Farmhouse-Penthouse

I am thinking, watching Trouble 1 and Hannes in the hole created where the rusting tin plates and the rotted shingle roof just came off, that this is very far from a penthouse.

It has always been referred to as the Big Barn. It used to be a hay barn, and it sits in between my place and Alida’s. In more modern days it served as storage for farming equipment and later my garden furniture and a lot of things kept just because there is room for them. The old tin roof has been looking sad for many years though and this spring it was a fact: the ridge is giving in. So the question was, do I need to tear it down or should I leave it to simply collapse?

Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the work and effort it is keeping a place like mine. The main house, the baker’s cottage, the woodshed/coach house and the Big Barn. This summer there have been three major concerns heavy on my shoulders: the Big Barn, the south wall of the baker’s cottage (are the ants eating it and do I need to replace the whole wall, not only the boarding suffering from the sun and wind?) and the main house roof.

My place is my maternal grandparents homestead, built 1915-20. It’s my heart and my roots. I am the seventh generation in my village, that’s how far the family tree goes, my sons the eighth. The fields and the forests, planted by my grandfather, is the map I am navigating by. The creek is the blood in my veins.

It is a gift and I am very grateful. But it is also an anchor sometimes too heavy. That’s why I need a penthouse with a view in the place where my lungs are.

Seattle is water and mountains, skies and tall glass buildings. It is the smell of red cedar and the ocean, new memories and those yet to come. My history here is only twenty years old.

It used to be taking off to Seattle was diving into the sky. It was running away from my life in the woods. From the gravity of generations and preconceived notions laid upon me. And even if I was in a really bad place when leaving here, I could trust life running into my body as soon as I was waiting for my welcome-back ride at SeaTac. Filling my lungs with that cedar-ocean spray that lifted my spirits  like a colorful balloon.

Seattle isn’t that quick fix anymore though. Twenty years isn’t seven generations, but it is pretty much 1/3 of my life. And it’s most of my sons’ lives. It is a divorce and the loss of a happy family. It is friends passed away and moving out of town. It is restrained passion and love lost in failed hopes. It is cancer. And it’s a traumatized body from countless back episodes, bedridden stays and nightmare overseas flights.

I live in the woods on an old homestead that used to be a farmhouse. It’s as much on the ground as it can be. It is as much grounded as I can be. The antipode is a penthouse in Seattle. To live in the sky with an unrestricted view of mountains and water, a big city and a tiny home, easy to maintain. It’s as much up in the air as it can be. It’s as high as I can be.

When I returned to Seattle after the cancer, I hadn’t been back for three years. I was a different person. I walked the Northwest soil with baby steps. And I had found the penthouse to fill my lungs.

Opening the door to Main Condo at the corner of Main and 23rd took my breath away. I was in heaven. Literally. The place swam in light and air from the floor-to-ceiling windows facing south and west, and sitting at the 700 square feet patio was like being on a mountaintop overlooking the city and the Sound. The place had Maria written all over, everything was perfect, even the parking; the best spots in the garage! And it was for sale!!

I was renting from the lovely Debra who wouldn’t mind selling to me. I didn’t have the money of course, but my dear friend Randi and I bought lottery tickets, convinced that this was meant to be! I am not a lottery person, I am not lucky in that way, and of course the money didn’t come my way. But I had a great experience, and it turned out I was right: I was a penthouse woman as much as I am a farmhouse girl!

And yesterday the farmhouse girl was leading the Saving the Big Barn project. In the morning already Alida’s son Melker started the chainsaw. Hannes down the road joined with the hammer drill and the team was completed with Trouble & Trouble who used to keep the barn as their hut and climbing wall when they grew up.

The plan was to strengthen the two rotting roof beams with new ones attached to the old. Then remove the rusting tin plates and dig out the soft shingles underneath. The next step would be to replace the decayed crossbars. Would the plan work?

It did! It was exciting I have to say, because the barn is tall and the roof neither accessible nor safe to work. But the Big Barn rescue team was just perfect for the mission as Hannes is a climber and Trouble & Trouble Parkour seniors with height experience, not to talk about the Koja/Treehouse project!

It is mid September. We’ve had lots of summer days although fall is officially here. And I have taken care of two of my three major concerns. I’ve had the main house roof inspected and assured that it’s okay and will last for 10, maybe 15 more years!! And yesterday my fantastic neighbors and sons saved the Big Barn for at least this winter and I am so grateful.

The south wall of the baker’s cottage I am letting go for now. Next summer new missions. And, yes, I am aiming for another penthouse experience. The roots need the air. The heart needs the lungs. The antipodes need each other.

 

A little bit less lonely

-       Take this, these guys will keep you company!

It was Eastern 2009, I had just started chemo and my friend Majsan borrowed me her Sex and The City box. I had never watched the TV series, not even been curious about it. But here I was, at one of the most difficult and loneliest times in my life, and I sure needed some distraction and entertainment.

I developed a routine. I finished every night of my troubled days with one or two episodes of Sex and the City. I got to know Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha. Their characters, their personalities, their dreams and fears. And was surprised that the series wasn’t about sex at all.                

Sex and the City is about four lonely people in a big city. Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha don’t have families. There are no parents or siblings. They are four solitaires creating their own family together. But at the end of the day they go home to their own apartments carrying their dreams and fears in take out food boxes, a pair of new shoes or a designers bag. And they fall asleep by themselves if there isn’t a temporary date or a complicated relationship keeping them company.

The four women became my best friends. I was struggling the cancer mainly by myself. Most days I didn’t talk to anyone. The phone didn’t ring and my house was empty. In the evenings I watched TV, what was on. I had no energy for films or books, and I didn’t like going to bed in the evening because I dreaded waking up the next morning, everything the same. 

Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha became my late night comfort. Dragging myself through the days they were my light ahead. My evening friends showing up always when I needed them. And then I could go to sleep feeling a little bit less lonely.

I was also surprised and taken by how the series developed and what the characters had to face. Miranda, who was all focused on her lawyer carrier and no way would have a family suddenly was pregnant and chose to keep the baby. Charlotte, the good-hearted girl who believes in love and would die for a family, can’t have children. And Samantha, the sex goddess whose main asset is her fabulous body, gets breast cancer. And yes, they have each other, but at the core they need to take care of their challenges themselves, alone at night. Like I did.

My friend Majsan was right: they kept me company during a very difficult time. But they also became my friends. Today, my best TV-friends are the surgeons at Grey’s Anatomy. 

Again, I hadn’t followed the series. But a year ago, when I was sitting in my September Seattle penthouse with my back out and the city skyline as an out of this world post card outside my floor-to-roof window, I bumped into the same view at the TV screen next to the window, and started watching. And back in Sweden with the safety alarm on my wrist and home care putting the dinner tray at my lap here on my couch, it turned out the Seattle doctors were on every day right at dinnertime. I was hooked. Such great company.

And again. Grey’s isn’t mainly about doctors at a hospital. It’s about people struggling with their lives. Jobs, careers and most of all, relationships. The hospital is just a setting for their stories. A parallel story. Like sex in S&C. And like Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha they are solitaires. Alone at heart.

We come to this world alone. And we die alone. In between that, if we are lucky, we share our lives with other people. With friends and family. Or, as the women in S&C and the doctors at Seattle Grey’s, we create untraditional families.

And if not, TV-friends are not to be understated. As long as the home electronics works, they won’t abandon or fail you. They will show up and might even wait for you. Perhaps they won’t love you as you love them, but sometimes they will ask you questions that you need to think about. Or give you unexpected advice that might guide you on your journey. And they may make you go to bed a little bit more safe and less lonely.

My friend Majsan knew something I didn’t know that Eastern 2009. And I will always be grateful that she did.

My two summers

It’s delivered as it was ordered for the exact right day! It’s literally poring down this first September day, the day we count as the beginning of fall in Sweden. So yesterday was the last official day of summer and I was sitting under my apple tree working, grateful about still open doors and windows, cherishing the sun.

But today doors and windows are sheltering me from this first heavy fall rain. This is the time of year I am migrating west if I have wings for it. That is, if I didn’t fly over for August already.

It’s just the perfect combo for a summer: June July in Sweden when the light refund from our pitch-dark winters keeps us up around the clock and the wild flowers grow tall and delicate. And then when the anxiety of the fading daylight evenings grabs me and the meadows are withered, I spread my wings and arrive in Seattle at the peak of the summer. Or, if going for September, getting one whole month more of warmth and sun, usually not having the confrontation with the above 90° F (32° C) heat waves though.

Not that I mind the heat waves. Not at all. My body is a battery always in need of serious charging; I simply cannot get enough. The pleasure of the sun against my skin, being embraced by that dry heat, is the proof that I need it.

The Swedish summer is outstanding, mostly for the light, if it’s a good one. It’s unreliable though. Sometimes the Swedish summer is like today, more like a Seattle winter. The Seattle summers on the other hand are very reliable. Once we are passed July 4^th it’s a three-month stretch of sun and temperatures around 80F and more. This year there was no measurable rain in July, and my September stay 2012 was a five-week spell of eternal sunshine and warmth.

And yes, now it’s even scientifically proven! Seattle is the only US city I have been living in, but I can’t imagine American summers being lovelier than in The Emerald City. And, it turns out I am right!

Seattle has now officially sailed passed Portland, Oregon (and every other city) as the nicest place to be in the US during the summer! Why? Well, the Pacific Ocean is the simple answer. As the Pacific makes nine months of the year rainy and quite gloomy, it works the other way around during the summer. But even though temperatures can occasionally rise to close to 100F (ca 38C), the cool Pacific keeps the air dry, and you never get those muggy almost unbearable days the East coast has to fight. The ocean also makes the evening cool off, although I as a northern Swede find them incredibly warm and I just love it and can’t get enough of them!

So, won’t I miss them, entering the fall now? Of course I will. Especially on an evening like this with the rain poring down on my windows. Usually I spend the first part of the summer hunting for a flight to Seattle, browsing Craig’s List for a penthouse with a view for the latter part of my summer. Yes, you heard me right; I am hooked on penthouses, but more on that some other time.

Although my back and I are doing a lot better I couldn’t make it to Seattle this summer. There is no way I can do an overseas flight. And as I am not quite driving yet I couldn’t get around in Seattle. I can’t go to the grocery store by myself. Heck, I haven’t even been in downtown Umeå by myself for more than nine months, so Seattle is definitely out of the question.

Which has, in a way made the summer over here in Sweden more peaceful. Not the usual restlessness and Internet hunt anxiety hanging over me. That’s been kind of nice. And so has the summer weather! Second part of May was hot and wonderful, our only heat spell, but over all we’ve had a lot of sun and temperatures between 60-70F (16-22C), which is good for a Swedish summer. I’ve had more breakfasts under my apple tree than indoors and I’ve been barefoot more days than wearing shoes! That’s my Swedish summer happiness!

If I were free to choose I would live somewhere where the air was always warm against my skin. Where my bare feet could always touch a smooth wooden floor or a cool stone one. Where the soft grass or a sand beach transmits its’ sensations through my body. Where the warmth makes my joints move effortless. Where the door could always be open erasing the border between inside and outside. Where there was no need for winter clothes and heavy shoes. If I were free in that sense.

It’s September 1. The initial day of fall and it’s poring down. I’ve lit my first candles for the season. In Seattle it’s 79°F (26°C) and there is one more month of summer to expect. But I have had a summer to be grateful for. Wild flowers, light, little walks, neighbor hangouts, Sting, and some days with the top down on my Chrysler Le Baron. My body has soaked up all the heat it could find and I feel like my battery is charged, if not for the whole winter but for the fall to come. And as I am continuously getting stronger I will trust my wings for migrating west next August. And that will get me through the winter.

Moving in a good circle

-       You are looking a lot better Maria. Really, a lot!

This is Michael talking. Michael is my chiropractor here in Umeå. He started his practice pretty much when I started my now 27-year career as a back patient. He is the one who has, by far, treated me the most.

I am a tough case. Usually, when I see a new practitioner they are all optimistic and positive, convinced that they will be the one finding the core of my problem, fixing me. At the 5^th-6^th treatment I am sitting there comforting them though. Telling them that nobody in this whole wide world has been able to help me. So, please don’t be sad. And then I smile and move on to someone else for a while, to give the poor person some space. Careful not to let them know what it feels like inside of me.

I don’t know how many have been treating me over the years. In Seattle, at least six different people, my dear friend Randi being the most patient and loving of them all. In Umeå I would say 15-20 chiropractors, osteopaths, physiotherapists, massage therapists, acupuncturist and naturopaths. And then one in Northern Ireland. And I am sure somewhere else. And it’s been hundreds and hundreds of thousands kronor out of my wallet.

- You really do look a lot better.

Michael was on call around New Years. I hadn’t seen him for about four years, letting him rest. But here we were again, like so many times before, only: I was worse than ever.

Michael is looking at me with new eyes though, not intimidated or depressed about my sad condition. He has studied, now working with a different technique then he used to. And he tells me that he thinks my main problems are at the bottom of my pelvis and in my neck. And that everything in between is secondary to that. And in good spirits he takes on the assignment helping me out.

I have seen Michael pretty much two times a week since January. A month later I got his first “Maria, you are looking better”. In March he told me about his measuring points, which told him I wasn’t as twisted as when I first came in. I didn’t feel that much difference myself, but clinging hopefully to Michaels testimonials, “Trust me Maria, you are getting better.”

I have never before experienced the power in someone believing in me. I showed up in Michael’s office many times lost in discourage and pain, frustrated about my condition and situation, feeling like I did no progress at all. And I left with his words ringing in my ears:

-       I have to say, this looks fantastic.

At the very end of May, the day for the funeral of my dear uncle Lennart, I found myself forgetting my back support at the house, being up and about for a whole day without it! This was the first sign of a turning point. It took my brain and body that long to understand what Michael had been saying for 3-4 months: that I was doing a lot better.

Since then I have been more stable and I am slowly getting stronger. I have been able starting working out with my upper body and can now do 4,5 kilo (about 10 pounds) with my biceps and triceps (8 kilos = 17-18 pounds in my hay days)! I am so happy: I never thought I would get my arms back again!! I still have to be very careful about my lower back though, but hopefully, some day…

And I am driving! Well, rephrasing: on a good day I am driving my summer car, the Le Baron which doesn’t have a stick shift and is therefore more gentle on my pelvis. It also has a power seat so that I can adjust the angles while driving, if necessary. Also, I am only driving with a co driver, not ready to be alone in the car yet.

What is still tricky is walking, since my pelvis is still unstable and often a bit twisted. I am not doing more than 400 meter (0,25 mile) at a time, but 2, 3, or even 4 times a day, which makes me end up at a mile on a really good day, and that’s pretty darn good!

And, in August, at the time when most Swedes are returning to their desks at the office, I was able to move my 9 months couch corner office down to it’s regular place at the bottom floor! Oh the joy sitting up straight in my beautiful office with my computer on my desk in front of me!! I can’t of course do 9-5, but 2-3 hours at a time, and I just love it!

On May 5^th under the title You always have a choice. They say / Part 2, I was listing 77 more or less impossible dreams that I wanted to do. I am happy to announce that 9 of those dreams have this summer been achieved!

·      Go to a concert (Sting!)

·      Drive        (at least semi driving)

·      Move around without back support

·      Sit for hours with my beloved neighbor Alida drinking tea and talking about life and death

·      Climb a ladder (to get to The Treehouse / Kojan)

·      Stand up and sit sown without the fear of being stabbed by a knife in the back

·      Change linen in my bed

·      Cook       (at least semi cooking)

·      Have a shop till you drop afternoon with a friend (although I dropped in about an hour, but thank you Agneta and Agnes!)

Within reach are Going to the movies and Going to a restaurant. And I am having my breakfasts at the kitchen table or outside, and even doing a little bit of happy dancing on a good day! Curios for the rest of the 77- item list? Look here of what to expect: http://homeisawayawayishome.blogspot.se/2013/05/you-always-have-choice-they-saypart-2.html

It’s 9.30 PM and it’s already dark outside. The day was beautiful. 70°F, perfectly blue sky and a light breeze. I didn’t make it to the beach this summer (one of the dreams), but I’ve spent many afternoons on my sun-bed on the grass behind the bakers’ cottage, and that’s good enough. Today might have been the last one. Late August is usually early fall here on the 64^th latitude, and so having a tanning day August 25 is rare and wonderful, a late summer memory to cherish when temperatures are dropping.

-       You are looking a lot better Maria. You really do.

Yes, I am beginning to believe that I do. And I can feel it too. It’s a bit magical that it might be Michael, who has seen me for 27 years, possibly finding the roots for my dysfunctional body. I feel like I have been moving in a big circle. And I think Michael is as happy as I am about that circle.

Headlines for billionaires

So, it echoed all the way over here. Every newscast reported. The big news that Jeff Bezos was buying the Washington Post. The Millennium innovator meeting the legendary 136-year old newspaper. And once again a successful Seattle billionaire is making headlines.

In 1993, when I first came to Seattle, Microsoft was still a company, a young adult at age. People working at Microsoft were young too. You were (and to a large extend still is) expected to work around the clock, and important meetings were scheduled in the evenings. That took care of the problem with employees starting families. If you had to go home to your children in the evening, you were out of the loop at the office, a self-regulating lay off system to keep the company young.

Bill Gates was accused for being greedy. Donations from his burgeoning wealth seemed to be in his own interest: computers and software only. His 6100 square meter mansion took seven years (1988-95) to complete. I remember the building cranes south of the 520 Bridge bridgehead at Lake Washington in Medina. Year after year. Although Seattle is populated with a large amount of wealthy people and the city is sprinkled with spectacular homes, the Gates’ building site was kind of obnoxious and the talk of the town for about ten years.

At about the time when Bill Gates and his wife Melinda moved in to their Pacific Lodge-style, super high tech earth-sheltered (cut into the mountain) home, Jeff Bezos came driving across the country from New York, writing up the Amazon.com business plan on the way.

The reason for him to choose Seattle for his fresh internet-based business, was a then new US Supreme Court rule that online retailers would not have to collect sales taxes in states where they lack a physical presence"; he headed to Washington because of it’s small population and presumptive customers mostly being out of state. That was his plan.

And the plan worked. Amazon started out as an Internet bookstore. Then added music, film and today you can bay most anything from A to Z from the company, even food! Amazon is now the world’s largest online retailer. As Microsoft is the largest company in software developing.

While Bill Gates and his company have matured and found their places in Seattle and the world, Jeff Bezos and Amazon are still young. Back in 1993 it wasn’t on the map that Bill Gates would turn into the most generous and powerful philanthropist in the world. The home of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was until they moved in to their new headquarters across from Seattle Center in 2011, a humble Eastlake building which you had to look for to find.

Amazon, on the other hand, is now the teenager who is taking up far more space than some of Seattle is comfortable with. And interesting it is, that there is a link between the two biggest-in-the-world companies.

Paul Allen founded Microsoft with his Lakeside high school pal Bill Gates. He left the company in 2000 to focus on philanthropy and developing within his company Vulcan Inc. 1992 already, he started investing in South Lake Union, a run down industrial area in the middle of Seattle, neighboring the southern tip of pretty Lake Union. Today Vulcan owns a large part of it. The South Lake Union redevelopment represents one of the largest urban revitalization projects in the US. New residential areas, office, retail and biotech research space are replacing one-story garages, paint shops and boat supplies.

Amazon started out pretty much as an underground thing where sales people were picked from the street (this was in 1994 and everybody was hiring) answering phones on desks made out of old doors placed on home made hammer-and-nailed wooden frames. Today, the Amazon headquarters campus at South Lake Union is totaling 11 buildings, built by Vulcan and later purchased by Amazon. The Amazon presence in Downtown Seattle is in total 6 million square feet with a workforce of 91 000 employees, pretty much the exact same numbers as Microsoft which is located in Redmond, Eastside Seattle.

That said, Amazon has kept a low profile. You won’t find any logos on those buildings. That’s why their new three block development in progress at South Lake Union is racing eyebrows: three giant glass-and-steel spheres capable of accommodating mature trees, accompanied by high-rise office towers. Built by Vulcan.

So, the basement flannel company is coming out in the daylight, needing air and taking up a lot of Seattle space. And the founder, Jeff Bezos, is investing in the more eastern Washington, buying the Washington Post.

When I first came to Seattle twenty years ago, Microsoft was about 20 years old, an annoying young adult. Bill Gates, at that age, made the impression still fighting acne, needing a lot of deodorant. Amazon started the year after and is today the same age: a baby cuckoo needing a bigger nest. Jeff Bezos has been a much more reticent public figure than Bill Gates. His private Washington Post purchase is therefore raising eyebrows the same way the giant glass spheres do.

But who knows what Jeff Bezos legacy will be in another twenty years? Bill Gates certainly surprised everyone. Only time will tell.

The treasure hunt

-       I want that one!

-       Me too!

It is eight years now since my sister and I cleaned out the house where we grew up and put it up for sale. Our parents had both passed away that winter, dad right before Christmas, mom when the birches turned green in May.

Our father was a strong tall life-affirming man who suddenly was diagnosed with lung cancer and was gone within six months. Our mother had hurried through life sad and in anxiousness, at the end crippled by several physical diagnoses. It wasn’t in our fantasy that we would loose our dad before mom, but we did. And five months later she gave up her life.

My sister and I are mothers of altogether five sons. They were all teenagers when their grandparents died. Going through their things they kept some treasures, little things that were grandpa and grandma to them, boy’s memories that fitted into a teenage room.

Me and my sister had a feeling though that they might appreciate different things when they grew older. And so we boxed up dinnerware and kitchen utensils, the Christmas crib and the church playing Silent Night, and of course the crystal chandelier that neither of us desired. The boxes have been sitting at the attic of my baker’s cottage all these years, waiting for the right time to come. And the right time was now.

More exactly this week. Trouble 2 back from Paris. Cousin 1 back from Canada. But Trouble 1 leaving for US on Monday. And Cousin 3 for Barcelona in a couple of weeks. So, on to it!

-       That used to be my favorite!

-       It was mine too!

We all gathered Wednesday afternoon starting out with take out pizza under my apple tree. I don’t think there have ever been pizza under that tree, but there is a first time for everything. And we sure needed a great deal of energy before opening up those dust covered boxes.

Cousin 1 married a year ago and has a new home. Trouble 2 and Audrey did just move into their first apartment, and Trouble 1 and Fay are planning for a future together. Cousin 2 and 3 have brutally been kicked out of their home since my sister and husband recently scaled down. So the timing for all five sons to dig in to those boxes was perfect!

It was a beautiful evening so the event happened outside in my front yard. My sister and I comfortable in chairs while our sons and girlfriends spread cutlery, tablecloths and teacups on the grass, hunting for treasures.

It was fun. It was emotional. It was overwhelming. And it was a bit magic.

I am often thinking how my parents would have loved their grandsons’s choice of girlfriends. And how sad it is that they didn’t get to meet. But that evening, watching Audrey and Fay’s happiness over the crystal chandelier and the Christmas crib, I felt like they met. Like they really did. Dinnerware and cutlery that used to pass Grandpa and Grandma’s hands every day, now tenderly received by the hands of two young women who love their grandsons and want to share their lives.

-       Oh, I had forgot about that one!

-       How could you, it’s unforgettable!

The evening was turning chilly as the boxes and treasures found their new owners. But the most spectacular sky kept us outside yet a while. None of us had ever seen anything like it: blue, violet, turquoise, purple, red, orange, yellow, pearl, a rainbow of colors playing above us as the sun was setting. Playing above the roof of the baker’s cottage where Grandpa and Grandma spent so many summers. Above the fields which Grandma’s father once farmed.

At my kitchen table later, warm, their daughters and families having tea together. Passing around Grandpa’s golden watch and Grandma’s golden bracelet. Their wedding rings. What to do with those? We agreed on not making any decisions there and then. It had been a long evening.

I had a hard time sleeping that night. That’s okay, I know the routine: a tossing and turning night, empty of rest, follow a day packed with impressions and emotions. It’s been eight years since I boxed up my mom and dad. Years packed with challenges and life turning changes.  The sight now of my mom’s omelet pan makes me take a deep breath. My dad’s blue apron designed as a dressed up west makes me smile and miss him like crazy. Looking at their everyday things from my childhood home is looking at myself.

The day after I was exhausted. Body and soul. Happy though. Happy because we were all there meeting Grandpa and Grandma once again, together. And because the two of them will live on in the homes of Trouble & Trouble and Cousin 1,2 and 3. What used to be everyday things to them, my sister and me, are treasures to the next generation. Happily received and cherished. A Grandpa and Grandma forever remembered.

Taking pride in little dreams fulfilled

I have all these dreams. For myself. And for my place here at the end of the road. In May, under the title “You always have a choice. They say/part 2” http://homeisawayawayishome.blogspot.se/2013/05/you-always-have-choice-they-saypart-2.html, I was listing 77 of them. Yes 77. Everything from “pick something up from the floor - buy the Smith Tower. To “go to the movies - dig a lake or two”.

I don’t have a problem finding 77 dreams, big and small, utopias and maybe-a-possibility-at-some-point. It’s very easy to get overwhelmed and discouraged about everything I want and want to do that can’t happen. And hard to see that I, in spite of everything, circumstances and challenges, have managed to accomplish and fulfill some small things that used to be on my long list before it was narrowed down to only 77.

In the seventies my mother planted a couple of lupines in front of the cute outhouse, where the barn used to be. Over the years they have spread to a June-beautiful sea of white, pink, scarlet and different shades of blue. The place has felt kind of flat though. I wanted to add something to give it some height. Also, I felt like it needed some centerpiece.

I had spotted a big rock in the grove between my place and Alida’s. Dark grey, like a stranded baby elephant. Everyone told me it was too big to move. Well, if you say so… I laid my eyes on a smaller one for a different location and asked Sören to bring his tractor. He did. But even though it was way too small for my needs it was quite enough for Sören’s tractor, and it took a while to get it into his bucket and put it in the right place, just in front of the lupines. Nice!

Should I give up on the baby elephant?  That’s what everyone told me to. But, what about Jonas? Jonas and Sören are the two farmers in my village. It turned out that Jonas was more heavily equipped than Sören, and yes, he could probably do it! Watching him wake the elephant up and let if fall asleep again in the middle of mother’s sea of lupines was a spectacle! And my feeling had been right, that was exactly what was needed and the hidden elephant of the woods was given a new life. And ha, it could be done! Don’t ever tell me what’s possible and not! I literary felt like I could move mountains!

I love the traditional American Aaron Deck Chair. Summer -07 while in Seattle, I saw a picture of four chairs in four shades of yellow, green, blue and red, one color per chair. So Seattle! So fun! I love how playful art and crafts are in Seattle! And the idea of doing something similar back home was firmly planted in me.

Summer -09, the chemo summer, I bought a deck chair at one of those low cost Home Depot kind-of places (Jula) in Sweden. It was plain natural pine, about 30 dollars – I was lucky to even find one, they weren’t as common here back then. And then I got myself the colors I wanted. Four shades of blue and violet. Just some paint, not a big deal. Well, as the chair was going to be on the grass in front of the lupines under the birch tree and the open sky I needed out door paint. Only 90 bucks… Did anyone have opinions about this? What do you think?

Then I dismounted the whole chair. And it wasn’t a four-part back. It was a seven. And then on to the paint job.

It was a sad summer. Not only because of the chemo but the weather. A no-good summer for painting. It was raining a lot. And very windy, as it always is. I can truly say that it took me the whole summer and a good part of the fall to make this Seattle fun thing become reality in Sweden. Every single part of the chair needed three coats of paint. Most of it I had to do inside because of the weather. And, of course, I was very week. I could only do so much at a time. But, finally it was done.

It’s now the forth summer I am enjoying this Seattle inspired jewelry in front of my mothers lupine sea and the two impossible-to-move rocks. I’m so glad I put all that money into that paint, because the finish is still as beautiful as when it was first done.

The very same summer Trouble & Trouble and I planted for baby apple trees in the lupine sea. The winters to come should be really hard on those babies, but they have all survived snow, deer and field mice and are looking good, spreading above the lupines and framing those impossible rocks.

Now, a forth dream for this spot is a water lily in a zinc bucket under the birch tree with the deck chair. Shouldn’t be that hard? Well, the zinc bucket is a substitute for a good size pond, so it’ really just a tiny dream. But water lilies need some depth so it took me many years to find a deep enough bucket. Which I did last summer.

My cousin Pär helped me plant the water lily in some special clay at the bottom of the bucket. Pär lives in Miami and knows his way around water plants. I am sure he did everything right, but somehow the poor lily didn’t seem to enjoy her life deep down in the bucket, she just stayed down there and the water and clay turned to a dark green mess. At my return from Seattle in the beginning of October there was a crust of ice slicing the poor thing and I gave her back to nature. I had to give in for the moment.

But I am not giving up! This summer I haven’t had a chance to make it a new try, but hopefully next year. Because I am looking at my mothers lupines, which were just a couple to start with and I know her dream was a sea of them. And then I added my dreams: the rocks, the colorful deck chair and the four baby apple trees. I will just keep on trying for my water lily.

So, there is this list of 77 more or less impossible dreams. Add three that I actually accomplished and fulfilled. In spite of everything, circumstances and challenges. Check, check, check. And help me remember that I did. It was possible. It’s not big dreams. They are small and very down to earth. They are dreams I can look at every day though, thinking; I did it. Goddamn, I actually did it.