To be a -56 (or being one of the -56s)

There are the very distinct terms. The Baby Boomers. Generation X. The Millennials. Generations having their significant features. Then there is the crowd born in the Fifties. And they are like…nobody. Anonymous. No features at all. I am one of them.

Friday evening I was watching the 60 year anniversary of television in Sweden. We were born the same year, Swedish national television and I, in 1956. It was a great show. Fun. Dramatic history. Warm. Nostalgic of course. It was like watching my own life pass in review. So familiar. Close. Emotional.

There have been more anniversary shows this year. Because although the Fifty-generation generally is perceived as pale, there are exceptions. And in Sweden they happened to be born in 1956.

The -56s. That’s the term they go by. And they were all, except one, athletes. Internationally very successful, still some names might not ring a bell to you unless you had a special interest. To Swedes though, they are icons. So let me just list them. Frank Andersson, wrestler. Linda Haglund, sprinter. Tomas Wassberg cross-country skier. Ingemar Stenmark, downhill skier. Björn Borg, tennis player. And then of course Ted Gärdestad, composer and singer who left a much loved treasure of Swedish pop ballads for us to adore and pass down when he died much to soon.

Well, Björn Borg I know is still an icon to more than Swedes of course. And Seattle, you might remember Ingemar Stenmark as he was competing with the Mare brothers.

So, 2016 I have been watching all these shows of the iconic -56s. And it’s like I am watching myself. Especially Ingemar Stenmark who grew up in the mountains of my region. Who talks with the same dialect and is shy and self cautious as northern Swedes in general are. Who made all of us hit the slopes. But “watching myself” is more about watching my own story. Feeling myself through the familiar footage. Sensing who I were. The people around me. My life. I actually think it is really good therapy at the 60 year turn.

I am also realizing how much I am identifying myself with the -56s. Or, is it even that I am defined by them? In what degree do they have something to do with the fact that I have through my life expected myself to be a success? I can’t specify an area or a topic, but at some point I would be successful and in some way recognized. Is it that if you are born 1956 you would be destined to succeed? Anyone else born this legendary year who can relate to this? Well, it might rather be my mother’s grand plans for me. Or a combination.

Anyway. People born in Sweden during the Fifties don’t have a name or a special characteristics. We are pale, bleak, anonymous and forgotten. Except for six outstanding persons born in 1956, giving us unforgettable memories and experiences and making our lives visible. I happened to come to this world the very same year. I think all of us born that year feel a little bit like one of the -56s. Freeloading in the sun of those iconic legends. And my own success? Well, there is still time…

A 95-year birthday and a 4 year anniversary

It is lighting up the November dark outside my balcony window. An hommage to my dad. He used to decorate the railing of the back porch in my childhood home. Twisting pine twigs with lights around the railing at Christmas time. Light wires weren’t common in Sweden when I grew up and I don’t where he had found this. But the more rare and beautiful it was. I remember being proud about our special back porch and my father’s skills. Pottering was unusual for a man.

This summer I finally fixed a power outlet on my balcony with the only purpose of making my balcony railing as beautiful as my dad’s. I need to be practical though. Although I am surrounded by pine trees it’s too hard for me to cut the twigs and make them stick to the railing. So I bought a package of fake twigs and lights-combo at a cheap store. It really looks nice though this hommage to my father and it makes me feel like he is here with me.

Today would have been my dad’s 95 year-birthday. He passed away though, the day after his 83rd. I miss him everyday.

A different anniversary happened on Thursday. Marking four years since my back crashed and I started needing help in my everyday life.

As much as my dad left too soon and as much as I miss him I am often thinking it was a blessing he didn’t have to see his daughter in this situation. My back problems started more than 30 years ago and I know it was painful to him seeing me suffer. And needing to ask for help with all those things he taught me. Changing the tires, attaching a shelf to the wall, saw wood, painting the front porch. Well, that was long ago, now I need help with the most basic things.

The most important for a Swede is to fend. It is deep down in our culture. To not be a burden to anyone, not to other people and not to the society. Although the welfare state is (or has been) the Swedish soul, asking for help when you are weak and vulnerable is a failure. It’s the receipt for that we are in fact weak and vulnerable. 

We are not thinking twice about payed parental leave, child benefit, payed sick leave and state student grants, they are as natural as rain to us and I would say we are perceiving them more like human rights. But to apply for the help we are entitled to when we are becoming at age is to surrender to fragility. Giving in to that our life is over in the western way of perceiving it. It’s the proof of us not fending. 

My mother was sickly for many years at the end of her life and my father took care of her. He did not want people in the house doing the cleaning and helping out with food and grocery shopping. He wanted to fend. 

It is also a matter of dignity of course. It is an art form keeping your dignity while needing help from others. I am sure my father would have performed that art well if he had surrendered to it. But to watch his daughter surrendering at the young age of 56 I think would have broke his heart.

The first two weeks of November came with snow and my pine/light wire looked like Christmas, just like my father’s. It’s gone now, the rains are falling in the deep dark. But the lights are helping. On the 95-year birthday.

A soft-boiled egg without a shell looking even more forward to the first female president

Alyson Camerota and Chris Cuomo are staring right at me. They are dead serious. Announcing Donald Trump is elected the 45th president of the U.S.A.

My plan was to stay up during the night, but I was down in fever and a cold and couldn’t do it. I dragged myself out of bed in the late morning and onto the couch. Put the TV on. CNN. Met by my usually energetic midday anchors. Not a smile on their face. Donald Trump is the new president-elect.

I felt like when I was watching the planes crashing into the Twin Towers. My body went into a cramp. This couldn’t be true. This is not happening. But like with the planes and the towers they ran it over and over again. Breaking news. The banner. I read it. Over and over again. And again. I cried.

The last few days I have been extremely tired. Like zombie tired. It’s the cold of course, but I am beginning to think I am having a mild PTSD light, hopefully transitory. 

I know what a shock is. I have had a few. So I don’t use the word carelessly. But there on my couch I was registering the feeling of a mild shock.

I think the fact that my companions for the occasion and the day, Alyson and Chris, clearly were as horrified and stunned as I was, enhanced the feeling. We were in this together. As all the commentators and experts in the studio that day.

For three days I kept CNN on morning to lights out. I watched Hillary Clinton’s succession speech momentarily. I saw the motorcade ride for the White House with the new president-elect while it happened. I heard every reporter and expert comment during the 1,5 hours the two presidents had their first meeting in the Oval Office. I watched the photo shoot at the end of it. President Obama relaxed (as relaxed as he could be in that situation) on his turf. And Donald Trump looking pretty small and his man-spread interestingly narrow compared to Obama’s. I watched all this to be present in the moment. That’s my way of processing. And it comes with experiencing intensely.

Switching over to Swedish National Television at the end of the third evening I discovered something odd. I felt slightly uncomfortable. A little bit of anxiety out of the slower tempo and the softer voices. Abstinence. I resisted the reflex zapping back to the high energy that’s been feeding me for three days. And in a while my breathing deepened. My pulse slowed down. I felt like I landed in Umeå after sitting in Seattle traffic for some weeks.

Then the fatigue. And a feeling of being in limbo. Part of it fear and uncertainty of what this planet will turn to with the boy brought up to be a killer never admitting he is wrong at the helm of “the free world”. Part of it because I don’t really know where I am at.

Three days experiencing and processing the frightening change of history with Alyson, Chris, Wolf Blitz and the breaking breaking news has transferred me to the U.S. My mind is there. Although my body is here. I feel like I am sitting in a tiny wooden boat without ores, drifting on the open sea. Balancing tide and waves. And myself. The trick is to just sit there. Follow the movements of the water. 

Here on my couch I feel a strong need for silence. It’s like those three CNN-days are still ringing in my ears. Shouting. And the message of it. Too much input. I need that silence and listening to myself to move back here. Touch ground. It’s hard though, since every day will be dramatic in this political shift and the temptation being present in that first hand information via American media will be strong.

The shocking fact that Donald Trump will be the next American president and the experience of the election has left me vulnerable. I am a soft-boiled egg without a shell. But I will try to stabilize myself with a positive future scenario. The fact that it didn’t come to a third Democratic term (which would have been historic) makes it possible for them to return in four years. And the fact that Hillary Clinton didn’t win makes the opening for a different woman to do so, which would not else be possible in a mans-age. 

So, let’s look at Donald Trump as a bump in the road. I know, he is a big pump. And a dangerous one. One who can throw the whole carriage over. But more Americans wanted something different than Donald Trump in this election. And in 2020 it will be Elizabeth Warren or Michelle Obama. I am looking forward.

The secretive girl seeking her father’s validation and the boy brought up being a killer who is never wrong

It is the last Sunday before the election for the next president of the USA. I want to write about it. I need to write about it. But in what sense? I am keeping the by nature loud CNN on while a quite snow is falling over my fields as a soft backdrop.

An American president election is as important for the world as for the U.S. That’s one reason to why we are so obsessed by it over here. Another reason is of course that it’s good entertainment. This time around good isn’t the correct word even, great would be more proper. I would say frightening though. As this is not a well written TV series. This is a reality show which is not only about being the most malicious one on the set, but who will be, as it’s called, the leader of the free world.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Neither one of them generally perceived as really sympathetic persons. A man and a woman of mature age. Once they were a little girl and a little boy. And as different as they are from each other, they have one thing in common.

The girl Hillary and the boy Donald both grew up with harsh and demanding fathers, even cruel. No matter what Hillary did, however a straight A student she was, her father responded “Did you get all A:s, then the bar in your school has to be set too low.” In addition to that he was mean, and abusive to her mother.

Young Donald was sent by his stern father to the New York Military Academy at the age of 13, spending his school years boarded in the grimmest educational environment the father knew of. Finding the severe discipline he exercised on his son wasn’t enough and believing a military structure would provide the best setting to shape him in the right direction.

The two young students became extreme achievers. Due to the constant fights in the girls home, her room became her refuge. She closed her ears the best she could and developed a talent for secrecy, concealment and inscrutability.

The boy became a young man within a military environment along only boys and learned about women through Playboy magazine. His father used the expression “a killer” for the personality he wanted from his son. In addition, he was taught to never admit any kind of wrong doings. One could say the boy learned well and his father should be very proud.

I am watching Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton flickering by on my TV screen. A woman who probably all her life has been looking for her father’s approval in everything she does. Longing for validation filling that hole he created in her. And a man who is the perfect product of his father’s pursuing.

The two candidates for president of the USA. The most powerful position in the world. A girl prone for inscrutability seeking her father’s validation. And a boy who is never wrong and brought up to be a killer.

I wonder if there are any parents not messing up their children. I think it’s inevitable. Fortunately most messed up children (that is all of us) are a problem only to themselves and their closest neighborhood. Not to the entire globe. So, in this particular case I would vote for the secretive girl seeking her father’s validation. Not for the killer who is never wrong.

The no bad mood-win!

Yesterday I felt a little off. I shouldn’t, because the sun was out all day (the much there is) these last hours of Savings time and we hadn’t seen it for two weeks. It’s like when Mount Rainier suddenly occurs after a long time of over cast, oops, there it is, I kind of had forgotten about it! 

This last week has been a transition week between my Pre Fall and my Late Fall. I have spent September and October working on public relations for a new CD from my choir Sångkraft Chamber Choir and upcoming concerts marking the CD release, which happened last weekend. Most other things in my life I had put on hold so the to do-list for Late Fall is pretty extensive. But in-between, a week of  recuperation.

The off feeling yesterday I can’t really figure out, not that it’s that important. It wasn’t like I was in a bad mood…

Bad mood, I was thinking heading for bed, when am I ever in a bad mood? This was interesting pondering.

I can be angry. I can be frustrated. I can be sad. I can be melancholy. I can be in despair. I can be devastated. I can be annoyed. I can be mad. I can be in a good mood. And all the positive adjectives on that scale. But in a bad mood. Like in general. Waking up in a bad mood. Being and feeling grumpy. No. Never. I am realizing. Not any more. Very interesting.

In my former life I used to constantly be in a bad mood. At least that’s how I remember it. And how I am perceiving myself. A negative grumper - I just invented that word.

I have definitely become a better person, and I mean that. I’ve been working a lot with myself for many years, and I am different. But in my bed yesterday I am reflecting about something else on the case bad mood.

To quote Carrie Bradshaw, “I can’t help wondering”: is it because I am by myself?

I am spending most of my time alone. There is a lot to say about that of course. My solitary is not by choice and to a large extent it is a negative aspect of my life. But. There is no one here to annoy me! Well, that’s not entirely true. My home care personal are all wonderful people and like family to me, but my kitchen drawers are a mess (dear ones, that’s not entirely true either, but you know what I mean). Etc.

Like family to me. And I am thinking, is that one definition of family? The people closest to you can really put you in a bad mood? Get on you nerves. All those annoying little and big things you don’t agree on. You go to bed irritated about your teenagers not having a clue about their share of the family disorder and you try to sleep beside a snoring husband with whom you had the usual dsipute. No wonder you wake up in a bad mood! And does anything change during the day? Nope. So you go to sleep… and you wake up…

This is like an epiphany to me. I am really never in a bad mood anymore. And is the case that only people interacting with us on a daily bases are triggering our bad mood?! I am thinking I have had my share of bad moods in work places too.

I share my life with my adorable little lady cat Sorella. Like any family member she has her peculiarities. In a couple of aspects she is more like a dog. One of them is that she is not, like normal cats, hiding and covering her defecation. No, she prefers leaving her excrements right on the slate tiles leading up to the house. Or at the path from the baker’s cottage to the outhouse. Yesterday I ruined my second pair of sneakers in two weeks with walking right on it. 

This might be why I was a little bit off yesterday. Or because I had a lousy night although no one was snoring beside me. Or the fact that Late Fall is starting tomorrow and I have to take aggressive action on my to do-list. Lots of different feelings will show up as they always do and that’s fine and as it should be. But according to my new awakening, I will neither wake up in a bad mood, nor go to sleep in that state of mind. My nest has been empty for nine years, how interesting I haven’t realized that win until now! 

Elisabeta

- Elisabeta, welcome back!! I walked up to her and spread my arms.

- Maria Maria, madame! And she stood up and an we hugged and took each other's hands and I touched her face and we  smiled and laughed, and she asked me: bra? Bra? Which means good. Good madame?

Elisabeta is the Rumanian Romani woman who earns her living outside my grocery store. I first met her about a year ago, bent on her knees on a purple inflatable cushion with her paper cup in front of her. In a little while we knew each other’s names.

I am doing my grocery shopping Monday and Thursday so we get to see each other twice a week. I always buy her some food. Most often a chicken, but sometimes she needs fruit more, or potatoes and some olive oil. For some reason I feel better buying her food then giving money, so that’s been my choice. After many months I realized I’d never asked for her preferences so I did, but it turned out she actually preferred food so we were both happy.

Elisabeta only knows a few words of English and Swedish, and of course I don’t know any Rumanian. Some of the Romanies here know Italian but she doesn’t, so it is hard for us to communicate about more than chicken and fruit. So although we’ve met twice a week for almost a year I don’t know much about her except the obvious. She is here bent on her knees begging for people’s mercy during the cold and dark Umeå winter because that’s her best choice. I know though that she has three children and lives in a trailer while in Umeå. And I’ve met her youngest, an adorable little 3-year old girl.

It’s hard to guess Elisabeta’s age. From the looks I would think we are the same age. Which we can’t be as her children are young. Goran, who works for my home care company and often picks up the groceries with me, is guessing 33. Goran is a Kurdish man from Iraq who has been living in many countries on his way to the final destination Sweden. As he is multiple lingual he was also the one figuring out Elisabetas message back in May when she wanted to tell me something besides chicken and fruit. 

I could tell from her eagerness it was something important. Yes, she was heading back to Rumania. And could I spare some money for clothes and food for her children for the trip? Of course I could. She had never asked me for anything before and now she was heading home. I didn’t get to say goodbye though, next time she was gone and I didn’t see her again.

During the summer there have been other Romanies outside my store. But not any regulars. And it was interesting, because I realized I wasn’t ready to connect to anyone new. It was like I needed the breathing space. Which is ridiculous. I needed breathing space?! I feel ashamed. I felt ashamed and I feel ashamed admitting it. But the thing is, connecting and doing the little you can do twice a week is a little bit like an adoption. You commit to someone. There have been Romanies before Elisabeta in my life, and the connection-separation I am experiencing is a process needing it’s time.

But this Monday Elisabeta was back! I didn’t know if I would ever get to see her again, but there she was on her purple cushion! And we were both so happy to meet again. I asked her what I could get for her and her respons was chicken. We smiled. Chicken of course. And it always feels good handing over the warm food in her cold hands.

What I really wanted to ask her though was how she was. How she had been. How was Rumania? What was it like being back home? And how does she feel about returning to the cold and dark Umeå. Oh how I would love to have a real conversation with this woman, always smiling on her cushion how ever bad the winter is.

On Thursday she talked about the trailer. Cold. Gas. Babies. Gas? Money? She needed money for heating the trailer. Of course I wanted to help her out. 

Next time Goran is the one assisting me to the grocery store I will ask him if he, with all his language skills might figure out a way to ask her how her summer was. Maybe he can be Elisabeta’s and my interpreter. Language. Communication. The key to everything. Oh how nice it would be.

Me, my mother, and the piano

Watch your ears I said as I slammed the piano lid one last time! Bam!! God, that felt good!

My dear neighbors Jenny and Hannes will unfortunately be moving, and it turned out they couldn’t bring Jenny’s piano to the smaller condo. Can I have it, I asked, and I could!

Me and the piano as an instrument have a very difficult relationship. It started out in my early years. Yet, I think a house needs a piano. As a house needs a cat.

When I was 5 my mother took me for my first piano lesson. There were hundreds of them to come until the day when I started high school, moved away from home and was liberated from that ball and chain.

My mother’s ambition for me at that time was two hours practice a day. I don’t know if she come to realize how unrealistic that was, but for all my childhood one hour a day was the standard. I hated every minute of it, and as I grew older I started to lie, telling her that I had done my practice while she was away. Or ran to the piano throwing myself at the stool as I heard her on the steps to the hose. And as an obstinate teenager I was down to half an hour.

A lot of my time at the piano I spent trying to reed the music through my tears. I can at any time recall the effort to blink the tears away, as my hands were occupied on the keys not to interrupt the music she expected from me. And I can feel the salty liquid running down my face, mixed with snot as it reached my mouth. Swallowing swallowing. Playing playing. While the tears found their way down my neck and in-under the collar.

I wish I could tie you to the piano stool, my mother used to say. Well she did mentally. I even have a picture in my head the stool covered with twine. That did not happen, but the picture is the possibility it might. You will thank me one day, she said. I wish she had been right. One might think all those hours would have made me somewhat of a piano player. But it didn’t. Not a bit.

I have hardly touched the piano since I had the choice not to. Correction, I have hardly played anything from out of a music sheet. However, I have written songs and coming up with the harmonies for them at the piano. I wish my mother had seen how her daughter was an intuitive child and that’s the way she could have been a musician, as my mother’s ambition was. Although I wasn’t aware of the density of her desire until a couple of years before she died.

When my parents passed away and we cleaned out our childhood home I, against all odds, took care of the piano. The one I had was really bad, and a house needs a piano. Besides, my two sons liked hanging out with the instrument. I planned on burning the detestable stool though, I mean actually burning it, up in flames. But it turned out piano stools are really expensive so I ended up only putting new fabric on.

Since then, parts of Trouble&Trouble’s music has been created on their grandparents piano. And some of mine too. But it’s time has been up for a good while. Keys are falling off. It’s impossible to tune. So I’ve desired a new one for many years. A house needs a piano. And then it turns out Jenny wants a new home for hers! 

To Jenny and her mother the piano is relaxing. Meditative. A sonorous tranquilizer.  So last week I slammed my childhood piano lid one last time! Bam!! God, that felt good! And Trouble&Trouble and Hannes moved it out to the barn - in wait for final termination. In my music room now, Jenny’s piano, which also is a really beautiful piece of furniture. I think it comes with a good vibe and mojo. Adding the right energy for my home. She kept the stool though. As hers to her, is a comfort.

How different things are, according to our experiences. I will not pull out a piece of sheet music to play on Jenny’s piano. I know my eyes will tear up just watching it at the stand. I once asked my friend Mats what he thought my natural instrument would have been. The piano, he said. You have the sensibility. Too bad mom. The day never came when I come to thank you for my childhood piano upbringing. And too bad for me. I am thanking you for the music in my life. But not for the piano.