Things I don't do anymore: Final reflections

The posts in this series are: kite-flying, skiing, skating, fishing, archery, mushrooming, celebrating New Year, gambling, party games, knitting, baking and traveling by train.

This has been a useful exercise since I had a chance not only to indulge in nostalgia, but reflect on why I stopped doing all these things. I have noticed that most of them have two features in common. Firstly, they are all connected to the place and time of my childhood and youth. We made things that weren't available, and we did things because there were no other options. When I moved to Sweden and things became available, they became less attractive. I have another example: we took incredible efforts to get hold of horoscopes, but when you can read them in any daily paper, what's the point?

Secondly, all the activities I described are things that bring people together; and again, bring together because there are few or no alternatives, of the kind people have now when we spend most of our spare time one-to-one with computers or other devices. I feel frustrated when I see members of my family sitting in the same room, each with a device, often playing the same game or even laughing at the same Facebook joke. We have lost something important, and I am resisting it as much as I can, meeting people in real life, spending quality time with people I love. I'd like to belong to a knitting club, or do Saturday baking for charity, or find someone to play scrabble with. Live scrabble, not virtual scrabble.

Maybe it's my own fault. I haven't been active in finding fishing or skiing companions, and I have recently been consistently choosing solitary pastimes, such as walking or gardening.

Whatever the reason, I don't really regret that I don't do any of these things, because obviously I am doing other things instead. Read my blog if you want to know more. 

Things I don't do anymore: Fishing

Read previous posts in this series: kite-flying, skiing and skating.

I spent all my summers between eleven and nineteen at the Composers' Union resort in Karelia, near the once Finnish town of Sortavala, by the Ladoga lake. The territory was annexed by the Soviet Union after WWII, but all places, villages, rivers, bays, lakes had Finnish names, and in the '60s there were still ruins after burnt-out Finnish houses. The area was so close to the border that you needed a permit; therefore the nature was as pristine as it was under the Finnish government.

The resort had a central building, which was claimed to have been Marshal Mannerheim's hunting lodge. Whether true or not, it was indeed a magnificent manor, with a huge front staircase, elegant sittings rooms and a dining hall with dark roof beams. I have no pictures from my childhood because we didn't have a camera then, and I only found a few pictures on the web. It doesn't match my memory, but it's over forty years ago. 

 

There were some guest rooms in the building, but most families lived in small cottages within easy walking distance, some with direct access to the waterfront. People would rent a rowing boat for the whole season; some people, including my father, had light motors that allowed us to go further away into the archipelago where we had our very own island. We would bring a picnic and stay for the whole day, cooking over open fire, and very frequently cooking our own catch.

The most common catch was pike, but occasionally you got pike perch and, with luck, salmon. The gear was either casting rod or reel, and my job was rowing. If you have never rowed a boat while someone is casting you have no idea how hard it is, especially in windy weather, and what a risk you are taking by sharing the boat with a loved one. I had no choice, because my father simply gave me orders, but he once set off my mother on a tiny cliff in the middle of a vast water span, to untangle a line. With casting, you have to row smoothly and absolutely silently because the b-y fish hear the slightest splash. You need to watch the direction of the wind and the incoming waves. You need to balance the boat so that the caster doesn't fall overboard. You have to watch out for underwater cliffs and floating logs; you need to steer the boat close enough to the reeds where the fish is, but not too close so that you lose the lure. And when there is fish on the hook, you manipulate the net, and the kind of language you hear if you are clumsy and the fish escapes... yes, it would make a sailor blush.

Every day we would also set up a longline, with live bait, for eel and burbot. It had to be checked and re-baited twice a day, early in the morning before breakfast, and late in the evening. Summer evenings are long and light in Karelia; water surface would be like a mirror, and every sound was carried around for miles.

I miss those days with my father in a boat.

On rare occasions, I was allowed to cast a couple of times, just to practice, and I did catch fish when I had a chance. My father kept a log, giving all fish funny names. 

 

It was my job to gut and cook the fish. There were several cooking methods which I learned very early, all over open fire, since we didn't have a kitchen. For clear triple fish soup, you first cooked small fry with spices, then strained, added pieces of larger fish, cooked until it fell apart, strained again, and for the last round you only added burbot, particularly the liver, a delicacy to share around (and all the foul language I heard from my father when I wasn't careful enough with the liver and spilled the gall). The soup was thick as glue, and a small cup was enough to make you full. But the best way was to smoke the fish, particularly eel, and as soon as I could be trusted with an axe, I would cleave young alder to line the smoking box, fill it with fish, close the box tight, make an even fire under it, knowing the exact time for every kind and size of fish. Serve it steaming hot, without plates.

I miss those evenings by the fire.

The irony is that Staffan also used to be passionate about fishing, but we never pursued this passion together, although Stockholm archipelago was no worse than Sortavala and very similar. I have asked Staffan repeatedly, and he cannot give a proper answer. It just didn't happen.

We once went shark fishing in Morocco, and we went deep-sea fishing in San Diego when I got terribly seasick; and I had the thrill of fishing piranhas in Brazil, but all that was tourist fishing.

Why do you stop doing something that used to be the gist of life?

Lost allusions

Thinking further about my yesterday's experience I realise that another reason for my emotional disturbance is an acute sense of lost allusions, the lack of common cultural ground, the paucity of mother-tongue immersion. I have in all these years deliberately avoided Russian diaspora, for a number of reasons. Firstly, Russian emigrants of all generations have been suspicious of each other; I have heard slander about most of my former compatriots, and I can just imagine what has been said – perhaps is being said – about me behind my back. In every Russian diaspora there are factions and groups; in Stockholm there are several Russian Orthodox parishes that don't recognise each other; there are mutually exclusive societies and associations. I never wanted to be part of it so I preferred not to join. Then, as any diaspora, it is highly heterogeneous, and I see no point in socialising with anyone merely because we happen to come from the same country, but with whom I wouldn't socialise back in Russia. Also I made a point of becoming personally and professionally integrated in Sweden, in all things Swedish. It never occurred to me to get involved with the Slavic department, because I had never been a Slavic scholar and had neither interest nor competence to become one. I did attend Slavic conferences and other events, but only when topics interested me for my own professional goals. I also tried to become involved in various communities, from the parish to charity work to Swedish Institute for Cultural Exchange, and abandoned those for various reasons.

The gains are obvious: I would have never been where I am now if I hadn't invested in my professional career. But the losses only became clear to me obliquely. I would go back to Russia to speak Russian and to immerse into what had been my element since I was a child: intellectual talk with common denominators, where allusions didn't have to be spelled out. As years went by I started to notice that I wasn't any longer atuned to my friends' framework of mind. I didn't understand their references; sometimes, their language felt alien. I wasn't able to keep up with new literature, new thinking, new worldview, new gossip. I wasn't one of the gang anymore. Some of my Slavic scholar friends caught up and passed me in their knowledge of contemporary Russia. For them, it was their study object. I could never make my country of origin a study object. And I had to keep up with my own study objects.

The allusions got irretrievably lost. There is no point throwing out literary quotations if your conversation partners have no idea what you are talking about. You cannot explain every joke. Finally, you give up. I have read about emigrants who forgot their mother tongue, or perhaps suppressed it. I hope I haven't quite forgotten Russian although I have fewer and fewer occasions to speak it, and sometimes I ask myself whether I should persist at all. I even speak to myself in my two other languages. I read Russian literature, classic and modern, but I cannot write professionally. So much of my grown-up vocabulary has developed in the other languages.

What happened yesterday was a rare occasion of shared allusions. Everybody laughed together, everybody recognised and remembered (I am sure there were people who didn't, but we can ignore them). I was brutally and painfully reminded of my voluntary isolation, of severed ties, of my cultural luggage that will die with me, unclaimed.

Things I don't do anymore

I frequently refect upon the fact that things that were indispensible once aren't any longer. I don't mean that few of us use typewriters because we have a better technology, but something that you used to do a lot and then stopped for some reason or other, although it is still easily available.

I used to cross-country ski - not that I particularly liked it, but that's what we did in my time in my country, perhaps because it was the cheapest and easiest winter sport.I haven't done it since I moved to Sweden. I also used to skate a lot, even when I was quite grown up; I had a good skating partner. I brought my skates to Sweden, and we went skating a couple of times when the kids were small, but it never became a must like it used to be.

Fishing was the most important summer pastime; I just couldn't imagine my life without fishing. Interestingly enough, Staffan was also a passionate fisher, but we both stopped since we got married. He claims that nothing can compare with his former wife's fishing waters (thus emphasising what a sacrifice he made for my sake). There is enough fishing space in the archipelago or in the inland lakes and rivers, but for some reason it never became a habit. Sergej used to bring home pike from local lakes, and we even cooked and ate them. But he soon found other pleasures.

I don't knit. Knitting was obsessive when I was young. For one thing, this was the only way to make an original piece of clothing, but it was also highly social: we would sit and knit and talk, or listen to music. We exchanged patterns and ideas. My daughters both knit a lot, but I quit when they were still small. I cannot really explain it because it is still nice to have an original piece of clothing, and it is still relaxing. Probably it's the social bit that is lacking.

I don't make clothes because nobody wants homemade clothes these days.

I don't play cards, or any other games. In my youth, we played cards, Scrabble and mahjong. For poker, a friend used to have a five-liter jar of pennies we used as chips. Our first Scrabble sets were made of school erasers cut in four bits with letters written in ink. Our first mahjong set was made from dominoes. Games were bridges between young and old, children and adults.

We played simple card games with our children, as well as Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit, but it felt much more playing for their sake. I never found good mahjong partners in Sweden.Staffan promtly refuses to play Scrabble or Mastermind with me - I wonder why?

Of course I do other things these days, although most of them solitary rather tahn social. Yet it is strange how all these things just fade away.

Reunion

Staffan is in Sweden for school reunion. Isn't it cool? He has been saying for weeks: "What am I going to do with all these old ladies?" But it seems to have gone smoothly.

I have realised that I never blogged about my school reunion a year and a half ago. I know why. I only went for two days and didn't tell anyone, except for my best friend and classmate Alyona, who had persuaded me to come. I didn't want to blog so that someone in Moscow could read it and feel offended. It's all ancient history now, and I cannot help going back to it in my memory, now that Staffan is meeting his old ladies.

I didn't have many good friends in school; in fact, I was one of those kids who are not directly bullied but effectively excluded; a weirdo in eyeglasses, top grades and book lover. I did a lot to gain popularity, including smoking and almost getting expelled for it, but I was never invited to parties and I didn't have a boyfriend in school. In fact, I have never ever had a boyfriend, but it is another story.

I went to a reunion two years after graduation, mostly to see some of my favourite teachers. Then I lost touch with all my classmates, except for Alyona, who is still my best friend, despite and not because. Then I moved to Sweden and actually met an old classmate there, but he wasn't exactly one I wanted to meet. Alyona went to a couple of reunions and reported, but I didn't care much, beyond the normal human interest for gossip.

A few years ago Alyona told me about the Russian version of Stayfriends - or was it the other way round? Anyway, we discovered this site, and I found quite a few classmates, despersed over the whole world, who were all extremely glad to hear from me. It must be nostalgia or some other similar feeling which, as you get old, compels you to seek people you knew when you were young (that's why Staffan was after all so eager to meet his old ladies). They mustn't  necessarily have been close friends, but you sat in the same room for years, read the same books, broke the same rules. One of the former classmates I found on Stayfriends was expelled from school for antisocial behaviour. I won't reveal what has become of him because it is easily identifyable. In fact, many of my classmates have become something grand and have professorships at world's leading universities and medical clinics, and have made brilliant political or financial careers, or own theatres, or write novels. We discovered this when we finally met, but I am going ahead of the story. As we realised that a 40th reunion was approaching, some classmates took the initiative, the bankers gave money, the theatre owners made venues avalaible, and I was appointed liaison for diaspora.

I didn't want to go to Moscow for a number of reasons, but Alyona persuaded me that I could come solely for the reunion and never tell anyone. Which I did, and I am glad I did. I have never, before or after, experienced the temperature of hugs and kisses, and although there were a couple of people who had to remind each other who they were, almost everyone was recognisable, and the reminiscences came in floods. We were about eighty in my year, and thirty came to the reunion, from far and wide.The meal was plentiful, as it should be in Russia; we moved around the table to talk to everyone, took pictures, shared pictures of grandchildren, gossiped about absent friends, honoured some of the teachers with a toast and some with a moment of silence. We agreed that we were an exceptionally privileged year, and we were. The really bad times followed soon after our graduation.That's why so many are abroad.

Easter

Easter time is when my identity gets most confused. Russian and Western Easter do not always coincide and can be as far apart as five weeks. We always celebrated Russian Easter in Moscow, even though my family was Lutheran. When I moved to Sweden I of course started celebrating Swedish/Western Easter, but I brought my Russian customs with me. Russian customs include Russian food: the Easter saffron cake, kulich, and Easter spicy cheese, paskha. At the same time, as a child I was supposed to believe in Easter Bunny, in the good German tradition. I had to prepare a plate with some moss or pretty leaves and put it under my bed on Easter eve. In the morning the Bunny would have hidden the plate, and when I found it, it had a little kulich, a pretty egg and perhaps a little toy. No chocolate eggs. Easter was officially forbidden, so there was no commerce around it. Yet you could buy kulich in a bakery, only they called it "Spring cake". People with self respect baked their own. There were no special paints for eggs, we would use onion skins and other natural dyes. We shared family secrets.

We played the egg game at breakfast, knocking egg against egg to break it. But one year when we were visiting some German relatives in Northern Caucasus, they took us to the churchyard to roll eggs on graves, which was utterly perplexing. Many years later, I saw remains of hardboiled eggs in Russian churchyards in Moscow. Visiting graves on Easter Day was not part of my family customs. Later, the authorities in Moscow organised shuttle buses from undeground stations to nearest churchyards on Easter Day, to avoid chaos. Still they didn't admit it was Easter.

In Sweden, when the kids were small - and actually when they were grown-up - we filled cardboard eggs with sweets and hid for them to hunt for. A big cultural clash happened during my first Easter in Sweden, when I had carefully prepared the food, painted eggs, set the table on the eve, and in the morning Staffan started boiling eggs for breakfast. On the other hand, he expected me to make a leg of lamb for Easter dinner, and I thought it was barbarian. Eventually, we reconciled it all, taking the best of everything.

In my youth, we would go to Easter vigil, which was forbidden. To discourage young people from attending Easter services, attractive American films and shows were broadcast on television well beyond the normal broadcast time. Around the few remaining churches in Moscow, police and volunteers from Young Communists made human chains, but were instructed to let the believers in. Which implied old women in headscarves, but if you went past with determined steps they'd let you in. The church was overcrowded (in Russian Orthodox churches there are no pews, you stand), it was unbearably hot from hundreds of candles. Once you've squeezed in, you couldn't get out, and the service went on for hours. Sometimes we stayed outside and watched the priests come out to call: "Christ is risen". I knew very little of the implications, but it was a celebration we shared and valued. The Russian custom was to carry a burning candle all the way home. Luckily, I lived just next to a church, so I managed. Sometimes we would go to a different church, and the game was to bring it home in a taxi (it didn't work). Once I attended a service as a guest of honour, allowed to stand with the choir. I received a blessed egg from the priest. People said that blessed eggs didn't rot, you could save them for years.

In Stockholm I used to go to the Russian church for Easter vigil, even when I didn't otherwise go regularly, and in San Diego I managed to find a tiny Russian church. When the Russian and Western Easter did not coincide, I would celebrate first with the family, at home, and then with Russian friends, in church. I would make Easter food twice. Occasionally I would go to a Swedish Easter service. In Sweden, Good Friday (strange name for a day when God is murdered) is a holiday. In the US and here, in the UK, it isn't. You get out of phase. Add all your Jewish friends and friends of other confessions and atheist friends... Yet much like Christmas, Easter for me is mostly about the family. We could never get the whole family together for Christmas Eve, but they all came for Easter brunch.

This year, Julia made Russian Easter food and invited her little brother. I don't think she realises how happy she made me. Somehow this multicultural, confused tradition is carried on.

Another favourite

There is another mysterious British children's book I loved as a child. It was called, in Russian, The Adventures of Muffin, and was a collection of short stories about anthropomorphic animals. It also had activities, such as join-the-dots, paper figures, find five errors, and a board game called “Carrots” which was a simplified version of Monopoly and which we loved even when we were quite grown up (we didn't know about Monopoly then). The reason it was called “Carrots” was that the eponymous protagonist was a donkey who loved carrots. Or actually, he was a mule. I just realised it recently: all characters' names were alliterations: Muffin the Mule, Sally the Seal, Oswald the Ostrich, Peter the Puppy, Willy the Worm. In the Russian translation the names did not alliterate, but since we didn't know they were supposed to, we didn't care.

Just like The little ruggamuffin, Muffin's Adventures was not mentioned in any British sources, not even in Margery Fisher's Intent Upon Reading, which at that time was the most comprehensive study. I didn't ask anyone in the UK, because it was obviously one of those books that for inexplicable reasons get famous and popular outside their own culture.In Russia, it was known as one of the most popular children's books in England, and its author, Ann Hogarth, as one of the most important English children's writers.

When I was in Edinburgh many years ago and had some spare time, I visited the Museum of Childhood, and there, among other toys, was Muffin the Mule. He was a puppet and came from a television show. The book was obviously a sidekick.

I asked Morag sometime ago whether she was familiar with Muffin, and she immediately started singing the Muffin tune.

There are dozens of Muffin fan pages and YouTube clips.

Happy Rabbit!

Today is the Chinese New year. In my youth we would celebrate it with pomp and circumstance. It was exciting because it was secret and private, for family and close friends. In the authorities' eyes, it was as bad as Christmas, or worse. You didn't advertise it to everyone.

My mother was an Orientalist, and it was she who introduced the Chinese calendar to us all. I don't even remember how it happened, but suddenly there was a wooden animal whom we decorated with jewelry and gave a little bowl of rice to eat and worshipped all year until it was time to switch to the next animal. Somehow we managed to find out the right date. You couldn't just look it up in an encyclopedia (and internet hadn't been conceived yet). My mother found the description and characterstics of the animals in her Japanese art books, and we translated them, typed out and shared. Getting the right animal in time was a problem as such, because you couldn't just walk into a shop and say: "Can I have a dragon please". Well ahead of time, a hunt would start, and if you happened to see suitable bulls or monkeys you bought a lot and gave to friends. As a last solution, you could draw your own. Planning twelve years in advance is weird when you are young, so I never kept the animals, except my own. In fact, I have a set of my animals, in clay, wood, silk, glass and jade, and they have followed me in all my displacements.

It isn't as exciting now, like evething that once was forbidden but isn't any more. When I was in China I considered buying a whole Zodiac, but the pretty ones were too expensive. I don't have a rabbit to decorate and feed with rice. Perhaps I can draw one.

Reflections on age

Tomorrow is my oldest son's birthday. When he was born I could not imagine myself being as old as he is now. Everything beyond thirty was senility.

Somebody mentioned on Facebook today that their students were in elementary school when the first Harry Potter book came, as an example of ageing anxiety. I am not impressed. When I started teaching, most of my students were older than I was. Then they were my age. Then they were my children's age. Now they are just slightly older than my grandchildren.

"When Mozart was my age he had been dead for more than twenty years" (after Tom Lehrer).
 
I am older now than my granny was when I was a child. I remember her as very old.
 
I don't mind, but it just feels odd.

Travelogues

Looking for something completely different, I found a sub-subfolder in my computer called "Diary" which made me curious. In the folder, there were three files from three trips of ten years ago. One was a longish letter, never posted, from a week in New York with Anton and Julia in April 2000. With my fresh memories of New York, it was interesting to revisit it and compare the impressions. What I was most impressed with was how much we managed to do in a week. And I always get melancholy at the mention of WTC.

The second story was from a trip to China later the same year. I thought I had good memories of it, but of course there were lots of details I didn't remember. And of course, my notes are emotionally charged, and they record meetings and talks with people that I had forgotten. And funny small episodes. And lack of cash machines that I had promptly obliterated from my memory.

The last one is from our trip across America, from California to New England, 26 states in 23 days. Again, I remember highlights, I remember that we were at Grand Canyon and in Yellowstone, but I had forgotten the details. For instance, my 5-hour walk along the rim; if someone had asked me what we actually did at Grand Canyon I wouldn't have remembered. Or my driving around in Yellowstone on my own (Staffan had eye pain), on small mountain roads, chasing geysers and grizzlies - did I really do it? Obviously I did; I wouldn't have made it up. And the endless small museums and roadside attractions, and all the crazy motels and funny meals, including bison steak in Utah where no alcohol was served. And meeting old friends who, sadly, are no more.

This was before blogging became popular, otherwise I probably would have it all on my blog. 

Lost allusions

"What do we lose when we lose allusion" is the tile of an old essay by Peter Hunt. He talks about different levels of literary texts and whether it is necessary to understand every single element that writers have put into them.

In everyday life, when we lose allusions we lose a part of ourselves. Yesterday I was about to post something on Facebook when I realised that of my 250 FB friends three maybe would recognise the allusion, and those three do not log in on FB anyway. This is the price of being a displaced hedgehog. You lose your allusions, your reference frames, your context. Or rather the other way round, you still carry them with you, but there is no one to share. I think that I have gathered a fairly good set of Swedish allusions, American allusions, and these last years British allusions. It helps that I am familiar with children's literature because many people would remember quotes and characters. It is more likely that they remember a children's book quote than a Shakespeare quote. But my Swedish allusions are wasted on my British friends. And my Russian allusions are wasted on almost everybody. Even my children.

Maybe it is not spatial, but temporal. Maybe I would have lost my allusions even if I had stayed put.There are family jokes that die when the family dies. Jokes that come from somewhere and wander away. Childhood anecdotes that do not make sense any more. Poetry lines. Dialogues from old movies. It's sad. One should not start the new year on such a sad note.

The tragedy of broken toys

Our New Year Eve movie was Toy Story. Not the new one, the first one. It came between our children and our grandchildren so we never saw it then. Anton says Toy Story 3 is a wonderful movie, but it made sense to watch them in order, and it just so happened that I got the first one among my rentals two days ago.

I didn't know it was a horror movie. Child abuse is terrible, cruelty to animals is abominable, but toy abuse is unbearable. I watched it to end, under excruciating pain. This is beyond being sentimental, it must be something very deep and inexplicable in my mind because I have always been like that, since I was small. Cried over The Steadfast Tin Soldier. I don't think I want to see Toy Story 2 and 3. It's too sad. I know it's ridiculous.

This evoked a memory of another very sad story, so here is my old review:

The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban

A large number of modern children's classics have recently been reprinted, which is more than welcome. Among them, The Mouse and His Child is far from a self-evident title. This book appears sparsely on recommendation lists and in textbooks. It must be one of the most underestimated masterpieces of children's literature.

There may be many reasons for this. The best-known and constantly reprinted books by Russell Hoban are his nice, simple picturebooks about the badger girl Frances. When you see another title mentioning nice animals, you may think that this is another book in the same style. But this is not the case. It is a long, sad, not to say tragic story about toys that are exposed to the fate of all toys when they get broken. If this book had not been published and marketed as a children's book, it would have become one of the greatest works of existentialism.

The plot is reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," which I, strangely enough, have not seen any critic mention. The two toy mice have to go through many painful trials, through anxiety and sorrow, slavery and humiliation, actually through physical disintegration. They meet friends and enemies, but - as in real life, no villains are totally evil, and no friend is totally good and nice. The characters in the book are colorful and unique: the greedy slave-driver Manny, the unreliable Frog, the cunning thinker Muskrat, the self-centered poet Serpentina. The toys meet with much treachery and evil, but also loyalty and unselfish courage. During their adventures and bitter defeat the two mice sustain their longing for a home and their childish hope for a happy ending. It is not a coincidence that the mouse child is stronger in spirit than the father, and he never loses faith.

Hoban is an incredibly skillful writer. All details and events in the book are interconnected in a way that we normally associate with great mainstream novels. To let an empty can of dog food be the central symbol of the story would be daring even in an adult novel. The chapter about the Crows' Art Experimental Theater Group ought to be a universal classic.

The ending is happy in a way, at least from a young reader's viewpoint. Adult readers cannot but notice its deep tragic undertones. Nothing will ever be the same again - the toys can never become new again, just as humans cannot become young again.

The book is multidimensional and can be read at many different levels. As an exciting and moving fairy tale for the youngest. Or as a philosophical fable for teenagers and adults. It is possible that it will not be appreciated by children who believe that they have grown out of fairy tales, while they instead have not grown into them. In any case, children who will read Hoban's book perhaps need some help from adults. The book presents grateful material for discussions of essential life questions. What is beyond the last visible dog?

Opsis Kalopsis 1989:2

Lucia

My oldest boy and I came to Sweden twenty-nine years ago yesterday. The day after, we were immersed in Swedishness as we were invited to a Lucia party. I was sort of prepared because I had read some textbooks and fiction, while my poor son must have been thoroughly confused by all these girls wearing their nighties with red ribbons and electic lights on their heads. On the other hand, life was confusing as it was, one more weird experience didn't change much.

Next year, Sergej was given a large role for the Lucia celebration in his school. The teacher said he was the only one in his class who could memorise the lines (Russian school training!). School Lucia in Sweden always takes place inhumanly early in the morning so that the parents can come and relish before they go to work. In his next school, Sergej used to choose a less conspicuous role of a gingerbread man. 

I made Julia's first Lucia dress, and Anton inherited the tomten costume from someone. The gender roles were unquestionable, at least in pre-school. Every year, we got up an hour earlier on the 13th, took the kids to preschool, sat on uncomfortable benches, listened to horribly oversimplified Christmas songs and were treated to weak, lukewarm coffee with gingerbread that the kids had baked. Yet every year I started crying, because I love traditions and I was happy that my kids were part of a tradition that they didn't have to keep a secret (unlike me with my secret Christmases in Russia). When the kids grew up a bit, I would prepare a tray in the evening for them to bring into our bedroom next morning, with coffee and gingerbread. We pretended to be asleep and allowed to be awakened by song. Year after year, and eventually Anton and Julia both went to a school with great musical traditions with a specially written Nativity play, and I cried when I saw the procession moving down the church aisle. No oversimplifications, and a real multivoice choir.

By the time the grandchildren started in day care Staffan and I had had our share of uncomfortable benches and lukewarm coffee, so I don't miss it. I didn't quite expect Staffan to enter the bedroom this morning with candles on his head and a tray with coffee, but I wouldn't have been amazed if he did. He never stops surprising me.

Blog challenge Day 28 – Something that you miss

I realised when I was baking gingerbread a couple of weeks ago that I miss Christmas preparations with my children. Baking gingerbread: you really need many hands, so that hot oven doesn't wait empty. Tray after tray, rolling the dough, cutting the cookies. We had lots of small funny cutters: stars and moons and fir-trees and pigs and elk. Pigs we most popular, and the kids used to fight for them. They also used to eat the dough, and I pretended I didn't see. Then we would select a pile that were “burned” or “ugly” or “failed” to eat at once. The same with saffron buns. We used to make different figures that all have special names in Swedish; then the kids would fight over who should put in raisins. We would listed to Christmas songs on CD and sings ourselves. We would also take out the decorations, candlesticks, wreaths. Of course I do it now too, but it's not the same. And to be quite honest: it's not that I miss baking itself. I miss the children being small.

Blog challenge Day 27 – Your favorite place

Many places can compete for this, but there is nothing like San Diego. Interestingly, I didn't feel it during my first three visits, although I did enjoy the sunsets. I didn't feel any particular difference between San Diego and other places with palm trees and sandy beaches, and I wasn't particularly fascinated by the Spanish-style architecture, and I am not particularly fond of Mexican food. I had my reasons for returning to San Diego and especially choosing it for my research leave, but I had no idea that I was moving and dragging my family to a paradise. Looking back, I cannot really explain it. Palm trees, sandy beaches, stony cliffs, whitewashed houses, Mexican food – what was so special? Perhaps it was me rather than the place. Me in that particular place in that particular time, my trajectory, as cultural geographers call it, meeting Californian trajectory on its slow fall into the ocean.

I'd better stop before I get soppy.

Blog challenge Day 24 – Something that makes you cry

The safest way to make me cry is to sing or play Silent Night.

Since I have read so much cognitive science recently I know how it works. Our memories are stored somewhere in ours brain, in fragments, all mixed up. Somewhere in my brain there is a memory of me sitting under a Christmas tree and listening to a bunch of elderly aunts and uncles singing Silent Night in German, which I sort of understood, but not quite, so it sounded like a magical incantation (which it is in a way). If I just think back about it, I remember it clearly and rationally, and I can state that all these uncles and aunts are dead, which is sad, but inevitable. This won't make me cry. But if I hear Silent Night, even played in a department store, the sound of it evokes the emotional memory: exactly how it felt to be a small child under a tree covered with real candles, the smell of honey buns, anticipation of presents hiding behind the tree. The brain says: this is something lost forever,it triggers a complex chemical process which makes me cry.

On the other hand, someone has said: you can only own forever something that is lost.

Blog challenge Day 19 – Something you regret

They say you never regret what you have done, only what you haven't done. There is one thing that I have done that I regret. When I was little I had a toy clown who played cymbals if you pressed his tummy. He wasn't my favourite toy, and once when I was told to clean up the mess in my room I threw him away in the garbage.

The thing I regret I didn't do was playing – it has just occurred to me now, honestly! - if not cymbals, at least percussions in a student orchestra. I was sixteen and had by then given up my music lessons, but the conductor, a family friend, tried to persuade me that anyone who could read sheet music would be perfect with chimes, tambourine and triangle. I thought the whole idea was ridiculous. The conductor's stepson, a few years older and without any knowledge of music took the job. He got tons of good friends in the orchestra, travelled all over and had a lot of fun.

Blogg challenge: Day 7: Your best friend

Me and my Alyona in school, 1967.

At least I don't have to think about it. Alyona and I have been friends since we were two. Of course we were then the kind of friends that parents take to visit each other saying: “Now run and play”. We would also be sent to run and play under our nannies' care. The nannies gossiped, we played. Gulliver's travels was out favourite make-believe. We went to school together, and because we had known each other before school and because we lived in the same house we become officially best friends. We had secrets, we had imaginary countries and our private language. At some point my mother decided that Alyona was bad influence for me and forbade me to play with her. But children at that time had more freedom than now. We all played in the backyards and streets and squares, nobody could control us. Then she came into grace with my mother again, and we were allowed to go home to each other and play. Yet oftentimes she made me jealous because she played with someone else and wouldn't let me join.

In summer, Alyona went to summer camps, and I was sent to the country with my granny. I was tremendously envious. Some years ago she confessed that she had been tremendously envious of me who didn't have to go to camps. One summer, which as I realise now must have just been a couple of weeks, I was allowed to visit Alyona at her granny's country house. It was my happiest summer ever. Her father allowed us to read in bed, eating biscuits! Who wouldn't be envious of such a father.

We became more detached during our teens, with new networks and interests. Alyona was popular with boys. I wasn't. We almost lost touch in university, but got close again after our first broken marriages. When I moved to Sweden I realised after a few years how much I missed her. The first time she visited me in Stockholm, Staffan got very upset. Alyona and I were talking all the time, and Staffan complained that he understood every word, but had no idea what we were talking about. He felt we only uttered every third sentence. He was right. We knew each other so well that everything didn't have to be said.

Some time ago we started travelling together every now and then. First time I let her choose the destination, and that's why I know every little obscure museum in London: she made me do some serious sightseeing. The next time I managed to take her through check-in and security at the airport without her knowing where we were going. Each time we meet we have tons of things to talk about. We know things about each other that nobody else knows, not even other significant others. A whole life shared.

Paper pleasures

I wonder whether any girls today play with paper dolls. Why would they when they have Teletubbies or whatever they have these days. Shame because it is such fun with paper dolls. I made some for the oldest granddaughter when she was five and visited in San Diego. She was delighted and packed them carefully to take home to Sweden. She had never seen a paper doll before.

When I was young, every girl with self respect had dozens of paper dolls and boxes upon boxes of clothes. Sometimes dolls could be found inside chocolate bar wrappers, but mostly we would draw them, copy the best from each other and make all those clothes with tabs to fold over the doll. There was scope for imagination! All the clothes that we couldn't even dream of we gave to our paper dolls. We never had problems with keeping us busy on rainy days - long, long time ago, before computers and videos, almost before television (there was one channel, with children's hour at six).

The reason I indulge in these idyllic memories is that one of the dollhouse magazines I bought yesterday has cutouts of Victorian paper dolls. It surely kept me busy this evening. (But I think I deserve it, after a day of personal-statement writing - see my previous post).

Traintrotting

Last Monday I went to London - not to look at the Queen, but to give a talk at Roehampton university. The first time I didn't get to Roehampton was many years ago when I was invited to give a talk, but it turned out that there was a general strike on that day, so the university was closed. I spent the day with Kim Reynolds. I had not met Kim before, and we had arranged the talk over email. In fact, she invited me to stay with her in Lewes where she lived then. I remember I thought: "This person invites a total stranger to stay with her - I like it!"

I flew to Gatwick and stayed the first night at an airport hotel because I was going to Cardiff early in the morning (I missed my train and never gave that talk, but that's another story). I got back from Cardiff well over midnight and wondered how I would get in touch with Kim: it was long before mobile phones. Very early in the morning, earlier than I wished to be awake, there was a phone call, and Kim arranged for us to meet in a cafe by National Theatre. I was a bit perplexed by the choice of meeting place, but why not (since then, I've been to this cafe several times, it's really nice). Again, we had not met, but we figured out who we were, had our coffee, went to the Museum of Childhood and then took the train to Lewes. It was so absurd that it was wonderful. It is a long journey from London to Lewes. The train was full to the brim, so we couldn't even talk. It was late when we arrived, but it was a perfect evening. Very early in the morning Kim had to go to London after she had directed me to the local bookstore where I spent some time before I caught my train to Clapham Junction where I changed for Reading. I had never changed so many trains in so few days.

About that other story: I missed my morning train from Gatwick to Reading, where I was to change for Cardiff, because the hotel reception gave me wrong information. The railway officer advised me to take a train to London Victoria, underground to Paddington, train to Reading and perhaps catch the train I was originally supposed to take. It was madness, but sort of a challenge. Of course I didn't catch that train. Since it was long before mobile phones I had no chance to call Cardiff to say I would possibly be late. I had no time to stop and call from a phone booth. Well, I missed that talk, but I had some great time in Cardiff, only it turned out that the train I was to take back to Reading to change to Clapham Junction... are you still with me? - well, that train didn't stop at Reading, so it was all the way to London, Paddinston, underground, Victoria, Clapham Junction. I was younger then, too.

I finally got to Reading which was why I came to the UK in the first place, and it felt good to know that there would be some days before I had to get on the train again.