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Swedish Island Holiday: The art of being carefree

Sunday, July 17th, 2011

It ain't easy being carefree

It’s the sort of summer when you stop paying attention to the weather forecasts. They never seem to get it right. As I flung open the kitchen door this morning to push out Lucy the dog, who needs to be presented with a fait accompli in order to get up in the mornings, the sun shone brightly on the rainbow of roses that my husband and I had planted on the sandy hill. It’s interesting that when the sun shines despite the weather forecast, you don’t ask yourself where the clouds are. They’re just somewhere else, and here on my Swedish island during this short respite of light that we call summer, that is just fine.

There are always a hundred things to do here, but the wonderful thing about mornings in this place away from the gaze of schedules, is that you can ignore all of them and do something else. I started by counting the number of rose varieties that my husband and I had planted during all of the years that we had worked on this impossible project. By the time I counted thirty-five, Lucy the dog sat staring, drooling for breakfast amid the roses on the largest bed. She’d have to wait another minute, since my thoughts had wandered to the thistle, which too were flowering. I began to notice that there were hundreds of tiny flowers on each thistle head, something which had not gone amiss on the bumble bees, which rushed frenetically from one sweet flower to the next, like children in a candy store. The lavender were blooming too and I checked to see whether there were any in my pockets. Noticing that there were none, I picked a few and stuffed them down. No one’s pockets should be without lavender sprigs during the summer.

At the dock, I picked up the book I’d left there on the day before. There is something carefree about being able to leave your book on a chair at the dock and know you’ll find it there dry and untouched on the following day. I opened the book to where I had left off and read a couple of pages. I looked up across the water toward the horizon. Here there was time to think about what one had read, read it again, and see it from yet another perspective. If only there was a way to take this feeling of space and time with me into the working year. Life had meaning when we gave ourselves the time to discover it.

Lucy the dog refused to accept that her breakfast was one of those musts that could be ignored on this carefree morning. Her dark brown eyes with the sultry, blond lashes stared at me as I turned the pages in my bubble of liberation from duty. Then a fish stirred in the water and her attention was diverted. Lucy could never resist the fish that nipped at the surface. They seemed to her one of life’s great mysteries, which she was determined to unravel by watching them for hours on end during these lazy days.

With Lucy now occupied, I laid down on the dock, warmed by the morning sun, and stared at the sky. Lying there, staring at pure sky without limits, time or onlookers, was to me the greatest of life’s luxuries. The skies had no plans written in them, no matter how much the tabloids liked to insist that they did with their 14-day prognoses. There were endless possibilities there at all times. It was only we who chose to see sun or rain.

The strings of a guitar sounded out the open window. My son had awoken and was doing whatever struck him first. I was glad that he knew how to be carefree. It was one of those things that might protect him in life.

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Rose in the Sand available at major online bookstores now

Julie Lindahl’s new book, “Rose in the Sand,” is now available at major online bookstores in Sweden and elsewhere, including at www.amazon.com.

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Tags: carefree, Island, roses, sand, Summer, Sweden
Posted in Outdoor Activity, Season, Summer, gardening | 6 comments »

What are we thinking?

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

The delicate flowers of spring

Lucy the dog and I have gone off the beaten path. We tread through the soft green wisps that have cropped up everywhere on the forest floor like a silk carpet. The lilac, yellow and white flowers that flourish in the shade of the trees in May tickle my ankles to catch my attention. We can marvel at the big peonies and roses of the summer, but these delicate flowers of spring are more graceful and more moving because of their determination to rise up despite all of the odds: the iron nights of spring, the mud of April and May, and people with their dogs who long to trample upon the greenery as soon as it emerges.

Lucy digs furiously at the base of a tree where obviously some poor unsuspecting creature has made its home. While I fully expect that someday something angry is going to bite her nose off, on this occasion I let her take her fate into her own hands – or should I say paws? Amid the delicate flowers and the blades of young grass, my eye strikes a large-sized coffee cup from Pressbyrån (the local kiosk), which someone obviously decided they were done with. A little further on, an empty plastic water bottle lies forelorn on the ground with some used white tissues scattered here and there.

I try to reconstruct the story: A woman walking through the park on a sunny May day sipping a cappuccino receives a call from her fiancée who says he has decided to break off their engagement. She drops her cup on the ground in shock and begins to weep, unconsciously throwing her tissues onto the ground, one after the other. In order to calm herself down, she takes out the plastic water bottle from her hand bag, sits on the bench next to the statue and sips water, unable to organize her thoughts and emotions.

I like to construct these types of stories around garbage I see scattered on the ground in public areas, since I want to believe that my fellow person cares but has simply experienced a momentary lapse of responsibility. I want to believe that there are good reasons as to why people leave garbage scattered amid the delicate flowers. In my heart of hearts I am always hoping.

During the summers I sometimes walk around my island with a black garbage bag picking up the debris that visiting sailboats have left at our shores. I remember sitting on a rock with a black garbage bag that was somewhere between full to brimming, and thinking about what this says about developments in our society. Can people be blamed for feeling that the land isn’t theirs, and that the forests and wild shores aren’t really a part of their reality? People live mostly in big cities which create a considerable degree of separation from the earth and its cycles. We have divided the land between us so that we don’t feel a collective responsibility for it. Here in Scandinavia this attitude is somewhat mitigated by customary laws allowing common access to the land and the seas, but signs of lack of common responsibility are nevertheless everywhere to be seen.

I pick up the debris on the ground so that the forest floor is once again a place where people can dream. Our systems have no doubt helped more of us to survive, but they have also weakened our will to take own responsibility. How we encourage that attitude is probably the greatest challenge to cleaning up our planet.

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My new book, Rose in the Sand, a memoir of a decade lived in the Swedish wilderness, will be out shortly. Watch out for it at www.julielindahl.com and join me at Facebook and Twitter. Learn more about my non-profit, Stories for Society, which brings story-telling as a tool for learning and communication into schools. Enjoy my e-magazine at www.nordicwellbeing.com.

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Tags: clean planet, environment, garbage, spring
Posted in AllemannsrÃ¤tt, Conservation, New Thinking, Season, Self-reliance, Spring, nature, sustainability | 7 comments »

Clearing out

Sunday, April 17th, 2011

Time to get your hands dirty

Out on the streets people are cleaning. The last of the snow has melted and trickled down the gutters. All attention has turned to the debris which is the only remaining evidence of the gargantuan winter gone by. You’d imagine that with the sun shining warmth on this pre-Easter weekend, everyone would be in their sunchairs basking in the newspaper. But no, here in do-it-yourself Sweden there is no time for that sort of thing until your hands are sore and swollen, you’ve got a few scratches on your bare legs and you’ve put your back out from the first manual work of the season.

I stand on a ladder cutting down the hedges with an electric saw. “I’ll take care of that,” my husband says, somewhat embarassed that the passers by see him on the ground with a mere rake while his wife is up in the trees wielding a heavy machine. Yet I insist on sticking to my task because I enjoy the expanding view as the crowns of the hedges fall away.

Suddenly I can see the woman who usually passes laden with jewellry in the shiniest of black Jaguars. Usually I feel like a peasant when she passes. Today she is out with everyone else raking away the molten leaves on the flower beds that line the streets. Her appearance is still elegant, and so the rest of us are all still peasants, but the leaves in her rake and the black garbage bag in the corner are the same as everyone else’s. Nature in the spring unites us on the streets and feels like an experience of true socialism without the politics.

As I cut down the corner hedge, the tennis court comes into view. The community’s tennis players are out in full force preparing their red earth courts for the matches of the summer. Children chase one another around the perimeter of the courts while their parents clear the leaves and restore the lines of play. At such an illustrious location as the courts at the royal palace one might expect the King’s white-gloved tennis court maintenance crew to appear, but here in DIY Sweden there is always the possibility that the King and Queen might turn up in their shorts, t-shirts and visors to help clear out.

A glance beyond the courts reveals an enormous pyre that is building up so that it can be burnt on Walpurgis Night or Valborg. People from around the community make pilgrimages with their garden waste to this rapidly growing pile of garden twigs. Here in two weeks a leader of the community will make the customary protest speech before the first of May, International Worker’s Day (even if he isn’t on the left of the political spectrum). Everyone needs a good protest every once in a while. This will be smoothed over by the spring psalms of the local choir, which will give way to the flames that finally clear away the debris of the winter.

The hedge is even now and my husband is relieved that I haven’t lost a finger using the electric saw. I take one last look out onto the water that reaches out to the islands. The steam boat that transports eager visitors from the city hoots in advance of arriving to forewarn us that it is time to be done with our clearing out. In the gap between the distant islands there is a space beyond which I cannot see. It seems that there is nothing there except peace, silence and the promise of summer away from cars and the bustle of life. My spirit has already gone there as I suspect it has for everyone who has been clearing out with me on the streets today.

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Happy News! My new book, “Rose in the Sand,” which is a memoir of Swedish island life and the writing of which has generously been sponsored by a literary prize from www.gather.com will be out this April. Join me at Facebook and/or Twitter for notification about the release date and more information about how to order it at my web site. Learn more about my writing and other projects at www.julielindahl.com. I a manage a non-profit for bringing story-telling to schools as a new tool for learning and communicating. If you are a principal, teacher or other person interested in knowing more about this, please visit www.storiesforsociety.com and get in touch!

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Tags: clean-up, clearing out, Easter, spring, Valborg
Posted in Season, Spring | 2 comments »

Spring rebellion

Saturday, March 26th, 2011

Little Rebel

A V-formation flew overhead. Lucy the dog and I watched it with necks craned back. The Canada geese had returned. My heart expanded with love of the season, wanting to break out and embrace every bud and creature that dared to speak despite the brisk temperatures. Each spring is like a rebellion in nature. That which lives will have its say, and like a ruthless dictator, the winter, which seemed impossible to depose just a few short weeks ago, begins to look increasingly toothless.

Over in the cropped linden trees the smaller birds are singing in an increasingly complex chorus. With each day that passes there are more voices. It’s beginning to sound like Mahler. Today a new diva in the branches catches Lucy’s attention. She sits with pricked ears and cocked head, and listens to this sound she has heard before but never tires of. Lucy is a retriever, in other words, a bird dog. Everything relating to birds fascinates her and now she has passed on her fascination to me. The thing about the birds in the trees is that it is often hard to spot where all of the sounds are coming from with the naked eye. I suspect that Lucy can smell the birds from her spot down on the ground. Without binoculars, I settle for the idea that trees sing. Not a bad thought.

Then down on the grass a crow caws condescendingly, provoking Lucy. There is something about crows that sends her blood pressure up. I hold her back and behold the raven creature. It looks at me with a regal air, as though I am nothing but a tiny spot. It is perhaps this attitude that gets Lucy all riled up. She’s a Swedish dog: she likes groups, lagom, consensus and togetherness; not a crow’s haughty tune.

We’ve gone to observe the small islands of tiny spring flowers breaking out on the sun-struck hills. Nature’s rebellion is dramatic. It has been going on under the snow for quite some time without anyone seeing it. Now as the snow retreats it is there for everyone to notice. There are purples, yellows, whites and all manner of shapes. The difference of form that life takes in this new free time is exciting and almost unbelievable after the montone rule of winter.

We’ve arrived back home and I urge Lucy to come in for breakfast. She cocks her head once again in such a way that says, “why?” Not even breakfast can tempt her out of the sun and the revolution of nature happening outside. She is a dog of the people and shuns creature comforts to be out there with them, witnessing the fall of winter.

Out the back window I can see that she has instead run to greet Mrs. Bengtsson, an avid gardener well into her eighties. We have opened up our two gardens so that all of us can enjoy a bigger garden. Mrs. Bengtsson is one of those diehard spring rebels and finds a great deal in common with Lucy the light lover. She has already cut back all of her bushes in readiness for the greenery. My heart is there with her but I am still here at my keyboard putting my faith in the written word to inspire you to become a rebel too (if you are not one already, that is).

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Remember to check my e-magazine, www.nordicwellbeing.com, the one and only for wellbeing with Nordic inspiration!

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Tags: birds, dogs, rebellion, spring
Posted in Landscape, Outdoor Activity, Park, Season, Spring, Walking | 9 comments »

Crisp thoughts in minus thirteen

Monday, December 13th, 2010

Time for thinking, not talking

The snow crunched that dry cold crunch under my boot soles as the morning sun hit the east facing side of the palace. It was one of those winter mornings that no sane mind would trade in for a day on the beach in Thailand. Lucy tip-toed on the freezing ground at first but then got into her stride as she too was taken by the pure gloriousness of this morning in our mutual playground, Drottningholm Park.

Out on dog island, an enclosure where dogs can socialize, doggie masters and mistresses urged their pets to get on with their morning ablutions so that they could return to the warmth of their blazing fireplaces. Lucy and I prefer not to go there (alright, I prefer not to go there) as it means that I have to talk and therefore cannot use these invaluable early hours to toss around thoughts and consider the connections. I don’t know whether it is just the effect of a decade lived on an isolated island of my own (read more about this in the page about this blog), but I often think that people talk too much and reflect too little. Meetings, meetings, blaa, blaa, but where is the possibility to work out what it all means and to process it?

This morning my thoughts were definitely with the group of children I’d recently been working with at school. This and other projects I’ve been working on during the past year through my NGO (check www.berattelser.se which will shortly be available in English language) have drawn my attention to how we handle integration; how we handle kids who come from war-torn countries and whose learning capacity as well as capacity for concentration has been affected by events that most of us cannot even begin to imagine; how we talk to their parents who want to participate in their children’s schooling but don’t know how to begin to do that in a society that seems to have tight systems for everything; how we get all children in Sweden to be curious about cultures that they are not familiar with rather than scared of them.

As the day went on I found myself watching what is possibly Sweden’s most remarkable St. Lucia concert at the Ericsson Globe. 1000 candles are literally lit by countless youngsters from some of Sweden’s most prestigious music schools who sing Swedish songs of the season. I’ve been to this concert before and remember it as an experience that made me believe in this world again. While I thought it was superb again this year, something new struck me. Among the large number of children performing, almost all of the faces were white. This is not a criticism, simply an observation that hit hard after months of working in schools and increasing my awareness of the real Swedish student body. Where were they: the different colors that increasingly represent the place that Sweden is today? I couldn’t find them although I searched the performing crowd meticulously.

At day’s end I watched a bit of the endless media analysis of the terrible event in Stockholm on Saturday evening. You can read more about it elsewhere on this site. A senior journalist interviewed a panel of experts, asking them what could be done in the future to prevent such acts happening again. Most could only come with answers such as “keep a cool head”, “don’t over-react”, etc. The imam on the panel was in fact the only person who came up with anything close to what is needed: organized discussion among young people – an opportunity to vent frustrations and views that are based on anger and fear.

For myself, I had so many answers based on my experiences in schools, that I found myself shouting at the television. So, I guess I have some thoughts to sort out tomorrow morning in the park in the glistening winter sun. You got the uncut version (feel free to take whatever you like, WikiLeaks).

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Learn more about my work at schools at www.berattelser.se and stay tuned for the English language version. You can also learn more about my writing projects at www.julielindahl.com.

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Tags: children, Integration, schools, Winter
Posted in Integration, Season, Winter, children | 8 comments »

In the peace of the snow

Sunday, November 28th, 2010

Winter whispers in November

Sunday began with a walk in the snow-covered park. Lucy the dog gulped mouthfuls of fresh snow as she galloped through the sea of unexpected white. Her small soft ears fluttered behind her like two cashmere handkerchiefs. Wish I had something like those covering my ears today. It feels as though we are in February but it is only November. Is the coldest winter in a thousand years already here? The rumor had been circulating and I ignored it until the last three nights of ten degrees below zero (Celsius) in November.

On Friday afternoon, after a long week’s work, we trudged out to our summer island certain that the winter had beat us to the water pipes. Mounds of virgin white covered the paths, making it difficult to reach the house. To the left, a large indentation in the snow indicated that a moose had lain there less than an hour ago. I closed my eyes and let my senses rest in the quiet. I remembered the many years of living here year-round. There was nothing like the peace of the snow and today I missed it in my busy, people-centered life.

My husband flicked up the lever of one of the taps and miraculously the water still ran. Had a little angel blown warm air over our pipes while we ran our frenetic lives in the city? We had been lucky and now drained the pipes so that the coldest winter in a thousand years would not ruin our plumbing.

I removed the many containers full of red currants that we had picked and frozen during the summer from the freezer. Inside these containers were an almost unbelievable memory of heat, dryness and the unrelenting buzzing of insects. Now the insects had fallen onto the window sills with the cold. My hands froze as I packed the containers into an IKEA bag to drag back to the city with me. Ridiculous to have a freezer going in this freezing house, I thought, and flicked the switch to ‘off’.

As I pulled the sled full of red currants through the forest toward the car, I remembered what it was like to stare into pitch darkness. If you look hard enough at it, you will always find a glimmer of light on the horizon. It’s one of those things that few people know since we live in cities of eternal light.

The lake was already closing up with islands of ice beginning to connect to one another and form large continents. Winter whispers everywhere and it is only November. Back in town I unpacked the candelabras that are customary in every window in Sweden starting on the first of Advent. The children long for the time to Christmas to rush and ask eagerly when we will be making the saffron buns, the gingerbread house and so forth. All of these things signify that we are moving one step closer to the moment of opening gifts. For myself, after another tiring week full of many impressions, I long to rest in the peace of the snow.

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Learn more about my writing and other projects at www.julielindahl.com. Join me at Facebook and/or Twitter.

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Tags: Christmas, peace, snow, Winter
Posted in Island, Landscape, Season, Winter | 5 comments »

Let men be men

Sunday, November 7th, 2010

Being a man

This was one of those Sunday mornings that defied all of the cliches about November mornings in Sweden. As I walked down the hill with Lucy the dog, the bright sun stroked my eyelids like a therapist massaging tired muscles. The last yellow leaves that still hung on the branches were like golden jewelry on a woman dressed in strict gray. As we passed one tree which still had relatively many leaves, they detatched and began to fall to the ground in great hoards. Lucy and I watched, mesmerized at the way that great robust trees undress rather than dress as winter approaches. The deer and moose had fled the farmland behind the palace grounds where they normally grazed during the warmer season. Now they were desperately hiding behind the conifers in the forest, away from the sights of men who are free to hunt them in the November sun.

The outdoors can be a harsh place to be during this season, but today sitting inside drying out next to a heater was simply all wrong. As I walked in the front door with Lucy I could already hear my son and his friend playing their latest TV game snuggled up in bed. I caught a glance at the two of them through the slit between the door and the doorway. The spoils of the night were many. There were sweet wrappers all over the floor. Somewhere in the corner the inner tinsel of an empty bag of chips reflected in the sunlight that struggled to enter the room from behind the closed curtains. Kids have to be allowed to be kids, I told myself, but how much do these guys really benefit from this sort of experience? From my previous blog entries you already know that I am one of those horrid mothers that never purchases sweets or chips – not even on a Friday. I also give my kids a lot of ’stick’ about sitting in front of screens for too long. Sometimes I wonder whether their friends think that I am from the Stone Age or another planet. They look at me like that occasionally.

Most of all, I wonder what all of the passive sitting and staring, and consumption of vast quantities of sugar and salt does to boys who are otherwise naturally exploding with energy. What do they do with their instinctive need to burn it off? Basically, I’ve been giving some thought to maleness. Being a woman I accept that I will never really have any first-hand insight into the matter. At the same time (and rather ironically) I find myself in the position of having to help the young males who ‘hang out’ in my home to get out and be males.

The subject has also been on my mind since last week I took my son to the Skateboard Park at Fryshuset, a head-turning place which is currently the largest youth center in the world. As we entered the first of two big halls filled with ramps for doing tricks that definitely should be reserved for young males, I plugged my ears. No one seemed to be bothered by the noise of at least fifty skateboards hitting up against ramps and walls. It struck me that in this culture which I wasn’t at all used to, a special social agreement governed. Everyone pursued their own energy and physical limits to the max but no one confronted anyone else with it. There was an own sense of peace and order which was nothing short of miraculous in a place where the energy level could have given rise to pure aggression at any moment.

The young men who ran the check-in counter treated the boys who paid their entry fees seriously. Accompanying mothers who attempted to speak on their sons’ behalf were respectfully ignored. Passing that check-in counter was a ritual in responsibility for any boy. They could just as well have put up a sign saying, “here we are males who agree to exercise our full energies AND be good to one another.” There were a few girls here and there, but not many. Essentially, this was a male place.

On my night desk I have a book written by the founder of Fryshuset, a man called Anders Carlberg. After the day at the Skateboard Park, it didn’t surprise me that in this book (“Generationsklyftan hotar demokratin”, Hjalmarson & Högberg, 2002) he wrote, among other things, about maleness and the need to create opportunities for channeling this energy in our society. I take the liberty of translating a line that is beginning to make increasing sense to me: “So that boys can develop to become responsible, grown men they need to be allowed to develop positive male traits.” I thought of the boys at the schools I’d been working in. Yes, we would solve a lot of problems by giving this subject a bit more thought.

This Sunday ended as gracefully as it began. As the afternoon sun began to move towards the horizon I set out for a run. The grumpy elderly man who barely ever talks to anyone on his daily walk through the park shouted out as I ran past him: “Faster, faster, I say!” I grinned and waved. Even old men have a strong and entirely healthy need to be male.

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Learn more about my writing and other projects at www.julielindahl.com. Join me at Facebook and/or Twitter.

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Tags: boys, Fryshuset, men, skateboarding
Posted in Autumn, Culture and Health, Season, children | 8 comments »

Taking a breather for the planet

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Stockholm in November?

Sunday came and went and you, my beloved readers, probably noticed that Höstlov (autumn break for schools) had sabotaged my usual Sunday blog entry. The truth is that by the time Höstlov comes along, we’ve all been waiting for it for some weeks. As Wonderful November approaches in Sweden one feels like a person holding his/her breath underwater. When will that respite come? When will we have the time to light our candles and huddle under the soft fleece in an easy chair with a favorite book and Mahler awakening our senses from the stereo? On Sunday morning that moment had come. My husband and the children were wrapped under their warm covers still fast asleep – even Lucy the dog needed some extra shut-eye, and my moment in the arm chair arrived. Do forgive me for this little blip. Here I am: better late than never!

“Aren’t we going to Thailand or London?” the children asked. “All of our friends are taking an extra week off and going for holidays SOMEWHERE!” Just as I learned that Stockholm was not somewhere, I was carefully calculating what we would be doing on each day in this beautiful city that the working year leaves us so little time to enjoy. In particular, I had been watching the sun symbol in the weather section of the newspaper moving from Tuesday to Wednesday to Thursday…Is there is a conspiracy going on between the government and the weather service to keep our spirits up? The sun will come, just not today.

When it rains there is always the cinema. We navigated the traffic – a relatively new phenomenon in Sweden – to see the film “Oceans“. It is a documentary sponsored by the wealthy of the world (and Disney) about the high seas and what goes on deep under the surface. I have done some scuba diving in my time and mostly when I watch such underwater documentaries, I can imagine how the film might have been shot. In this case, I just could not imagine how the filmmakers managed. There were images of the sea at its most violent and frightening, with building-high waves crashing up against one another like titans. There was an image of a diver filming a sperm whale as it ‘played’. An inadvertant whip of any of its fins could easily have sent the diver to Valhalla. There were the strange creatures that stay clear away from human life at the very bottom of the sea; creatures that look more like they come from Star Wars than from our planet.

For a little over an hour we dwelt in a world that was not ours but at the same time very much ours. In the film a whaling boat hauls a shark out of the water, mercilessly cuts off its fins for making that terrible luxury - shark fin soup – and throws the live shark which no longer has any possibility to move itself through the water into the depths. I never thought I would feel sorry for a shark but for the first time I realized how helpless these creatures can be when man is heartless. The garbage flowed freely around the seals who could barely see through coastal water filled with gritty garbage. The contrast to the happy creatures that can live in the pristine waters on either pole of the earth was palpable.

We need films like this to remember. Just a couple of days before I had been in the supermarket in a rush to get home and put something quick yet special on the table for Friday’s dinner. As the editor of The Nordic Wellbeing Cookbook, I know that I should skip those big, juicy shrimps that come from farms which destroy entire coastal ecosystems. Yet there were crowds, I was tired and I could not find the sustainable Atlantic shrimp or think of anything else in my exhaustion after the long week. I was glad to meet a friend at the cash register to remind me that even if those shrimps were big and juicy, we should skip them for the sake of all of the beauty on land and in the sea. Sounds simple and it is simple. Yet, it is so easy to give in to the complexity of exhaustion, crowds, lack of time and waning creativity which follows.

Thank goodness for Höstlov. It’s time to take stock and remind onesself that with just a little extra breath and a moment’s reflection those majestic creatures in the sea can continue to make this planet the universal miracle that it is.

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Learn more about my writing and other projects at www.julielindahl.com. Join me at Facebook and/or Twitter.

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Tags: earth, environment, Oceans, Stockholm, sustainability
Posted in Autumn, Conservation, Food and Health, Season, nature, sustainability | 1 comment »

Roses bloom in October too

Sunday, October 24th, 2010

Little rebel

The rain hit the lawns and turned the first snow into tiny islands of white. It has been a week when the usual chaos of the first snow ensues. We know that it will come each year, but each time is as shocking as the last. The radio blurts out interviews with people relieving themselves of the shock by blaming the chaos of the weather on somebody else: “they should have done this,” “they should have done that,” they say. Yes, but weather is weather and each of us bears some responsibility when it comes.

This Sunday morning the rain is restoring some of the autumn. The fallen leaves have become visible again from under a thin cover of snow and provide a small respite before the inevitable happens and we head full throttle for Christmas. In my garden the roses refuse to give up. I love them for this. There is something extremely freeing about watching a rose bloom in the cold north in late October. As Lucy the dog and I head out for our morning stroll in the rain, the petals grin with the resilience of rebels. Out on the paths a group of Sunday morning backpackers unbelievably sets off for a hike in the forest behind the palace just as the rain intensifies. I catch a glimpse of their faces as I walk past them. They remind me of my roses.

This week our home seems constantly full of other rebels after school hours. Our children are in that twilight zone between childhood and teenager-ness (they are 12), and so are their friends. We’re never quite sure exactly what they are going to get up to next but at least they are doing it at home. It goes without saying that my favorite yogurt and juice is always gone before I can so much as catch a glimpse of it. The laundry baskets are overflowing with bed sheets used by kids staying over. No one thinks to use them twice. The furniture is rearranged in a way that I don’t recall placing it. Yet whenever I hear the peal of children’s laughter and the scrambling of intense play (all of the time), I can live with all of the symptoms of a household overflowing with young rebels.

As a parent one watches this age with a lump in one’s throat. The child for whom you were once the center of attention is suddenly looking out into the world and seeking new forms of belonging. Belonging is one of those primal instincts that drives our behavior. It is like food or the instinct to reproduce ourselves; we seek it irrespective of logic, and sometimes to our detriment. Yesterday’s radio program about a man who as a child was drawn into a criminal gang because the other options for belonging (family, school) were so weak that they didn’t offer an appealing option, struck me hard in this respect. The thing that eventually saved this young rebel, who landed himself in juvenile care on several occasions, was a coach in a football team who was not afraid of putting his arms around this young man and making him feel a part of something more appealing than a criminal gang.

Perhaps I am not thinking so much of my own children when I hear this story, as of some of the children I have met through my various children’s projects over the years. In every group are at least two children out of ten who are viewed as having special challenges. These can range from learning disabilities to aggression. Many of these kids feel that they are not a part of the group and will never be (therefore they must seek other groups outside of school). I’ve noticed that when these children are given the opportunity to learn in a way that allows them to express themselves and feel that they are heard by others, they tend not only to participate but also to shine with the consequence that the whole group is lifted. This is not the way that learning generally happens in our schools which are still primarily governed by the idea that children should learn quietly at their desks by having information passed down to them.

One of the greatest challenges that our modern societies face is how to include these children who otherwise may go on to pursue their need for belonging in ways that become problematic for them and for the whole society. My own feeling is that opening up as many opportunities as we can to include them at schools – not as special needs but as a part of the group – will take us a long way. Perhaps the reason that my roses are blooming despite all at the end of October is because I actually see them.

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Learn more about my writing and other projects at www.julielindahl.com. Join me at Facebook and/or Twitter.

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Tags: Autumn, Belonging, children, Inclusion, rain, schools, snow, Winter
Posted in Autumn, Belonging, Inclusion, New Thinking, Season, children | 5 comments »

The forgotten island of the individual

Sunday, October 17th, 2010

Submitting to winter

The leaves have turned to crystal wafers. The winter has caught them just as they were rolling up to dry. When the October midday sun comes they’ll dampen down in the melted crystal and start their long process of becoming a part of the muddy ground. A thin crust of ice covers the ponds in the park. The birds that haven’t migrated swoop down to drink but cannot find a way in. They’ll have to settle for the lake outside of the royal palace which is still open, though covered in the morning mist that plays games with their vision.

As winter approaches in Sweden there is very little to do but to submit. Under the guise of mastering the season with our simmering stews, lit fires and thick-soled boots we play along and deep down know that we will always be the pipers playing to King Winter as the darkness and cold descend. There is nothing wrong with being submissive to nature during this season. In fact, it can be quite cozy and it is probably healthy for us to get away from our hubris – the notion that man has or will somehow become the master of nature.

However, out and about among the young of Swedish society this week, I’ve noticed a kind of submission that disturbs me. As I continue to help children to create stories at school, it strikes me that so many feel pressed to fit into a world that really isn’t their own from a very young age. The child that wants to draw angels feels pressed to draw beer bottles because that is the world that it lives in. The child that is curious about other places in the world feels pressed to make racist comments because that is what it takes to be cool at the moment. The child that revels in the fresh, clear autumn air feels pressed to take a puff.

Apparently we are living in the age of the individual, but in the shards of the collective that children sometimes reproduce as they tell their stories it seems that the reverse is in danger of happening. Children are in many ways a mirror upon our society: they tell us where we are at. This tells me that we are deluding ourselves if we think that we live in the age of the individual. We have a great deal of work to do to give children the wherewithal to reveal who they really are and to stand up to forces that bear no relation to the world that our children would like to live in.

With this challenge in mind, it is perhaps no coincidence that there has been a sudden swell of interest in story-telling; our own stories, not those of others, that is. Just this past weekend The Fabula Festival in Stockholm highlighted the value of this ancient art to our society. Most of all, it is a way for us to express our own worlds – those forgotten islands of our own hidden longings where the spectrum of colors is rich and diverse.

Lucy the dog rushes to greet yet another visitor to the park. She must be the only dog in this park that everyone – even those afraid of dogs – seems to be pleased to meet. “Isn’t it amazing how similar people are to their dogs,” my husband comments, looking at a woman with frizzy tufts of big hair walking her poodle. My thought is that it would be an honor to be like Lucy. This wonderful creature seems hell-bent on expressing her joy, which pours in generous floods from her very heart, and never submitting to any prevailing glumness or indifference.

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Learn more about my writing and other projects at www.julielindahl.com. Join me at Facebook and/or Twitter.

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Posted in Autumn, Landscape, Park, Season, Story-telling, children | 15 comments »