The Nordmaling and Robertsfors of Seattle. And why.

When I first came to Seattle in 1993 I was struck by how the city was laid out between the waters of Elliot Bay to the west, Lake Washington to the east and around Lake Union in the middle of the city. The hills and the waters made it easy for the eye to navigate. Queen Anne Hill, Capitol Hill, First Hill, West Seattle over the bay. In the middle the dense Downtown as the obvious city center surrounded by neighborhoods were people lived their lives.

I was fascinated by the neighborhoods. Wallingford, Madrona, Madison, Central District, Ballard, Montlake, Queen Anne. I remember writing letters (!) home trying to explain how Seattle had a city center surrounded by small-towns like Nordmaling, Robertsfors, Vindeln and Vännäs, places of about 2-3000 inhabitants when I grew up in Västerbotten Region where Umeå is the main city. Places with local downtowns, schools, shops, most everything you needed. Built up by single homes, mostly.

In 1993 the Seattle population wasn’t far from 600 000, Greater Seattle about 2 million. In 2014 about 668 000 and Greater Seattle 3.6 million people. I’ve been thinking the fact the City of Seattle hardly been growing during these 20 years is because it’s squeezed in between the waters and have very little chance to expand. And the expansion that’s after all been happening is upwards with the Downtown condo rises. It’s not until this summer I have learned that I’ve partly been right in my guesses, and why.

The Seattle neighborhoods are protected single-family zones! I don’t know why I never even questioned the fact that the Nordmalings and Robertsfors of Seattle are only residential areas with quite streets and basket hoops in the back yards and alleys, although they are in the middle of the fastest growing major city in the U.S.! Maybe because Wallingford, Madrona and Ballard all have their souls, their communities, their self-evident space in the fabric that is Seattle. 

They say a city without building cranes is a city without a future. In that case both my cities sure have a future. For as long as I have known Seattle, building cranes have been a part of the skyline. That’s also true for Umeå now.

Due to my body restrictions I unfortunately haven’t been back in Seattle for three years. That stay was though, speaking in terms of getting out and about, my most difficult one. I stayed in lower Queen Anne in a penthouse with a killer view (google Seattle views and the first one you will find was mine!), but it became a tower from which I dreaded to climb down. Partly because of my back, but mainly because of the location. Well, the location on the map is great, close to Downtown, but to drive from there to Downtown or Capitol Hill through the Mercer (street) mess, was a nightmare of road work, traffic gridlock and construction sites. I feel claustrophobic even thinking about it.

Yet it seems like the three years after 2012 have totally crazed Seattle. Amazon is taking over the former wear house waste land (umebor, think Västerslätt) South Lake Union, made it it’s campus adding more than 15 000 workers to Seattle with capacity of 30 000 within e few years. Last time this kind of company development happened in the Seattle area was Microsoft in the nineties, although in Redmond east of Lake Washington. Now it’s happening right in the core of the tight Seattle city center with already packed freeways and over-crowded buses. As much as I miss Seattle and always long for the Emerald City, this picture makes the claustrophobia take a seat on my chest.

So, where will everyone live? Downtown condo high rises, yes. But, it might be that the Seattle neighborhoods will be changing. The single-family zoning may very well be in jeopardy. That’s in the Seattle Mayor Ed Murray’s panel on housing affordability, because here is another issue. As Seattle’s booming is going through the roof, who but the Amazons and the Microsofties will afford to live here? A lot of the new high-rises planned for Seattle aren’t condos but apartments (unthinkable in the nineties, only losers were renting), because people just can’t afford to buy on this market anymore!

Wallingford, Madrona and Ballard might look different in the future. In the recent draft  of the panel on housing affordability’s recommendations, the committee argued for converting Seattle’s single-family zones into “low-density residential zones” allowing more types of housing, such as “small-lot dwellings, cottages or courtyard housing, duplexes and triplexes.” 

I can see how this stirs up feelings all around Seattle. The neighborhoods are beautiful and generally safe. Privileged, if you so will, some very privileged. To buy a home in either of those neighborhoods is money. But maybe, if the development is restricted to mother-in-law backyard units and modest town houses, it won't be worse than tearing down a bungalow replacing it with an oversized McMansion blocking the view? And might it add something to diversity?

Now, is building cranes always a sign for a a better future? Well, that’s a different topic.

A ruby dress for a gardner

- I would like to come visit you, what would you like to do?!

Linda is the unusual combo of a sound engineer and a gardner. She is in my film crew and that’s how we know each other. She was also the unexpected angel who offered to stay with me and take care of me for two days at Christmas when I fainted during my choirs Christmas concert because of a 102°F (39°C) fever. That’s Linda.

To say I have a garden is too much. I have a front yard. Surrounded by my house, the baker’s cottage, the coach house/wood shed and a white picket fence. The front yard is pretty much a big lawn, a lot to mow for my poor sons. But there is also my grandfathers old apple tree surrounded by a round black wooden deck. The four new apple trees Trouble & Trouble and I planted 2009 during my chemo, in my mother’s sea of lupins in front of the outhouse at the woods edge. 

The flower bed at my house vanished when I had to dig up the sewer system last summer, but the one in front of the baker’s cottage is still there. If you can find it that is, it’s totally overgrown by weed and grass and God knows what. I used to have pots and boxes with summer flowers all over the yard, but as I can’t carry, bend down and be on my knees I am dependent on help to make that happen. And for every year now I am asking for less. The main thing is to get the lawn mowed.

It’s one thing being without the summer flowers, I can live with that even though it’s a bit sad. But what really wears on me is everything that’s become overgrown. Flowerbeds. Stone settings. Trees falling down from age. Nature doing what it does when mans hand is not there to dress and mother.

-  I would like to come and visit, what would you like to do?! Just hang out, go away somewhere, do something in your garden?

Well, the answer was simple. For one thing, I can’t even come up with going away somewhere, my life is a circle of being on my couch, going to treatments and picking up groceries, I realize I can’t even think outside that box anymore! But, when a gardner wants to come visit offering gardening as a choice, well…

So, Linda arrived Sunday evening, her car packed with bags of good soil, summer flowers and perennials. While being eaten by aggressive moskitos she dug out the flowerbed in front of the baker’s cottage, it was still there! She found the stone setting that diveds it from the lawn as well as some healthy perennials. The white rose bravely climbing the wall wasn’t only dead offshoot, but fresh green sprouts wanting life. And those little pions, would they choose life to, if they had a chance?

Linda dug out the old weed pested soil and replaced it with black nutritious. She saved some columbines and the pion that looked the strongest. Then she planted three white hardy geraniums which she had brought, took out a couple of tiny pions and planted those at the old granit foundation from the long gone barn. Perhaps they would like the warmth from the granit and the light?

At around 11PM I called her in. It wasn’t only the moskitos, it was cold too. Time for hot tea and strawberries. And talks. We talked until the middle of the night, then slept some. And in the morning she finished up the flowerbed and tried to make two of the young apple trees feel better. Then planted a couple of summer flowers as treat for my eyes on my balcony and the tiny baker’s cottage front porch.

The 2015 Swedish summer has up till now been ridiculous. And no signs for any changes in the forecast. Cold cold cold. Rain rain rain. More like a Seattle winter. But my baker’s cottage looks like risen from the dead. It would have made my parents so happy. And the whole feel of my front yard is lighter. I am in the illusion of being in control. 

Illusion of course, because nature is always in control. As long as there isn’t a gardener coming my way. But maybe there is. I sent her off with a bribe. A long ruby red dress from my closet fitted her perfectly, and her waist long black hair was just the perfect accessory. Once again Linda came here as an angel. And it was nice for the both of us that I didn’t faint and run a fever this time.

80 meters freedom and adventure

It’s 80 meters (263 feet) between me and my next door neighbor. On both sides of the narrow dirt road there is mature forest. Both homesteads are at the west side of the road with open fields facing west so there is plenty of space and light. So, it’s like there is my place in a spot of sun and air, then there is the dark forest followed by my neighbors in a spot of sun and air. Or the other way around.

When I was a little girl I used to walk those 80 meters to visit my neighbors Värner and Alida. To make the trip a bit quicker I took my yellow tricycle. I made that journey  every day during the summer, often many times a day. Värner and Alida were very patient with me and let me eat their fresh baked flatbred, that’s what they did for a living. Their baker’s cottage was a magical place of fire, smell and taste, and I was always welcome.

I can still perfectly recall the feeling making the turn from our front yard down on the road. From the sun into the dark shadows of pine and fir. With the safety of mom and dad in the back, and the light of Värner and Alida at the spot of sun 80 meters ahead. Such an adventure!

Trouble & Trouble made that journey all year around when they grew up too. Their mom and dad in the back. Värner and Alida still waiting at the other end, now for their arrival.

Little did I know that stretch more than 50 years later, for me, would again be an adventure. When my back is at it’s worst, I can’t get out of the house. Better days I can drag myself to the first lamppost, which is 50 meters (164 feet). And a good day I might, with much effort walk all the way to Värner and Alida. Although they are not there anymore. Värner died, 98 years old in 2008. Alida just turned 98 herself, and after years of fighting it (all of us) she had to move in to a home last October.

But the house isn’t empty. Poppie lives there now. Poppie is the nickname for Grandpa, given him by his granddaughter Dancy. Poppie is Värner and Alida’s youngest son and his daughter Josephine works for the home care company taking care of me. Josephine is here several times a day, and so is her little daughter Dancy, turning three in a month. So, Dancy is equally at home here and at Poppie’s.

It was May when she first made the trip. Me and Josephine here at my place seeing her off. Watching her run through The Hundred Acre Wood, yelling “bye bye” and waiving every other step. Arriving safely at Poppie’s a couple of minutes later. Only to do the trip in reverse as soon as she was there. 

A new world was opened to her! Her leash was suddenly so much longer! She could run between the two safe spots in her 3-year old world! From light to light through the shadows of the woods!

The 3-year old Maria is still very much alive in me. More alive than the contemporary one I would say. So the 3-year old Maria watches Dancy, feeling with every fiber in her body the anxious excitement as she runs between our two houses. Sometimes the contemporary Maria has a good day and can walk with her. And I am as excited as Dancy to be let out, transport myself through the wild forest and land safely at Dancy’s Poppie, the place of Värner and Alida.

I used to travel between my little village and Seattle. Two safe places connected by a trip often a bit more adventurous than I asked for. Feeling like being in the shadows before I saw the light at the arrival. The question all the way: can I do this? Will I make it over? Today I am traveling 80 meters. The same question. And Dancy. Taking her first trips. 80 meters of freedom and adventure.

We are the Champions!

Seattle must go totally crazy today!! 88°F (31°C) and the yearly Pride Parade happening two days after the U.S. allowing same-sex marriage, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision! Oh how I wish I was there on this historic day, but Trouble 1 and Fay are, representing the family!

In 2012 Washington State voters approved same-sex marriage, and the number of states following had climbed to 37 before Friday’s ruling which made U.S the 21st and most populous country to legalize marriage between same sexes.  And the world (at least that’s what we like to think) is celebrating!

For as long as I have known Seattle, the city has been identified as gay friendly, and liberal in that sense. A safe place for people who aren’t shaped for the square box family that’s the norm, at least inside the city borders. Seattle is also run by a gay mayor, Ed Murray.

“ - Grab your water bottles and your parasols and join us tomorrow for the Pride Parade! It promises to be an extra special celebration, and we'll be proudly marching. Hope to see you there!”

It’s the Seattle Men’s Chorus on Facebook inviting everyone to join them today. And yesterday they, as well as Seattle Women’s Chorus, were invited by mayor Ed Murray,  to sing at the Marriage Equality celebration rally at the federal courthouse in Seattle. What they sang? We are the Champions!

Somewhere around the Millennium I made a TV documentary piece on choirs, and Seattle was represented by Seattle Men’s Chorus. At that time there were about 250 singers in the choir, all gay. For me, meeting SMC was very special. A choral singer myself I know that every choir has it’s conflicts, as every community, but SMC totally embraced me, as they seemed to embrace each other.

SMC was too big to be a family. It was a village. A community of 250 they didn’t all know each other. But it was their village. It became clear to me that in a relatively safe city as Seattle, Seattle Men’s Choir was singled out as a place without fear.

I got to know Craig who became a good friend of mine. I was invited to his home which was a very special place. Together with seven other men he had bought a house with eight apartments. They were all gay and had their own place within the house. To me, it seemed obvious although I might have read too much into it, so I had to ask Craig the question: “so, is this your safe haven. The eight of you?” He looked at me, surprised. Paused. Nodding slowly. “Perhaps it is”. 

Historians date the modern gay-rights movement to 1969, when patrons of the New York gay bar Stonewall Inn fought back against police harassment. In recent years, the momentum for approval of same-sex marriage has escalated. But the court ruling doesn’t end homophobia. Discrimination lingers in areas such as parental rights for example. Suicide rates continue to be elevated among young people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transsexual. Harassment and bullying are still real. And coming out can still be difficult.

Let’s hope though that the law for same-sex marriages in the most populous country will make a real difference, not only to the U.S but to the world. And I picture the Pride Parade triumphing through a hot downtown today, and let’s all join them: We are the Champions, we are the Champions!

No, the gift of being invited isn't enough. I wanted to be there.

Welcome to my 60 years party on Midsummer’s Day! Kjell

Special invitation, Ida & Luke would like Maria to come to our wedding!

On my table there are two invitation cards. One is from a very dear friend, Kjell. We got to know each other back in high school, lived at the same student home and spent so much time together in our seven party Friends gang it’s a wonder anyone of us got any grades. Well, the others did, me, not so much. And now he is turning 60.

The other one is from Ida and her soon to be husband Luke. Ida is originally a friend of my sons from a village close by, so I have known her since her teens. But she has also become a close friend of mine. And now she is marrying!

I very rarely get invitations. People don’t usually ask me over, and besides from choir get togethers I think the last time I was at a party was February 2012. That was fun though!

And now there are two invitations. From very special friends. And I had to say no thanks. Because I can’t make it. I can’t get there.

It’s Midsummer’s weekend in Sweden, the most precious of all holidays on the 64° latidude. Celebrating the light. And after three months of wet cold and windy Aprils and a June being like early May, summer actually arrived at Midsummer’s Eve! Sun, 63°F (17°C) and a mild breeze instead of exhausting gale. What a gift! Finally, and on the right day.

The modern tradition in my family on my mother’s side is to spend Midsummer’s Eve at Norrbyskär, an island south of Umeå where my cousin, sister and their husbands share a summer house. This year 17 persons from three generations got together, most living in Umeå, but some arriving from the south of Sweden, Paris and Miami. I couldn’t be there.

I had made the decision a couple of days before. It is just too much hassle. I take up to seats in a car as I have to pretty much lie done. To get from the ferry to the house is a way too long walk for me and although I largely has accepted my situation and physical limitations I am not comfortable being in a wheel chair. Airports and hospitals okay, but otherwise not.

And I don’t want to be pitted. My relatives would have been happy to see me there, but I have a hard time with all the caring “we are so glad you could make it”, heads tilted. Best intentions, I know, but I feel inferior and small. And then, someone driving me home, undressing me, making me ready for night. No. I just want to feel like a normal person. I don’t want the focus on me being all the special arrangements that come with me.

So, I had made the decision even though it wasn’t an easy one. Although, had I known my cousin Pär was home from Miami I think I had coped with the downsides. We haven’t seen each other in three years maybe, and that’s just too long ago. But I didn’t know until it was too late, and it made me very sad. 

On the other hand, I couldn’t have made it anyway, because the day before, I turned acute. A knife in my pelvis. Hasn’t happened since early March, but there it was again. Shit! It’s not allowed to happen in the summer as that’s my only chance to recover a bit. But there it was. Shit, shit! So in a way it was a good thing I had decided to stay home, the disappointment would have been terrible.

My Midsummer Eve had a happy ending after all. It turned out my every day help Josephine didn’t have any plans and was happy to spend the evening with me. She and her close to three year old daughter came over here in the afternoon, dressed in white lace and flower dresses, so of course I had to put my most summery dress on too. The wild flowers finally had come out and we strolled around my front yard in the gorgeous afternoon light while they picked me Midsummer bouquets from buttercups, red campions, cow parsley and cranesbill, the flowers closest to my heart and soul. It was the finest treat they could ever give me.

Hopefully there will be more Midsummers to come, but Kjell is only turning 60 once, and my wish is Ida only marrying once too. Both those invitations came as such a surprise for me. I don’t think I have seen Kjell since my 50-year birthday. And Ida, my sons weren’t even invited but I was! In both cases I felt chosen. 

I tried to come up with solutions for being there but failed. And all I could say was, I am so sorry but I can’t make it. Sorry for them, because they really wanted to share their special day with me - although I know they won’t really miss me, there will be lots of people there. But most of all sorry for myself. No matter how hard I try I can’t tell myself it was a gift enough to even be invited. I wanted to be there.

Three months of April

The bird sherry has been blossoming for two weeks. The lilacs are yet to come and I can’t even see the buds on my grandfather’s apple tree. It’s mid June and the nature is still doubting summer.

Midsummer 2001 we were visited by very special guests from Seattle: Matt, Elizabeth, Olivia and Rebecka. There are pictures of us sitting under the white apple tree, covered in flowers. Most every year since then I have been amazed at that picture, could it really be that the apple tree was blooming that late? But it was. And historically I would say Midsummers has been the time for apple blossom here at the 64° latitude.

But times have changed, summer normally starts earlier nowadays and the blossoming period is painfully brief. The characteristic scent from the bird cherry is usually only a few days before the tree starts snowing. That is, if pre summer is not interrupted by cold winds coming in.

Anyway, these last two years have been strange. Winter 2014 and 2015 arrived very late, at the end of January. They were mild and didn’t produce a lot of snow. We have an official measurement in Sweden telling us when spring arrives. That’s when the average temperature stays over freezing point for seven days in a row. This year it happened February 15 in Umeå, 1,5 month earlier than normal. 2014 was even a bit earlier. To clarify, spring just above freezing point isn’t of course like a Seattle spring or even a Stockholm spring. Spring above freezing point is what we call spring-winter, so still snow, but a sense that winter is loosing it’s grip.

Now, one would think that spring arriving 1,5 months earlier than normal would be followed by an early spring-summer and summer. That the birches would go green at the latest May 1st instead of the normal May 23. Nope. Not at all.

These last two years March has felt like April. April has felt like April. And May has felt like April. Three months of April. Temperatures pretty much equal. Lots of rain. In fact, May 2015 was the wettest and coldest May in Sweden since pretty much forever. I hate it, the much longed for light returns but since it’s always cloudy and cold it feels morel like fall than spring.

Now we’re at mid June and it feels like mid May. The greenery is extremely slow. The midsummer flowers, those we need for the may pole at Midsummer Eve usually are nowadays withered at Midsummers, which is a problem. Not this year though. They haven’t started blossoming yet, and we are five days from Midsummer Eve! Midsummer 2014 was the coldest and wettest in history (below freezing point during night…) but at least the flowers were out doing their job. Not this year!

So, now I only have one wish. That 2015 continues as 2014. Because after a record cold June the heat swept up here all the way from Africa and kept us hot and sweaty for two months! Pretty much like a normal summer in Seattle, starting at 4th of July. Even with (nowadays) Seattle temperatures which I know Seattleites think is too much, and a lot of Swedes did too.

As for the mild winters, 2012 and 2013 were dreadfully cold with tons of snow. Of course the climate is changing but I’m sure there still will be cold winters and typical Swedish summers with highs at 68°F (20°C). 

The moskitos showed up today which is a good but annoying sign, it’s finally “warm” enough (59°F…) for bloodworms to become the summer pain in the ass. The lilacs just have to open any day now followed by the lupins. But the buds on my grandfather's  apple tree which I can’t even see…? Well looking at it from the bright side, the best is yet to come.

Stoltergården summer work

What I loved most about it was coming back to the house, hearing the hammering and brothers laughing together. Coming home.

It was my friend Mats who grew up in Dalarna in Sweden where most every home stead has a name, who started calling my place Stoltergården. Stolter from my name (stolt in Swedish means proud, so my name is Proudman) and gård means place or residence.

Stoltergården contains of the main house where I live, the baker’s cottage which is a summer house, the combined wood shed/coach house, a hay barn, an out house and a play house. It was my grandfather on my mother’s side who built the place which also of course had a barn for livestock, torn down in the seventies by my dad when the roof didn’t hold up anymore. My mother, her sister Inga-Märta and brother Arne were born here.

Maintaining a place like this is a lot of work, and as I can’t do anything myself anymore, it’s becoming a problem. Big things I would have to hire people for anyway, but things like a little paint here and there, taking down half dead trees, cleaning out the coach house, taking care of windfalls in the grove, saving the slate tiles on the stone pavings from vanishing under overgrown grass, things like that is just normal maintenance which simply has to get done.

I am the kind of person who just doesn’t do well in decay. And a place like mine doesn’t either. We had both come to a point where I had to make a decision. Either I have to find a way to take better care of Stoltergården or I had to sell to someone who could do it. 

I had a sit down talk with my sons. This isn’t about moving the lawn when you can squeeze it in anymore. This is about keeping Stoltergården in the family or not. So?

My proposal was to set up a work week every summer. A week dedicated to the (of course never-ending) list of top priorities which just has to be taken care of. The proposal was approved of by both sons, with a slight correction, at least for this year: three days in the pre summer and three days at the end. Noon - 9 PM.

So, I wrote the Summer 2015 to do list, decorated with flowers in bright colors. The flowers are important. List was in three parts. One for indoors, in case of rain. One for minor repairs and paint. And one for the yard and light forestry.

The pre summer days happened this week. And it was when I got back from my treatment on Monday, the first day, I was welcomed by the hammering and happy brothers laughing together. Music to a mother ear.

The weather cooperated like it had read my list. 

Day 1 rain was poring down and most things on the indoor list got done. 

Day 2 clear skies, and it was safe to cover the deck under my grand father’s apple tree with a fresh shiny black coat. A couple of young maples growing too close to each other on the yard next to the picket fence was removed to give others space to develop into big trees. This was hard work and took most of the day. At the end though, what for the labor was most attractive on the list, starting the chain saw, happened.

Day 3 was a mix of sun, skyfall, thunder, and overcast. Windy, as always here, nowadays. During the rain more indoor maintenance. But than in the afternoon getting to the main attraction, only sniffed on the day before: taking care of the windfall down in the grove.

Trouble & Trouble haven’t before worked with a chain saw. It has been dead for some years, saved last summer as their uncle Kjell took it to the work shop and now it’s up and running again. And the necessary safety equipment has been obtained. So, on to it!

Trouble 2 is a careful person, in everything he does. That’s a valuable asset when it comes to handling dangerous machinery. In addition, ground and greenery was heavy from the rain, more reasons for being cautious. For Trouble 1 the perfect assignment was picking up the water-heavy birch stumps with the incredibly effective and horrible hook, filling the wheelbarrow for further transport to the special place next to the wood shed for cleaving the wood, which has been asleep for many years.  

In three days a lot of the things on the list was done. Check. One of the important things with a list is the check part. Check, check. Done! Good job! High five! Add more colorful flowers!

In addition to the work done, we had three nice days. Afternoon fika. Carb rich dinners. Put the late summer work days in our calendars. We even squeezed in a production meeting for a film project we are working on. And all three of us were in a good mood, I enjoyed it tremendously.

Win win win. One more win with this concept is avoiding the entire summer frustration on days, weeks and months passing not getting things done (on my part) and the constant pressure from me waiting for things to happen (on my sons' part).

To give some little sparkle to all the must do I had the idea we every summer could ad something fun to it, some nice improvement to Stoltergården. Trouble 2 suggested building an outdoor kitchen at the baker’s cottage south wall, where the barbecue takes place. Trouble 1 wanted a cableway from the balcony over the front yard all the way to the tree house. That’s my sons.

Today my beloved uncle Arne would have turned 90 if he had still been with us. He grew up here, and at his funeral I promised him to take as good care of his childhood home as I possibly could. Tonight his blackbird is singing over the fields and I hope he watches his niece and her sons doing their very best.