August 21, 2018: I needed to get out of town. I know that sounds rich coming from someone living in
London this year, but it's how I felt. I'd bought the ticket months ago for just one night in Stockholm, a birthday celebration designed to punctuate a thesis already written. Unfortunately, that didn't happen; nor did plans to make my student loan stretch til October. I'm not even done with chapter one, and I'm so broke I'm 'borrowing' a bit of honey from cafes in order to add zest to a piece of bread. This is real. And yet, yes, I was in
Sweden just yesterday.
🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪
January 16, 2024: I just found the above paragraph in draft form. I had forgotten I had written it because the next day, my mother died. While in Sweden, she had told me to be sure and look at the bright, beautiful
flowers in "Europe", telling me "I remember how beautiful they were." She had said this August 19th, my birthday. And so the next day, I just wandered until I walked into
Kungstradgarden...
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Because Stockholm is mixed with the grief that assaulted me immediately after my trip, I sometimes forget just how much joy I felt there. I loved the flowers and the water and the yellow and green everywhere, particularly yellow. "Oohh! And yellow is your favorite color," Mom had purred from Waco.
I went out to eat on my birthday and had spaghetti and meatballs. My brother had asked if they were Swedish meatballs, and I said I didn't think so, that it was an Italian meatball that just happened to be in Sweden.
I stayed near the centre of the city in a charming hotel, ProfilHotels Central, in a room also yellow and green with a wee toilet (bathroom). After Mom told me to be sure and really see the flowers, I asked the clerk to snap my picture in front of their beautiful bouquet.
My favorite filmmaker was Ingmar Bergman and my first love is Swedish. I studied Linnaeus at university and interviewed a Nobelist for a science magazine. I like blond hair and cold weather. An ancestor, Winnifred Munday, may have been Swedish according to ancestry research.
So all signs point to a return voyage. I want to stand in the same room where I spoke to Mom on my birthday, where I described the colors and complained that a McDonald's was nearby. "Well," she laughed, "at least you will always have a cheap place to eat."
All photos by the author. Of special note: the charming expanding sponge with mother and children was picked up with Mom in mind, just three days before she passed.
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