Julie\'s Nordic Island

Calling my attention to the important things I would otherwise miss.

2012 kicked off with a stark little lesson of life: all things will pass. Driving up to the mountains near the Norwegian border before New Year’s Eve, I learned from the kind veterinarian that Lucy the dog would not make it through 2012 with me. In fact, we have a few more precious days left. For those of you who have been following this blog and/or my other writings, you are aware that this beautiful creature that looks more like an advertisement for Save the Seals than a dog, has been a constant companion in walking and writing. Lucy has called my attention to things that otherwise would pass me by: a squirrel that has just clambered up a tree; a cat that has run across the street; the great mysteries that lie hidden under piles of fallen leaves.

Up here at my mountain hut this New Year, Lucy and I are taking the last of our walks in the snow together. She looks like a chequerboard, with great patches of fur shaved off here and there, after an operation that could not save her.  It would seem responsible to keep her covered with so much bare skin exposed, but what is life worth if you cannot even have a refreshing morning roll in the snow? She takes each step more slowly than she used to, and I am always ahead of her these days. Still, at times she smells the exhilaration of the mountains in the air and charges into the great piles of snow on the sides of the cross-country tracks. Life and walking with Lucy in the snow this early 2012 seems like the most precious of elixirs: each small drop to be relished in moments one strives, against reality, to expand into an eternity.

Dogs have very deep souls, says my 100-year-old grandmother. “Looking into their eyes is like looking into a deep sea of feeling and intensity.” Of late, Lucy has made increasing efforts to meet my gaze. When she was younger, there was so much else for her to be interested in, and then there was the submission factor. To stare straight into your master’s eyes is an act of defiance for a dog. Lucy was rarely defiant. Up here at our mountain house, as she senses that her life is coming to a close, she seeks out my eyes. In the finality of life we are all equals. I put down my tiresome books and newspapers, and meet her gaze. Her eyes are two black spots in a white face, and now they fasten onto me like magnets. Her head cocks as she reads my thoughts. I hope that she can feel their caress upon her heart.

In sympathy with Lucy, I have contracted some sort of curable disease which a simple packet of pills will cure. Lucy’s ears are pricked up as I head off to the doctor’s office in the neighboring town. She wants to follow me – knows that I am not well. Once the car has pulled out, she sits waiting in the patch of thin snow (as opposed to the thick and unruly snow everywhere else) that the cover of the car has left in our driveway. Despite the discomfort, she waits there for two hours until I return with my tablets. She is overjoyed to see me. I would share my tablets with her, if I thought they might help.

I’ve already asked Lucy to meet me once I catch up with her at the Pearly Gates. I can see her jumping up at them, barking at St. Peter, or whoever it is that guards that gate, to let me through. My husband thinks that I am insane when I talk in this way, but that is alright. Thinking of Lucy as an angel in heaven, with fluffy white wings that match the color of her fur, isn’t something I am ashamed of. Each of us has to find ways of coping with the finality of life, and thinking of walking with my faithful hound in the clouds, both of us winged and this time looking down upon the squirrels in the trees, seems a pleasant way to do so. Beyond that, I have made a pledge to Lucy that in 2012 I will do whatever I can to enjoy this short and precious thing we call life. I hope you’ll join me in this important mission.

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Wondering what to give a friend or loved one this New Year? Learn more about Julie Lindahl’s prize-winning new book, “Rose in the Sand,” a memoir of a decade lived on a Swedish island. Order it now from amazon.com, amazon.co.uk , Author House, authorhouse.co.uk and many other online bookstores. Other books by Julie Lindahl available are: Letters from the Island (listen also to Julie’s podcasts from this site) and On My Swedish Island: Discovering the Secrets of Scandinavian Well-being.

Julie Lindahl is the founder of Stories for Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to learning and communication through storytelling.

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Merry Christmas

As Lucy the dog and I hit the beaten path today the air smelled a damp December morning. The snow that had lured us into thinking that we would be having a white Christmas was now in small ice clumps in patches on the road. It could have been any regular day in December, except for the fact that I knew it was Christmas Eve, and there is no getting away from the morning feeling special on this day.

Lucy sniffed in the air as we passed under the apple trees. She sensed some of the unpicked fruit of autumn, festive and red, up in the highest branches. It was as though nature herself had decorated the trees for Christmas. In a delicate pot at the entrance to one of the homes, ivy intertwined with tiny Christmas lights caught my attention. It seemed to me the most beautiful of man-made decorations in the neighborhood. Someone had obviously seen the beauty in a tiny object that most overlooked, with all of the more grandiose decorations around. It seemed so unpretentious and meek, yet was that fine seed grain amid all of the chaff that lifted the dignity of the neighborhood.

The absence of people on the streets gave room for reflection upon the meetings of the previous day. People I hadn’t seen in ages, although we all lived in the same area, seemed to be around every corner at the supermarket. One particular friend of mine stood facing the Christmas hams in puzzlement. Which one to choose? Everything seemed to be piled onto the shelves in such overabundance, that the mind had to work very hard to sort. Perhaps that is why people seemed to feel they had less time each year at Christmas. Commercial choices, while temporarily exhilarating, depleted time.

I tapped my old friend on the shoulder, at which she turned, and gave me the most unexpected long and heartfelt hug. It seemed at that moment that we had decided to push away all of the rest – the chaos and excess of the season – and to draw into a concentrated moment what Christmas meant between people. We remembered the elves’ workshop she had run for the children in our community when our children were small. There were no limits to what could be created there. We also remembered the summers out in our canoes and promised to find time to spend in them together with our families when the ice lifted and the islands once again became accessible by boat.

As the clocks tick on (yes, I still have clocks that tick in my house),  it is time to turn my attention to a mother’s duty to create the soul of the family festivities at Christmas. In our liberated times, I am sure many would argue this should no longer be a woman’s duty. However, the truth is that more often than not it is and, I would argue, we should see it as part of our power. If there is something that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee reminded women of this year, it is to believe in the value of our capacity to open our arms and cradle society, however we do that.

Dear friends and faithful readers, this is wishing you and yours peace and joy.

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Wondering what to give a friend or loved one this holiday season? Learn more about Julie Lindahl’s prize-winning new book, “Rose in the Sand,” a memoir of a decade lived on a Swedish island. Order it now from amazon.com, amazon.co.uk , Author House, authorhouse.co.uk and many other online bookstores. Other books by Julie Lindahl available are: Letters from the Island (listen also to Julie’s podcasts from this site) and On My Swedish Island: Discovering the Secrets of Scandinavian Well-being.

Julie Lindahl is the founder of Stories for Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to learning and communication through storytelling.

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Waiting and longing...

This morning it rained on the boxes of Christmas decorations waiting to be unpacked outside the front door. The newspaper ran a headline about the dangers that global changes in weather pose to our health. What about the dangers they pose to Christmas? I need snow to make sense of Santa Claus, reindeer, and wool mittens and socks hanging from the mantlepiece.

Yet, we’ve had these years before. The greyness of November just seems to get even more grey and muddy, until your eyes begin to wonder whether there are in fact any other shades in the color spectrum. The rain and the puddles soak us in annual greyness up to that point when the snow provides a release and brings in a new time. We are still in waiting, but, despite the headlines, there is the faith it will come.

Today is the first of Advent and already in every dutiful Swedish window a candelabra shines those small, magical spots of light behind the curtains. The wreaths that the school children sell door-to-door in order to raise money for their school trips are hung at almost every entrance, including ours.

Inside, saffron cakes, ginger bread cookies and spiced red wine shift the aroma of our interiors. Just to make sure that no one forgets, the cashier at the supermarket checkout always asks whether you have remembered to purchase your saffron. Why saffron in Sweden at Christmas? It certainly isn’t a local product. The answer is that we need saffron from Persia to make our food bright.

Outside the palace, a giant tree illuminates the grey traffic congestion with hope. In those lights there is the promise of space and, above all, time, that comes with the break at Christmas. Just now it seems that there is more to do than ever. The demands of the holiday season place a heavy extra layer on top of already heavy schedules. Yet, in the light there is the promise of doing nothing but watching the snow fall peacefully from the window sill on Christmas morning.

As we move towards the darkest day, our eyes open later, shut earlier and our working days are cut short by the sounds and entertainments of Christmas. We resist hibernating with the bears, but, to some extent, nature forces us into a semi-hibernation whatever we do. I look through the candelabra out the window and long for the snow to cover the wilted plants. I know that it is in the longing of November that this time of year has its greatest value. Longing is hope, and hope is light.

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Wondering what to give a friend or loved one for Christmas? Learn more about Julie Lindahl’s prize-winning new book, “Rose in the Sand,” a memoir of a decade lived on a Swedish island. Order it now from amazon.com, amazon.co.uk , Author House, authorhouse.co.uk and many other online bookstores. Other books by Julie Lindahl available are: Letters from the Island (listen also to Julie’s podcasts from this site) and On My Swedish Island: Discovering the Secrets of Scandinavian Well-being.

Julie Lindahl is chairperson at Stories for Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to learning and communication through storytelling.

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Indian summer?

They said it was an Indian summer. The tabloids shouted with glory that we would be wearing shorts on 1 October. “The summer returns,” they proclaimed, like authorities who knew something that we did not. The thing about the tabloids is that if you ask your heart what the truth is about any given subject they report on, you will probably land at something closer to reality than anything you read.

Yet, Lucy the dog and I fell into the same trap as everyone else on 1 October when we marched into the park early in the morning, expecting to find a summer’s scene. In the long linden alley stretching from the palace to the fields behind, the path was golden. It was as though the King himself had ordered it as a sort of rebuke at the tabloids, who are like mice constantly making holes in his cheese.

The young linden trees, planted like new princes in this alley this spring, had already succumbed to the autumn and were nearly bare. Their golden insignia lay on the ground below, and Lucy charged into them to make them fly. The leaf blowers hadn’t turned up yet to disguise the autumn, and so Lucy took this liberty, which I am drawn to take myself,  in the autumn leaves in the pathways.

Of the paths the oaks and other great trees looked as though red and yellow paint had been splattered upon them from the skies. They appeared like women (or men) who had streaked their hair in the brightest of colors. These trees reminded me of my sister, Evelyn, who once turned up to visit me from the United States after a stopover with the hairdresser in Iceland with four different colors in her hair.

Up on the hill where Lucy and I defy the law and dispense with the leash, the grass was wet underfoot. It hadn’t rained the night before, so we knew that this was October’s morning dew returned to soak our feet. It was clearly time for the rubber boots I had foolishly left standing idle at the front door. The white statues in the park glistened with dew that looked like sweat from struggle. All of the statues in the park had that look of having just survived a gargantuan battle, perhaps a sign of the hard times in which they were created.

Out in the fields behind the park, the morning mist lifted to reveal the deer looking frightened at the lifting of their cover. The falling away of nature’s camouflage and the gradual withdrawal of all to white and bareness was an annual trauma for these creatures. If only they could read the tabloids, things wouldn’t feel so bad.

There was no questioning that the time of respite was over. We would begin to walk more briskly, wear heavier clothes and stop our dreaming on park benches. The falling leaves were like kerchiefs waving goodbye to the gentler season. They fell behind us as we walked through the palace’s golden gate back home to my waiting boots.

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Learn more about Julie Lindahl’s prize-winning new book, “Rose in the Sand,” a memoir of a decade lived on a Swedish island. Other books by Julie Lindahl available are: Letters from the Island (listen also to Julie’s podcasts from this site) and On My Swedish Island: Discovering the Secrets of Scandinavian Well-being.

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The departure of sound

Two swans flew low over the pond in the English Garden at Drottningholm Park. Lucy the dog and I stopped to marvel at their construction. Although we had seen many swans during our years of early morning sauntering, today was the first time we took in just how big they were, their wing spans folded out before us, as they swooped down low over the water lilies.

Swans need space, and finally they had got it. The park seemed eerily quiet this morning, and it took a moment to work out as to why. Somewhere in the subconscious of September are swathes of geese occupying the skies, the pathways, the green patches, and the water. Now they were gone, and I reflected upon the small drama that had carried on during the past weeks, without anyone really thinking much about it.

Somewhere in the distance there would be a single cry. Then one or two others would join until the noise had built up to such an intensity that there was nothing to do but for it to become air borne. I searched the skies to see which direction it was coming from, but the sound of geese carried quickly, and it took a few moments before I could see the source of the sound against the autumn sky.

I expected that all would fly in one direction, without hesitation. Most of nature seemed like it was on a confident onward march. To hesitate was human. Closer observation demonstrated that this was not so; I saw it in the sometimes confused patterns of the geese in the sky. At times, just as everyone thought they were heading in one direction, the lead bird swung around and took everyone back to the ground. There could be a lot of complaining on those occasions, but clearly, it hadn’t been the right time to take off.

On other occasions, it was clearly now or never. The deafening gaggle would rise into the sky and vanish into a single dot, the sound rapidly being sucked into it. The degree of drama was most palpable when the geese flew directly overhead. One wondered whether it would rain droppings, but it never did. Lucy noticed that they seemed to take care of that part of life when earthbound.

Now they were gone until the spring, and the silence of winter would begin slowly to seep into every corner of the park. The leaves were falling and would soon cease to rustle, and the many picnickers would withdraw to their fireplaces. I felt sad about it, but knew that when those days of white silence eventually came, I would find a beauty in them too.

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Learn more about Julie Lindahl’s prize-winning new book, “Rose in the Sand,” a memoir of a decade lived on a Swedish island. Other books by Julie Lindahl available are: Letters from the Island (listen also to Julie’s podcasts from this site) and On My Swedish Island: Discovering the Secrets of Scandinavian Well-being.

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Healing in the time of harvest

As the summer comes to a slow and tragic close here on my island on the lake, the time of harvesting is a healing. That is, not only a healing of the sadness of losing the summer to the cooler season, but also of the human loss we have sustained during this strange and difficult summer. In my kitchen, the evidence of the end of the season is everywhere. The berries are picked and frozen, the onions hang in bunches from the ceiling, and the first sour apples are on my kitchen counter.

As I stood in my bee house, scraping the wax from each cell the bees had faithfully filled with honey, I listened to the radio. One program after the next considered the Norwegian tragedy and its perpetrator, from all possible angles. Occasionally some reportage about the US budget crisis interrupted, but mostly the radio blurted the lost innocence of the Nordics (if ever there was such a thing). I switched on my centrifuge to drown out the reportage and turned my focus to the honey pouring into the clean bucket. It was pure and constant, produced by just means, each being doing their part in a system that allowed for everyone’s existence – mine and the bees. No being had to desist for the others to exist – there was room for all beings.

Some days later the children gathered in the kitchen; four of them between the ages of five and twelve. They were tasked with bottling 160 kilos (350 pounds) of honey, something which could be seen as child labor, had it not been quite a lot of fun. The children quickly divided up roles. The oldest took the most tricky of jobs, which was filling the jars to just the right level without spilling the honey. The next in age was the “licker,” whose responsibility it was to catch the last drop of honey on a finger before a new jar was pushed under the tap. The third screwed on the tops. The fourth and youngest, a tiny, bleached-blonde mite who fought constantly to make herself heard, was “burk” (meaning jar in Swedish). Whenever “burk” was shouted, the little one hurried with a filled, closed jar to the long dining room table were the final products were gathered. Occasionally, she would try to scuttle along with two, a risky move which immediately provoked protests from the older children, who knew that those small hands could only realistically carry one jar in safety to the long table. My job, according to the children, was the ascertainment of a constant supply of clean, new jars.

During the four hours in which the children bottled honey non-stop, no one ever came into conflict with any of the others. There was laughter, dancing to West African music, and then the occasional common moment of feeling somewhat queasy, having tasted so much of the sweet honey. If only this could be the center of the world and everyone could learn from it, I thought.

At the end of those hours, the children marvelled at their work: a table laden with countless caramel-colored jars. I marvelled at this little team of heroes and thanked life for such healing experiences. We’re going to need many of them as we wake up to what happened this past summer.

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Learn more about Julie Lindahl’s new book, “Rose in the Sand,” her memoir of a decade lived on a Swedish island, published through a literary prize from Gather Community Press.

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Playing before the rain

It was the evening before the rain. A long week of summer’s heat had culminated in the air.  The insects danced over the water like crazed performers at a mardi gras. On the dusty hill the roses lived up at the promise of rain, their previously wilted heads now forming pleasing, rounded, multi-layered heads of color and aroma. How did these roses survive at all? They’d been an experiment on this island of sand where everything that we did seemed to challenge the idea that certain things were not possible. In the process of challenging the idea of impossibility, we had found that certain roses do, in fact, manage quite fine in sand. They were the prickly, hardy type that bloomed richly and only once in the season, but with an aroma that made life feel like heaven.

Water now trickled down the hill, over the stones in the impossible waterfall that my husband had built between the islands of roses. Here was another project that wasn’t supposed to work, but as I sat in the “pleasure house” at the foot of the hill, listening to the water wash over the stones, it seemed that there were few experiences that approached perfection as closely as this one. As the sun cast its last evening rays just before the rain, the entire impossible creation – the work of years of believing in the impossible – came into view. I asked myself whether we could have lived without this project and all of the crazy struggles that it entailed. The answer was no, of course. Play – toying with the fantastical – is essential to man. Most of us wouldn’t be here if someone somewhere in time had not toyed with the impossible.

We’d removed the door and many windows of the octagonal pleasure house to let the summer in. The meal was over and we sat watching in that lovely space between dinner and dishes: when the work is done and the thought of the work to be done still has not set in. My husband recounted the story of the mink cubs that had chased one another around our house and played on the fence outside of our cottage. They had no care in the world, as yet untainted by the fear of man and sea eagles. Perhaps it was this that I adored about summers on this rocky island: it seemed an annual return to an untainted time and place; a moment when we did not assume or prejudge, and when direct experience freed us from irony or cynicism. It was a tonic to gain our knowledge from our senses, rather than from the usual screens and bytes.

Now the rain has come and the insects have fled inside. They hurl themselves at my windows, cursing the precipitation that interrupts their play. The ducklings swim desperately after their parents – even those who are perpetually wet seek cover in the rain. The young mink look on, their instincts rising about how they will find food when their parents stop delivering it. Over them the birch branch that should have been blown down many winters ago, hangs playfully over the water. It’s one of those things in this place that just isn’t possible, yet it is still there.

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Rose in the Sand by Julie Lindahl

Learn more about Julie Lindahl’s new book, “Rose in the Sand,” now available in hardcover, paperback and e-book at major on-line outlets. For more about Julie Lindahl visit www.julielindahl.com.

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Midsummer's tree

It’s Midsummer’s day and the birch branches are hanging limp from the docks after the evening’s festivities. Without any need to place seven wild flowers under my pillow (by doing so, you will dream of your future partner, according to the lore), I stuffed mine into the birch bound to the pretty white fence around the dock.

The birch is dominant everywhere at the moment. It hangs low over the shorelines and paths. Its comforting smell emanates from the forest, and it surpasses all other plants in its hunt for nutrients in whatever soil there is on this sandy, rocky island. In the bay it grows out of a styrofoam buoy that it has found some nutrient in. It thrives on bird island – a wooden raft anchored off our shores -  where something it can live off has accumulated.

A tractor pulls a hay wagon full of excited children down to the grounds where the Midsummer festival will be celebrated. It is decorated with none other than the birch branches. At the nearby church, birch adorns the entrance where the bride and the groom soon will enter. In the saunas being prepared for sweating away the schnapps that has washed down the sill and new potatoes, birch whisks soak in water, lending their irresistible aroma.

In the advanced societies of the world it has often become the practice that the decor or food of the festival is exotic – difficult to get a hold of locally and therefore a sign of status. Perhaps that is the reason I find the flaunting of the birch at a time of year when the birch is everywhere to be so refreshing. It is the legacy of peasant history, when affording the exotic was out of the question.  Yet this taking of what one has is something that we have a need to come back to today and into the future. We seem to have forgotten the proverbial art of making a bouquet out of the dandelions, as opposed to looking beyond the horizon to strain the earth for what we do not have.

In this way I find the birch on the dock to be very contemporary. It’s about making best use of what we’ve got. Out in their summer cottages, Swedes strive to become peasants during the summer. I used to laugh about this seemingly peculiar habit, but this peasant isn’t laughing any more. Rather, she can be found binding the birch branches to the dock on Midsummer’s Eve.

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For further information about “Rose in the Sand,” Julie Lindahl’s prize-winning book about a decade lived on a Swedish island, please visit www.julielindahl.com.

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Isn't she lovely?

It’s soon time to retreat to my Swedish Island holiday again. During the past days I have been here for a sneak preview of the summer, but work schedules still call and people won’t lay down their tools for the glorious season until just before Midsummer next week. This short peek into this constant world where the bluebells and the marguerites bloom in the same places each year, and where two great bushes grow from nothing to become the sentinels of the dock, tells me something about myself.

We live in a fast-changing world where we celebrate the rate of change and its ever-intensifying speed. Instant change screams from every corner and as soon as we spot it we are clapping, like captivated children in an amusement park. Here on my beloved island in the wilderness, change happens but so slowly that you have to be a faithful observer of the minutae to notice it. Of course, there are those changes in the air, the water and the soil that we humans enforce upon it by our presence in unprecedented numbers on this planet. Yet, today I don’t see those.  Rather, I see the familiar in my thorny friends, the wild roses, that have come up faithfully year after year. The absence of people makes it easy for me to make believe that I have returned to an original world where the insects and the trees govern.

This world, in all of its originality, is like a mirror. As I peer into my reflection in the rippling waters, I see that I have been a person caught up in the rate of change. Now, instead of being that piece of driftwood that bounces along in the current, I can take a moment to watch that person. She’s been in change, but knows how to withdraw from it for a while to live in the constancy that everyone needs in life in order to manage the breakneck speed of things. That is an art that has taken time to learn.

This place in its constancy tells me how I have changed. I smile at the gnarled dogwood that for years I would have cursed myself for not taming earlier in the spring. The wild grasses and the weeds caress my calves. So many weeds are medicine and food. Why kill them for the sake of an even lawn? I realize that I have come a long way from the dream of that perfect green carpet to love diversity – that which is wild and different, and contrasts markedly with the next man, the next plant. I relish in the uneven heights, unpredictable sizes and forms.

The giant irises have already wilted, telling me that the glorious pre-summer is already over. Their browned flower heads on long stalks seem to me a dignified way of ageing – somewhat like accepting graying hair. In the past I would have cut them down immediately. Today I observe, take in and accept their maturing against the backdrop of the new color that rises up behind them. There is beauty in the juxtaposition of the generations – something else that has gone forgotten in our time when we are always looking ahead.

Could this be age and the passing of time creeping up on me, little island? Yet if it means that I see more beauty in the way that you really are, then that must be a good thing.

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Rose in the Sand is now available at major online bookstores in hardcover, paperback and e-book

Purchase your copy of Julie Lindahl’s new book, “Rose in the Sand,” online today. For further information visit www.julielindahl.com.

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Find the thought

The rain falls and I wish for sun. Lucy the dog finds the rain and the cool wind a blessing. All she’s got to sweat with on the hot days is her tongue and it doesn’t seem to suffice for keeping cool on the long dusty paths of summer. Today there is no dust, just soaked soil and the many colors rising out of the intricately planned flower beds of Drottningholm Park.  Each day we saunter past them and each sunny spring day I haven’t given them a thought, caught up, as I am, in the euphoria of the season. Now that it is raining, however, my thoughts go to them. Rain is good that way: it turns your attention to the few feet from the perimeter of your umbrella.

The petals on the pansy beds quiver as the rain drops strike them. The droplets roll off and the petals bounce back, showing up their collage of colors. As my eyes follow the arrangement, I notice that the petals turn from a chalky lemon to dark yellow, orange and red. In the planting someone has thought of the transition from yellow to red and how that happens in the spectrum of  colors. Following this journey of color is like following a life and watching it mature, or following the spring’s path to summer. There is a story behind each color transition, and rather than superimpose my own upon it, I try to discover what the original thought was.

In the maze inside the high hedges, where the ‘dangerous liaison’ intrigues of the 18th century once took place, I discover small pockets of flowers that have been planted inside lower hedges. These puffs of color are not immediately visible unless you crane your neck to look over the top or peek through the tangle of hedges to discover the liaison of flowers that someone has deviously placed there. A clever gardener has played with ideas of secrecy and conspiracy in the creation of this small garden in the maze.

I walk on and look well past the perimeter of my umbrella. What if we are constantly missing the thoughts behind? So many things around us are so very intricately planned by real people with well-developed thoughts and intentions.  Yet most of the time we walk past them – rush past them – and don’t think.  In the color of our houses, in the shape of roads, in the placement of the aromatic lilac bushes and most other things, there is a thought and a story that rarely ever gets met because we have trouble looking past our figurative umbrella perimeters. Improving our capacity to meet the thoughts and intentions of others would most likely solve a great number of problems such as prejudice and racism.

It’s Swedish Mother’s Day and my daughter has walked in with a very pretty bracelet made out of linen thread and shells picked up on Nordic beaches. I look at the design. The pattern is bright and beautiful. What was the thought? What is the intention? I’ll have to gaze at it a little longer to begin learning of its story.

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Happy Swedish Mother’s Day to all mothers. Give yourself a treat and order “Rose in the Sand” today. For more on “Rose in the Sand,” my memoir of ten years lived on a small Nordic island just published by Gather Community Press, please visit http://www.julielindahl.com/web/author.php. Join me at Facebook and Twitter to learn more about my writing and other projects.

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