This is the case. My case/part 3

It’s tomorrow. It’s the day before The Day. And I am terrified.

I have spent many weeks preparing and today I am in on the home stretch. My lawyer and I have been through all the questions he is going to ask me and I have worked hard to get the answers right, not leaving anything important out. Formulating myself is my arena so I should feel somewhat safe. Now, I might if I was allowed a script or at least key words. But I am not. 

So, what do I do? I am spending the day memorizing. And it’s a lot. Don’t I trust my lawyer on doing his job. I do.

The thing is, this is about me. I will be in court tomorrow and the verdict will decide my future. My lawyer won’t be better than I have prepared him to be. I am the one giving him the information about my situation and a win or loose can depend on details I have given him or blanked out on.

It’s funny, I feel a lot as when I was a reporter at Swedish National Television briefing the host of the investigating consumers show before going live. God, make me not forget something really important!

The other thing is, in whatever situation I have been in in my life I am the one having the overview. I am the one seeing the whole picture. And outside the picture. Around the corners. And people around me trust me (for good or worse) to fix whatever it is. Now, I have never been in a court room before. I don’t see any picture what so ever. Which of course scares me like shit. So I am trying desperately to make me a picture.

The third thing is, in my life I have no experience of anyone speaking up for me. Correction, it has happened once (just a few years ago), and it was a strange, highly unexpected and wonderful treat. I was stunned. Not even in Swedish can I express the depth on an emotional level of that experience.

The past few weeks a nice young man have put in a lot more hours than he will be payed for in understanding my situation and making it a case. Trying to solve a very difficult situation for me. And tomorrow he will speak up for me in the court room. I can’t really wrap my head around it.

So, now I will spend the last hours on this home stretch memorizing as much as I can possibly do. And trust my lawyer to get me on track if I get lost. Or blanks. Or, my worst nightmare, if I pass the Fight and Flight system and go into Freeze Mode.

For now I need to stay away from the emotional part of me and keep my head clear and my body calm. And I am asking everyone out there to send good thoughts, light and love to northern Sweden Monday afternoon starting 1PM. Gosh Seattle, that’s 4AM! Okay, from you I am asking for nice dreams for me or maybe set your alarm on a powerful meditation before the sun rises. Thank you!

A Washington Initiative for change

The experience was surreal. A sleepy Sunday on a Seattle Downtown escalator, surrounded by people wearing NRA badges. Related to what’s happened in Washington State these past weeks, the memory comes back.

On October 24 a teenage boy shot five other teenagers and then himself in the Marysville-Pilchuck Highschool cafeteria in Snohomish County about an hour north of Seattle. Today five of the children are dead, only one survived. No, they weren’t young men or women, they were 14 and 15 year old children, three girls and two boys. Now dead by a gun. The reason for the deeply tragic shooting including relatives and members of the Tulalip Tribe will probably never be clarified. Funerals and memorial services so far have gathered thousands. 

The U.S. Mid Term Elections were held November 4. As always in a U.S election the different states are also going to the ballots about state initiatives. Which means, you give your vote pro or con a proposition which only affects your state. For example, Washington and Colorado earlier voted for legalization of marijuana for recreational use. Oregon followed in this election.

Now, on November 4 the people of Washington State were offered to vote on five ballot measures, one of them was Initiative 594, concerning background checks for firearm sales and transfers. The initiative makes sure anyone buying a gun in Washington State passes the same background check, no matter where they buy the gun and no matter whom they buy it from.

So, what about the experience on the Seattle Downtown escalator?

Well, it was a Sunday, I think in 1997. I had left my family in our Boyer Avenue home and took the car to Convention Center which I did three times a week to get my workout at Gold’s Gym. I would guess Trouble & Trouble were sitting at the dining room table drawing or playing with their next door friends Carel and Nick. 

I parked in the Convention Center garage and took, as always, the escalator to the gym floor. Although the Convention Center is a very public place, it is often surprisingly quiet. Not this Sunday though. A lot of people, a lot of badges. A lot of pins. I glanced at the messages. And remembered. This was the weekend for the National Rifle Association convention. I was surrounded by people who’s opinion was owning guns is more or less a human right.

Sensing the situation now I feel like I wanted to make myself as little as possible. Invisible. I was scared. I was surrounded by a culture so foreign to me I felt like I had landed on a different planet with evil aliens. Or being an extra in the escalator scene of a violent thriller.

What made the scene even more unreal was the fact there weren’t only men on the set. There were women. There were families. There were children. Children the same age as Trouble & Trouble momentary drawing at the dining room table on a slow Sunday afternoon. Children wearing pins saying “Don’t touch my gun”. It was surreal.

I feel now like that scene was in slow motion. I was at my step of the escalator standing as still as possible. Looking straight forward, glancing at the pins from the corner of my eye. Like, as if I didn’t move I wouldn’t stir the situation up and make it explosive.

Now, on November 4 Washington State voted yes on Initiative 594 and became the first state in the U.S. to close the background checks loophole by popular vote. 594 extends the currently used criminal and public safety background checks by licensed dealers to cover all firearm sales and transfers, including gun show and online sales, with reasonable exceptions. This is something to celebrate!

Some say this won’t change anything. If you want a gun you will get yourself a gun. And I’m sure that’s true. But it’s a start. It won’t bring Andrew, Nate, Zoe, Gia, Shaylee and Jaylen in Marysville back to life. And there will be more shootings, in schools, and elsewhere. But the people of Washington has made a strong mark. As the first state in the U.S. they want a change for the future.

This is the case. My case/part 2

November 17. That’s the date for my case in the court hearing (Förvaltningsrätten). I was summoned the other day.

Right now I feel a little bit better about the situation. I have a strong and clear attestation (is that a word that works here?) from my doctor. Another one from a nurse specialized in pain who have seen me for several years. A third describing every situation throughout the day and the help I need in each one of them. And Awara who is one of the owners of Civil Care (my home care company), Josephine (who works for them and also is my neighbor) and Trouble 2 are approved and summoned as witnesses.

But the reason to why I Friday afternoon felt like a glass of champagne is that I got myself a lawyer!

Very few lawyers are specialized in this field. There isn’t a lot of money to make on poor, sick, disabled and vulnerable people. And the cases don’t make head lines in the news papers. A bit like why pain is not an interesting research field, it won’t give you a Nobel Prize.

In Umeå there is only one law firm with some knowledge in these matters. I called them a while ago and talked to a vey nice young man who couldn’t take me on because of time issues.

- If I can’t put love into a case I have to say no.

A lawyer talking in terms of love! Although my disappointment I was smiling at my end of the line, saying, at least I know you are the right person for me.

Now, my hearing was postponed and the nice young man agreed on meeting me. Which happened Friday late afternoon. When most everyone was preparing for Halloween parties or lit candles on their loved ones graves on All Saints Eve, he drove all the way to the end of the road in my little village and sat with me for two hours listening to my long and sad story.

He listened. He took it all in. He questioned everything I questioned in the City decision denying me the help I need. He read the different attestations telling about my physical conditions and my situation and he said:

- We’ve got a case.

Oh how I had dreamt of those words!

We have no clue of course. A court is a court. And even if we should win, the City might very well appeal to a higher court (Kammarrätten) and I would have to continue my fight. Fight, fight, fight.

It’s interesting. I am discovering something I didn’t know about myself. A court is a court. It’s square. Strict with sharp corners. Steel and concrete. That’s the nature of it and that is how it must be. As a pretty articulate (in my mother tongue) person, communicative and with some talent in connecting to people, I am suddenly realizing the world around me being bendable. I’ve never thought about it that way. Plastic. Ductile. Moldable. The world around me, to some degree, is shaped depending on how well I am doing making contact with people and formulating myself. It sounds manipulative, breaking it down like this, I hope it isn’t though.

But here I am, on my way to court, in a matter about life, and the talents that I trust (without being aware of it) are insignificant. No good. Or even to my disadvantage. I need to really watch myself. Make myself a bit square. Not to come across as a manipulator. And ruin things for myself.

So. It’s Friday evening. The sweet lawyer is petting my kitten who hasn’t left his side during the two hours. He is telling me that he will be with me during the hearing and bring my claim in court. And from now on, he will be the one doing the job.

I can’t express the relief and gratitude I am feeling. The whole thing is still extremely scary. This is serious. But I am not alone anymore. We have a case.

Passing on valuable knowledge/saved by helping hands

It’s been poring down. The winds at gale force and gutsy. The last couple of days have been like a Seattle winter. And I can hear the sturdy wind chimes playing at my front porch, the one I bought down at Pioneer Square on my first stay in Seattle 21 years ago. It was on the very end of the stay, 22 $ we couldn’t afford, but yet couldn’t leave behind.

Entering the dark and cold season isn’t my cup of tea. The combination of closing the front door to keep the cold out for nine months / all the things that didn’t get done at my place this summer. Not this summer either. Doesn’t make me happy.

Saving the roof of the Big Barn. Lifting up the front of the wood shed/coach house. Painting the carport roof trusses. Fixing the leaking gutter. Burning the huge stack of twigs topped with discarded wooden furniture. Cleaning out the coach house which has become a black hole of recycling. What to do about the baker’s cottage, it looks like the ants are ruining our summer cabin? Taking care of all the windfall birches surrounding my house. To mention a few of the tiny things on my never ending to do list.

The art of focusing on the things that actually got done and can be (temporarily) crossed out from that list is, unfortunately, something I am not mastering very well. But I am remembering now how Trouble 2 made a heroic effort cleaning out the wood shed which had turned into a giant garbage storage, not to mention him carrying down most everything from the bakers cottage attic, which, among other things, is the extended family furniture storage. Hurray for Trouble 2, that was an amazing job he did!

To keep a place like mine, with a house, a summer baker’s cottage, a wood shed/coach house, an old hay barn, carport, out house, a sweet play house and a big yard and forest property, you need knowledge, tools, a strong physical body, interest and time. I have a lot of interest, a bit of knowledge and some time. My sons have strong bodies, some interest and no time. We have been lacking pieces of knowledge and all the tools. The equation is a hard one to figure out.

So, what to do? Well, you ask Mats for help.

Mats is a dear friend who builds baroque flutes and lifts an out house which is sinking down into the ground with equal enthusiasm. Mats also loves sharing his knowledge about most everything, holding lectures which can be terribly annoying, but sometimes a lecture is exactly what you need.

So, at the end of this summer Trouble & Trouble, Mats and I got together for a work day. To start with, Mats taught my sons how to build a tool to lift the heavy branches of my grandfather’s apple tree, something that needs to be done every summer. Mats is an extremely thorough person and the apple tree has never looked this good after the yearly face lift before!

Then on to the main mission for the day, saving the out house from tipping over. Why do I need an outhouse? I usually don’t but it’s there because it’s always been there, and it’s an unusually stylish out house built by my dad. And this summer when I needed to dig up the sewer system I actually used it for a couple of days, and hey, was I happy it was still there! But as the front is tipping forward you could hardly open the door, and that was needed to be taken care of.

I loved watching Mats and my sons together. Trouble & Trouble were soaking Mats’ knowledge and skills like dry sponges, and the way Mats showed them how to do, he made sure they could do it themselves next time. And that’s how a really good teacher does it. I was moved, a little bit sad, and deeply grateful.

So how come I don’t have tools? At a place like mine you got to have tools! Well, I do have tools, but none working. The lawn mower was quite all summer, the trimmer has been sitting in a dark corner for as long as I can remember, the chain saw died years ago and the clearing saw who I own in shared custody with my ex brother in law Kjell, hasn’t come my way since I don’t know when. So, even if my sons had the time they don’t have the tools. And I can’t help them out since I can’t transport any of those things to get them repaired.

Then, out of the blue Kjell called and asked me what I needed to have cleared out! I had made some comment on Facebook that led him to the question. The next thing I knew he was in the grove across the road and I had free sight down to the fields east of it! And then he searched all my sheds for non working machinery, filled his trunk, brought everything to the Husqvarna repair shop and then back here when it all was up and running again!

At that point I was close to crying out of gratitude. But Kjell wasn’t done. On top of that he met up with Trouble 2 for a lesson in how to run a clearing saw. And a long list of what we need to purchase to make power sawing of all kind safe. This is serious stuff.

Kjell lost his father when he was eight years old. He didn’t have a dad passing on his knowledge to his son and had to learn everything by error. Or, as he told me, what he later learned, was from my dad, his father in law. Kjell has three sons who are accordingly well educated in practical matters, and now he willingly is ready to take on an uncle mission with my sons. And Trouble & Trouble and I are equally grateful and relieved to receive this unexpected support.

Now, a note from a feministic perspective. It so happens there are no girls in the generation after me. My sister and I have altogether five sons. If there had been daughters I can assure you they would have been educated in how to keep an old homestead. My father taught me everything from changing tires to lifting the corner of a house in need  (which means I have the theoretical knowledge of  how to lift a house, but I can’t be there with my hands). The only thing he kept from me was the chainsaw. Which I found annoying.

This Sunday Trouble & Trouble, Audrey and I are making fall at Stoltergården - Mats’ name of my place here at the end of the road. The rain is taking a break today, but the wind is still at gale force and gutsy. We are putting in the winter windows, ironing the fall curtains, turning off the summer water and preparing for the Christmas lights in the garden. The leaking gutter is temporally taken care of, and the damned and huge stack of twigs and discarded wooden furniture is burning! It took my sons quite some time to get the fire going, and when it finally did the wind turned the situation a bit risky for a while, but now that stack is gone, hallelujah!

And for next summer, Mats’ plan is to teach my sons how to take care of my grandfather’s wooden windows. And Kjell will be holding a class on the subject safe power sawing. Trouble & Trouble are lucky to have such enthusiastic teachers. And I am lucky having such great friends. 

The ramps to nowhere - the story of a legendary citizen uprising

I drove through Arboretum most every day. It was my afternoon treat when picking up Trouble & Trouble at Valley School in Madison Valley on the edge of Central District. Being embraced by the greenery on the winding Lake Washington Boulevard on my way down there, then one more time on my way back. I loved it, I just loved it. And knowing there might have been a freeway instead of the Japanese Garden, made the drive even more precious.

First time I saw them was 1993 when we stayed in Juanita, Kirkland, east of Lake Washington for three months. Passing the lake on the 520 bridge they are on your right side driving from Seattle. The Seattle ramps to nowhere. It was our friend Harold, Trouble & Trouble’s American grandpa telling us the story.

In the 1960s there were far advanced plans for a north-south freeway, the four-lane R.H. Thomson Expressway to parallel I-5. It would have run through the Arboretum, mostly destroying it, and then south along what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Way. But the legendary citizen uprising in the late 60s and early 70s ruined those plans and that’s why Arboretum is still one of Seattle’s green lungs!

Although, there is the ramps.

The freeway project was so far gone some parts of it was already built. Like parts of the ramps leading from the 520 bridge over the water and into the Arboretum in the Montlake neighborhood. But right in the middle of those ramps, the R.H. Thomson Expressway was killed off in a 71 percent vote of the city after a 10-year battle. And since then the cut off ramps over the water nature preserve has been a ruin telling the story of  the power of citizen uprising.

Until now. Because this week the work taking down those ramps started. So is everyone happy now? Of course not!

In unofficial Seattle, there’s more sadness than joy. In fact there has been a drive to try to save the ramps — pushed by some of the same activists who fought them being built more than 50 years ago!

- “I still can’t quite believe they’re coming down,” says Anna Rudd, 74, who was in her 20s when she  helped make sure the ramps would never lead anywhere. 

When Rudd went to community groups to drum up support for saving the ramps, she was amazed how almost everyone had a ramp-jumping story. There’s a whole secret society in Seattle Anna Rudd found out. Generations of kids would ride their bikes down to the ramps to jump off, then not tell their parents about it until they became adults. Countless UW students jumped. The whole Garfield football team used to jump. It turns out it’s a Seattle rite of passage. Also popular was sunbathing, stargazing and frat-hazing rituals. The homeless used the ramps for shelter, lovers to canoe beneath.

But the ramps are coming down. The new 520 bridge over Lake Washington is wider, now in process and progress, and the Arboretum folks want their preserve back. The activists who blocked the expressway now quixotically hope to save pieces of the ramps for a monument.

- These aren’t just ramps, Anna Rudd said. “They’re literally a concrete example of how citizens can gather together and choose their own destiny. 51 years ago, they were an embarrassing mistake. Yet over time they became a real place, wriggling into the life of the city until they turned into the most unlikely objects of Seattle pride".

The cut off road on giant concrete pillars are symbols of hubris. Or maybe the ramps show that you can beat City Hall. Either way it was on those ramps that the ethic of progress at all costs gave way to the everyone-gets-a-say process that so defines Seattle politics today.

I am trying to think of a similar example in Umeå. As the Umeå politics is defined by the same everyone-gets-a-say process I’m sure there is one but from the top of my head I can’t come up with an example. 

I am thinking though about the new public indoor pool that’s under construction in Downtown Umeå. I haven’t heard of one single person who wants it there. We need a new great public indoor pool, yes, but there are several other spots to place it than right in the middle of the city center. This was the only spot the Umeå politicians could agree on though. What had happened if the Umeå citizens would have had a vote on it? If we would vote now, in the middle of the construction? It’s an interesting thought.

Trouble & Trouble and I used to watch the 520 bridge through the panorama window in our home on Boyer Avenue. I still love driving through Arboretum, and since my chiropractor and dear friend Randi has her office on Madison in the valley I have had many reasons to take that route and enjoy the winding greenery. Will I miss the ramps? Well I don’t have a personal connection to them other than they being a part of the Seattle history. And in that sense they are important. Even to me.

This is the case. My case.

For close to 29 years now I have had severe back problems. They have escalated, attacking more of my body every year passing, and two years ago I needed to ask the Swedish society for help, my sons and friends weren’t enough any more. It was a huge and horrifying step letting strangers into my home, but I was hoping for it to be temporary. I was wrong.

It is the City that evaluates how much help I am entitled to. Then it’s my choice if I want the City services to help me out or one of the private companies which also provides that kind of service. In the latter case, the City pays the private company to do the job. My choice was a small local private company, Civil Care, which literally rescued me in a time of unbearable pain and despair. They have been with me for two years now, wonderful people, and become a part of my family.

October 2013 I had to ask the City for more help. My problems continued to get worse, and the hours approved earlier on wasn’t enough, I needed even more care. The City declined my request. Civil Care though, never once considered leaving me in the lurch. They expanded their hours with me without getting compensated by the City, and has been loosing money on me for a year now, never complaining.

This is, of course, an unsustainable situation. When Civil Care took me on, they, as well as I, thought it would be a temporary thing. Well, it turned chronic for the both of us. And who knows, I might live for another 30 years and they will be stuck with me!

So, what I did when the City declined covering my needs was an appeal, which I am entitled to do. I have no knowledge about legal processes what so ever, have never been even in the fringe outskirts of anything in that neighborhood, and here I am right in the center of it. It would be an interesting experience if it wasn’t for the petrifying fact that my future life is depending on the outcome of it.

I am terrified. Nothing but terrified. But I can’t lose myself being petrified. Because I need to be the project leader of the case. My case.

I wrote the appeal in July. I have spent most of the summer and fall working myself forward learning the drill as I go. It’s terribly scary. I don’t sleep. I start my days crying in the arms of the Civil Care people. I am in total limbo. I feel like I just want to give in and run away. That’s not what I do, I am not a quitter, I am a fighter. In this case though I feel like I just want to lay down flat on my back and let the City officials run over me. But I don’t have the choice of giving in. Not this time, when I want it the most. I need to stay and fight.

I am feeling a lot as when I was diagnosed with cancer. Being terribly weak, needing to stay extremely strong, fighting something I don’t know how to fight, and not knowing the outcome of it. In both cases it’s fighting for my life.

Fighting for my life, isn’t that being dramatic? No, it isn’t. If Civil Care would only do the hours approved by the City, I wouldn’t even get out of bed in the morning since the official handling my matter with the City has decided I can do it myself although I can’t. I would lie in my bed and pee all over me, that’s the naked truth. I won’t embarrass you with more explicit graphics, but this is the place I am in.

Civil Care can’t go on loosing money on me forever. They are pushing themselves, stretching and bending to help me out in the best way possible, but they simply can’t do it forever. And I feel awful, a parasite, knowing they don’t get payed for all the work they are putting in with me. And somewhere there is a breaking point. I have a sense it’s not that far away.

So, I need to fight. In a week or two I will be summoned to a hearing. I have never been in a courtroom before. I will speak up in a foreign country where a different language is spoken. I am terrified. Because I have to win this case. My case. Although I think the chances are minimal. And if I don't? I have no idea. I have absolutely no idea.

Swedish governing in historic limbo/Part 3

- The new government is a feministic government.

Those words are Stefan Löfven’s, the new Swedish Prime Minister. Expressed in the Statement of Government Policy. Is the new Swedish government the first official feministic government in the world?

Three weeks after the election Sweden has a new government! The exclamation mark might be an overstatement, because it’s a minority and in reality a very weak government, but it’s a government expressing the same values as I have, and it’s like a heavy rock is lifted from my chest.

The new government is formed by the Social Democrats and the Green Party (Miljöpartiet), 24 cabinet ministers: 12 women and 12 men. The actual change of government took place on October 3 at a Council of State at the Royal Palace. Earlier the same day, Stefan Löfven presented the Statement of Government Policy.

I was lying on my couch, doing only that. Not checking emails, not being on the phone, not working on some text, not scrolling Facebook, mind not wondering around. No, being totally focused and present in the fact that Sweden is presented a new government and a new Statement of Government Policy.

For eight years we have been living under a right wing yoke. In the Swedish political history of social democratic values we have never been governed by right wing rhetoric for such a long period before. I was terrified they had been so successful drumming their message in (eight years is, as you Americans know, a long time, a first time voter becomes a grown up during a double government term) there was no way back and Sweden would be forever a country lost in the cold where only strong people contributing to GDP (BNP) are included as human beings.

So, I was focused. I was present. It was a historic moment hearing the word solidarity from a Prime Minister again. I am a bit embarrassed here, but I had tears on my cheek while listening to the declaration. A giant rock was lifted from my compressed chest. I wasn’t even aware it had been there. You can get used to almost everything. Political abuse, in words and in practice too. Every system can turn into a normality.

The giant rock was gone and I could breath again. That’s why the tears.

Now, I am not naive. And I am not stupid. I know this new government is historically weak and I know every ideology and value has a rhetoric vocabulary. But there are intentions. Very different from the last eight years that was forced on me.

I agree on most things in the Statement of Government Policy of October 3. I know though that it will be extremely difficult for this government to make the declaration a reality. We might very well have a situation similar to the one in the U.S where only a few bills actually are passing. But even if it will be only a few, it’s still better than living in a country where most every bill passing feels like a violation on a nation.

So, is the new Swedish government a feministic government? Well, it’s up to the evidence. 50/50 when it comes to cabinet ministers doesn't prove anything although it looks a lot better then 80/20. And words are just words. But the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is led by four women, fronted by Margot Wallström as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. So that’s a start.

I could shortlist the Statement of Government Policy to tell what this new Swedish government wants for change, but instead I will quote one sentence from Prime Minister Stefan Löfven:

- We will work for a global order of capital and labor that secures an international economy that benefits all and subjugate no one. 

Those words, I find beautiful.