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.

Gunnel and Kjell

Their names are Gunnel and Kjell and they are praying for me every day.

I am a choral singer and has been for most of my life. My choir, Kammarkören Sångkraft ( Sångkraft Chamber Choir), is an amateur choir with professional ambitions, and we are actually one of the most sonorous choirs in Sweden. We started out as a youth choir in the seventies and are still going strong.

I was 18 and we were all in our late teens. Our ambitions were high already back then and our concerts a big thing, well visited by a loyal audience. And at the core of the crowd, our parents.

Standing in the choir, singing in one of the churches or high school assembly halls, the sight of our parents in the auditorium was a grounding feeling. There they were, Ingrid and Sven, Gerd and Agnar, Gunborg, Bosse and Edit, Vivianne and Lennart, Elisabet, Arne and Eva, Åke and Inga, Kerstin and Martin (my parents), Harry and Anita, Gunnel and Kjell. And they all came to know each other.

I am still singing together with some of these teenagers, though now a bit older. And although quite a few of the parents aren’t here anymore, some still are. And the feeling spotting them in the audience is to me even now reassuring and warm.

Agneta is one of those teenagers and we are alto colleagues in the choir as well as good friends. Gunnel and Kjell are her parents, sweet sweet people, still as loyal to the choir as always. Further more, Gunnel and my mother studied to nurses together and were acquainted from back then.

Gunnel and Kjell have a special place in my heart because I have a special place in their heart. Since they have been following me they know about my challenges and they care for me. They pray for me every day.

Now, writing that in English it doesn’t really stand out as odd or remarkable, since in the American English language the sentence “you are in our prayers and God bless ” is like an everyday household mantra. At least that’s what we hear on TV, in films and of course in the political debate. But in Swedish it has a different ring to it.

Sweden is one of the most secularized countries in the world. So people who believe in God are a minority. By that I mean not just having a vague feeling of something bigger than themselves out there, but defend themselves to believing in God and are active in that belief.

Gunnel and Kjell go to church most every Sunday and God is a solid foundation for their life. They wake up with Him, He is always present and He watches over them through the night. And they pray to him.

I am sure Thank You is a a big part of their prayers. But I know they are also angels watching out for many people around them, asking God to take care of them. And I am one of those. I am one of the people Gunnel and Kjell everyday is sending their prayer to the God they believe in, asking Him to take care of us. Dear God, take care of Mia.

To know that fills my heart with gratitude and warmth. It is big. Overwhelming.

Last night Agneta, her husband Mats, Agneta’s sister Lena (all my good friends), daughter Agnes (a little bit of a god daughter to me), and Gunnel and Kjell gathered here at my place at the end of the road for a fall dinner together. The yellow, orange and red maple leaves as a carpet outside while the lit candles, the fire in the fire place and the company warming the evening inside. And the food of course.

It was such a nice evening. So cozy. So warm. Such a perfect thing to do on an October night. And it was my way to say thank you to Gunnel and Kjell. I have someone thinking of me every day. That’s pretty amazing. Furthermore, someone who is asking the God they so firmly believe is good, to take care of me. Every time my back allows me to attend in one of my choir’s concerts I am looking for Gunnel and Kjell in the audience, always finding them. Thinking, thank you. I am standing here.

Home is Away, Away is Home 5 year anniversary, now let’s se what the Russians have to say…

This would be a proper time to make it an end. 5 years even. But it seems I am not quite ready yet.

For five years now (yesterday) I have told my stories. Many of them true to my original idea of my blog Home is away, Away is Home. Stories about my two cities, Umeå at the northeast cost of Sweden and Seattle at the northwest coast of the U.S. But as time has passed many have come to be about my personal life. Which has provided me with as much material as I need and more. As Norah Ephron said: everything is copy.

Well, not everything. It’s true that I am letting my readers in on quite a lot. But there is so much more. I am sometimes thinking I should write a book called Most of it I Can’t Tell. Most of it I can’t tell for different reasons. Out of consideration to people around me. Out of shame. Out of integrity. Out of self-preservation. It’s actually too bad, since there are lots of powerful stories within those segments.

It’s been a beautiful fall Sunday today, the first after a freezing point night, just in time for October. Josephine has helped me change the window dressing in my kitchen and entrance. My light blue and white summer throws have been replaced with yellow and brown ones, just as my maple leaves in the garden. I am lighting candles. Accepting and finally embracing the summer being gone, making my home snug and cozy. As much as I LOVE the summer and start panicking already at summer solstice, I am always amazed on how good the yellow fall window dressing in my kitchen makes me feel when the time comes. Tucking me in. A fire in the fire place.

It’s a great loss to me that I can’t follow the seasons first hand in Seattle. Anymore. Or for now? Although I am saying it’s highly unlikely or impossible that I ever will be back, the hope is still not quite dead. I refilled my ATT account for a year only a few weeks ago and that says something of course.

I sometimes feel though that the lack of first hand experiences and being a part of Seattle and the debates and discussions among my friends makes me unqualified to tell about Seattle anymore. Life has made me a distant spectator. I am doing my best to keep me updated though, and I hope that counts for something.

Home is Away, Away is Home is following the seasons, in Umeå and in Seattle. And within myself. Most of my readers are Swedish. A bunch are American. Some are scattered around the world, one here and one there, although that might just be unfortunate clicking.

And then there are the Russians. Most of the time I don’t see them around. But as soon as the topic for the day is politics they show up. So let me do a little experiment here. We are only about a month from the American election so l am throwing in some words that normally would make them react. Such as Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, the Democrats, the Republicans, Bernie Sanders, Tim Kane, Mike Pence, Barak Obama, Michelle Obama, immigration, wall against Mexico, Syria, muslims, Turkey, Erdogan, Putin. Now let’s see what happens!

So for how long will I be continuing my Sunday evening storytelling? I don’t know. I am someone who has a hard time letting go. I am also the kind of person who needs closure, what ever the subject. So I am thinking my exit will be when I have the possibility of saying goodbye to Seattle. I am still hoping for it to happen with myself involved in it at the actual scene. 

But it might be that I need to have someone going  through my boxes in my Safe Guard storage unit at Martin Luther King Way while with me on Skype. I can totally see it. Letting Becca (who is the same size as me) have everything she likes and give the rest away. And then ship my Tempur Pedic mattress back to Sweden. Sob sob…

But let’s hope for a change. And some real reporting. And more Home is Away, Away is Home years. Now, lets see what the Russians have to say…