were talking about documenting Krister Olsson’s life as an entrepreneur on film, and even started on it. Since then he has been busy realizing his visions about Umeå, and so the tale about him hasn’t been neither a priority nor focus. I have never given up the hope of telling his story though, and about every other year I have been making the calls, poking around to make sure the idea wouldn’t die, keeping it alive. Waiting for the timing to be right.

It’s been one of those really nasty November days in Umeå today. Foggy, rainy, windy. About freezing point but feeling like 14°F (-10C). I’ve been sitting on the third floor of Väven wrapped in a big long down coat. The building is still very much in progress and there is no heat inside. Camera man Tomas, sound guy Johannes and me all thought we were dressed and covered for the occasion (after all, we have some routine), but being still and focused on a long interview in a cold humongous building is just…very cold.

I think though, the interviewee was even colder, although the atmosphere was warm. Krister Olsson is known for his persistence. Well, I am too. After nine years of keeping the idea alive, this fall I finally got a yes for telling Krister Olsson’s life on film. I’ve been close a couple of times before but something has always come up. The fact that it is now finally happening has kind of been hard to grasp. Today it became real. And I am so thrilled about it.

And quite proud. And humbled. I have been given a great trust. And I will try my very best to do a good job.

So what about the Nordstrom story? Well, it is yet to be told, at least from the Swedish perspective. And Paul Allen? I wouldn’t say no if I got the question. That’ for sure.

   

Nurse Kerstin's navy blue coat

It was tailored for her. In a navy blue woolen material you can’t find anymore. In the fifties. When she started her studies for becoming a nurse. I kept it after she passed away. And last summer I lost it.

My mother and I had a difficult relationship. She didn’t like me. I can’t remember ever sitting on the lap of my mother. Or getting a hug. Not until she became old and week and needed the hugs for herself. And I didn’t like my mother. I guess you can’t afford liking or wanting someone who in every sense makes you feel unwanted and not likeable. This continued until she died, 82 years old.

She was a nurse, my mother. A member of the first generation educated women with a monthly paycheck. Making them independent of men. My mother and her colleagues were all outspoken, fearless, strict, stern and strong in their professional confidence. I grew up among women who had an obvious place in the community and new their value.

She worked at a nursing home, my mother. That wasn’t what she wished for, she wanted something more, but in the small town where I grew up it was the only option. During my high school summers I worked there too, as an assistant nurse. And that’s how I become aware of my mother as a different person than the wife and mom.

She was a good nurse, my mother. She cared about her patients. She was nice and warm to them. Her group of colleagues was a tight gang who dominated the male doctors and ruled the place. They had a lot of fun together and you could hear their laughter and giggles filling the corridors. At her job, my mother was happy. I very rarely saw her happy at home.

Her fifties nurse uniform had a place at the back of the family walk in closet. A blue and white striped weekday cotton dress. The black wool Sunday dress with pin tucks. And the navy blue double-breasted wool coat. My mother kept her figure most of her life, and I remember her wearing the black dress for Good Fridays and Christmases. Nobody wanted to work those weekends, so my mom and her colleagues made it a thing dressing up, making it more fun and paying respect, although times had changed into white coats and scrubs.

It’s a mystery how those pieces of clothing fitted me perfectly! We were both slender, but my mom was at least 4 inches (10 cm) shorter than me. Yet, the sleeves go all the way down to my wrist. I loved that uniform. It was something about the quality. And weighing the heavy coat in my hand, rubbing my cheek in the Sunday dress, made me feel like they were a door to who my mother was as a young woman. Before me. The child who made her angry and upset.

I didn’t grieve my mother when she died. It wasn’t a loss. And I didn’t hang on to a lot of her things. I didn’t want to be reminded. But I kept her navy blue nurse coat.

I kept the part of my mother who I could bear. Who I could tolerate and even appreciate. I kept the professional woman. The one who cared for her patients and was warm and nice. I kept the laughter and giggle. I kept the happy part of my mom. I kept Nurse Kerstin.

I wore the coat for her funeral. And I wore it for a different funeral last summer. My choir was singing from the church stand and the navy blue was hanging in the coatroom. It was a warm day, and I walked out of there in my summer dress, simply forgetting about the coat.

The day after, it was gone. Someone had stolen Nurse Kerstin’s coat. My relative Lisa who is the church organist looked everywhere for me, but it was gone. I couldn’t believe it. And oh how I blamed myself loosing the only thing of my mom I wanted to hold on to.

I grieved. This was when I lost my mother. Seven years after her passing away. I couldn’t accept that her coat was gone. A part of myself was lost. I spread the word on Facebook and I even put an ad in the local paper: a photo of my mother graduating as a nurse, and begging the thief please to return the coat where he picked it up.

Nothing happened of course and I slowly had to accept the fact but never forgave my carelessness.

A week ago, while writing my weekly posting, Lisa sent me a question: is this your coat? A mobile photo, a bit blurry, followed the inquiry. It was a dark double-breasted coat tossed over a table. My jaw dropped. Picture number two showed Lisa with the coat on. I closed my eyes. I was shaking my head. It was unreal. But yes, it was Nurse Kerstin’s navy blue coat.

One year and three months later it was back in the church coatroom. Just hanging there. Lisa passed the space, like she does a dozen times a day, and from the corner of the eye something called for her. She has never even seen the coat, only heard my description, yet it caught her eye.

Where has it been? What story could it tell?

This weekend is All Saint’s Day weekend in Sweden. Friday evening my sister and our families went to our family graves to celebrate our gone loved ones. A quite Seattle-like rain fell making us cold and wet in the dark November evening, but the cemeteries were glowing from candles at most every stone. It was beautiful.

At my mother and father’s grave in my home town we let them know that Audrey was keeping the rain away with Grandma’s faded pink umbrella, and Trouble 2 was wearing Grandpa’s dark blue fifties hat. And then we told them the amazing and incredible story about a lost, much missed and astonishingly found navy blue wool coat. It was quite a moment.

This Sunday evening I try the coat on for the first time. Unfortunately I have grown a bit too big so I won’t be able to where it (anymore?) (for now?), but it makes me happy just watching it hanging in my hallway. Like it’s never been away.

I rub my nose in the dark fabric. So weird. It smells like my childhood walk in closet. Where has it been? I stick my hands in the pockets. There is some fine debris at the bottom of the right one, feels a bit like saw dust. I am turning the pocket inside out. The dust is reddish-brown. I am putting my nose to it. It smells like my father. There has been a cigarette in the pocket.

My father died from lung cancer five months before my mother passed away. He had been smoking most of his life. The scent of my dad was cigarettes. This is a bit overwhelming. I am washing my hands. The smell is still there. I have wrapped my mother around me and from her right pocket my father is saying hello. I am drinking a glass of cold water.

And then I continue writing my Sunday story. I wonder who took Nurse Kerstin’s coat. I wonder where it was for more than a year. I wonder how it came that the thief returned it. Did she see my ad in the local paper? Did she read my begging for her to return it? And did, 15 months later?

I will never know. But I know Nurse Kerstin is back with me. The part of my mother who I was able to like. I think it will be healing. And my father unexpectedly popping up from her pocket is a welcome greeting from a loving dad.

So, mom and dad, this All Saint’s Weekend. Thank you.