Adventure in Sweden: An Introduction

Tomorrow I will begin a seven day sequence of posts about my seven days in Sweden. It would be impossible for me to include every detail and much will be left out. Some unintentionally so. In order to prevent any confusion I shall set the stage.

I stayed in Västerås which is approximately 53 minutes west from Stockholm by train. It sits on the shores of Lake Mälaren which stretches all the way to the Baltic Sea. Every night, except two, I was hosted by my mother's Swedish "sister", Suzanne. I brought one suitcase. I took over five-hundred pictures. I had the time of my life.


Grandma Sue.


In order to give you a sense of what going to Sweden meant to me I shall tell you a story.*

Once upon a time in Sweden there was a girl named Greta who fell in love with a boy named Emil. Emil left Sweden for the great land of opportunity, America. Greta had to wait until she was twenty-one before she could join him. Her family was sad to see her go, especially her sister, Helga. In 1920 Greta traveled to the US all by herself and married Emil. Not too long after the birth of their first child, they bought a beautiful new house on Rose Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota. They raised six children in that house. Five girls and one boy. One of the daughters, Susan, is my maternal grandmother.

Every three months Helga would receive a letter from Greta in the US with updates on her children and life in the US. After some time these letters began to include updates on her grandchildren. My great-grandmother Greta died barely a year after I was born. All that is left of the one time I met her, when I was too young to remember and too chubby to walk just yet, is a photograph. My mother named me after Emil by combining two female names she liked that still echoed his.

Helga also had many children. The youngest is Siv. My grandmother and Siv are cousins. While growing up Grandma Sue returned to Sweden with her parents a few times through the years to visit the branches of the family that remained in the homeland.

In 1972-1973, Siv's stepdaughter, Suzanne, lived and went to John Marshall High School with my mother. They have stayed in touch since. I met Suzanne and her son Erik, who is two years younger than me, for the first time in 2000 when they visited the US. I was twelve at the time and I don't think I had any concept of how big the world is and how small it can be at the same time. Or how it is such a blessing to have a family full of history and love. Flash forward ten years and four generations down. Emil and Greta left Sweden but Sweden never left my family. And I finally got to go "home."

*Some details are not precise. I'll have to double check my facts but this is a true story.