avoidance techniques

I should be cleaning the house. My parents and grandmother arrive tomorrow and there are still beds to be made, floors to be done, etc. etc. Not that it really matters. They won't see how clean everything is but will just be glad to be here. But by instinct or by tutelage, I need it to be clean. That's what you do for guests. And who wants to sleep in a place with dirty floors and dead flies on the windowsills? ( I make our house sound filthy, but really, we get a lot of dead bugs on the window sills because people don't use screens here. The doors and windows are hinged on the outside, and open out, so screens are impossible.) (This also makes it quite comical opening doors, for along time I always pulled the wrong way, even in my own house.)

But I am putting it off and sitting here, typing in kitchen, looking out at the dull, drab sky and wondering what the weather will be like when my parents are here. This is my grandmother's first and maybe last trip-of-a-lifetime, and the weather needs to be good. At least a little good.

Our freezer is full of delicious vanilla buns (a sweetbread pastry made with vanilla, butter and sprinkled with crunchy sugar) and yogurt bread (all thanks to my super-woman mother-in-law!) Martin and I will be sleeping in our little guest-cottage which will be fun. Sleeping in your own garden can offer a new perspective.

We will have a full schedule: a trip to Cracow, Poland, an antiques road-trip, family dinners, a trip to the east coast to see the famous Baltic beaches and the royal summer house, shopping, berry picking, and any other number of things depending on what energy we have left. We also just need to relax and be together, drink tea and catch up on one year apart. It will be impossibly short, and it will crush me to say goodbye. Life is so short. Bittersweet. But I will savour the sweetness for every moment, and try to have a child's mentality and forget the impending goodbye. They will be here for my birthday, after all, so what more can I ask?

heredity

1 : the sum of the qualities and potentialities genetically derived from one's ancestors

2 : the transmission of traits from ancestor to descendant through the molecular mechanism lying primarily in the DNA or RNA of the genes

It's been steamy hot, high temperatures and high per cent humidity. I dressed to go out to work one morning in the garden. In a short while of pulling weeds and turning earth I was sticky sweaty and irritable with the flies that left the horse barn to come and fly about my face. I returned to the house to dig up the shorts I found in the "throw away pile" (when people throw away good useful clothes because they can't jam them into their suitcases).

Marching out of the house to do weed battle once again, I had an amusing realization. I have turned into my mother.

Not so much physically -- the Busenius side (my father's) is by far dominant in that regard -- though when we are together there would be no doubt we are mother and daughter. For the likeness I am referring to, a "transmission of trait", seems quite nebulous.

I'll explain.

As I was walking towards the flower beds, I laughed aloud as if someone placed a mirror before me. I could see my mother in the garden working: Running shoes (you can't heft a spade properly with sandals), socks, shorts, tank top. Muscular legs, bug-bitten (with a slight allergic reaction to each bite), broad straight shoulders with a slight hunch at the back of the neck (this goes back to my grandmother). Dirty hands (I can't recall her working with gloves) and a deep, almost effortless summer tan. Strong of back, strong of will. She is a workhorse, and there's no insult in saying that because I am, too. She keeps a beautiful garden and neglects the houseplants. (My houseplants are often brown at the edges, although I can't claim the years of hard work she's put into her garden.)

Martin said recently that I had a "farmer tan", a working tan, I guess, that leaves various tank-top lines, belly and upper thighs pale, white, or at least shades lighter than the shoulders, forearms, face and knees. I am ashamed to admit, when I was young, I was a bit embarrassed about my mom's working tan. We lived in the "California of Canada" (I say this oozing sarcasm and irony) where it was body beautiful all summer. I didn't realize as a child that real people didn't have perfect bikini tans, because real people have to work and raise children and do things besides lay in the sand or drive around in a speedboat. I just remember being slightly embarrassed that my mom's tan ended where her gardening shorts did. Now I look back with admiration that she didn't bow to the preening facade of others, and was simply her natural self. This I guess I take after, too. I haven't worn much makeup, or any, really, in years.

Now I guess I start to sound full of that opposite kind of vanity--looking down on the vain. I am describing what went through my mind as I was walking down to resume weeding.

I began to think of other things of heredity or family culture. My brother and I use the word "interesting" as a variable tool of conversation. "Interesting" (you are stupid) "interesting" (that's really interesting) "interesting" (I am actually not listening to you) "interesting" (I am bored)... the list goes on. As a family we have violent tendencies, not cruel but sometimes brutal. We laugh in the same explosive raucousness, doubling over if we really get going. We are strong, able, athletic, with that thick softening that can belie toughness. My brother, sister, and I are throwbacks to our Slavic roots -- born blond, dark-eyed, darker-skinned.

Now this probably quite boring, I realize. But having spent a year apart from blood family these things come up clearer and with more importance -- more draw, maybe the desire for connection. My trip to Bosnia in the spring made me think of these things, too, being surrounded by people that looked like my brothers. I guess it's always easier to see who you are like when you aren't with them.

a good, good end

It's morning and I debated staying in bed to avoid the inevitable: an empty house. Not that I don't enjoy being alone, but today, the first day my brother wasn't around after a month, seemed so painfully quiet and sad. I did get up, and push aside thoughts with laundry and cleaning, but... I seem to get headaches when I stuff emotions or stress. Quite severe headaches, which I find interesting. A physical rebellion against an unhealthy practice of emotion-stuffing... It seems today even Sweden is mourning his departure -- after over a week of solid 20-30 degree days and sunshine, the clouds cover and the insects come out to feast.

I suppose most siblings love one another, more or less, in that inexplicable relationship of siblinghood. Jordan and I must be on the more side, because even after a month of hanging about one another almost every waking minute, I wasn't ready to say goodbye. (It's possible he was but I didn't ask.) As we've worked together on the deck, relaxed, conversed, cooked and laughed often, I have felt the burden of time, marching continually towards the goodbye at the Nassjö train station. This goodbye -- moreso than the last, when we were heading off to Sweden with the future before us -- felt so... permanent. A spoonful of the medicine I chose to drink, inevitable goodbyes. I thought about culture shock, I thought about homesickness and missing family and friends, I thought about long distances and expensive travel, but I never thought of how it will be to say goodbye again and again, with a finality of not knowing when we will see one another, that life will continue on different parts of the world separately.

But how grateful am I to share life together for a month. To see my familial ties and shared characteristics in a new way. Even to simply physically look like someone! Having him here was some moments like having a host of others here as well. His strong Slavic features so like mine, his stand-up hair like Uncle Tim's, the crinkles around his eyes when he smiles, so like our mother. How he spoke and gave instructions so like our father. And in all of that he is completely his own, which is wonderful and fascinating. How we carry the traits of our parents and grandparents and remain completely individual is really quite remarkable.

I have thought of my mother in the past weeks, how grieved she was to say goodbye the last, in the sterile airport hallway, as we wept before the voyeurism of other travelers queuing for security. I had the youthful naivete of adventure and future to buoy me. She knew something deeper, more significant was taking place than I had yet to understand and am just now realizing...

Things can't simply be undone or redone as we fancy. And we know this, but live subconsciously as it's possible, that if I should need to reverse my decision to move and return to the good of things as they once were, I could. (But not sacrificing the good of things as they are now, or lessons learned, or treasures appreciated.)

In the last weeks I came to a moment of clarity. All the change and uncertainty we experience, not just beginning uncertainty, getting all you thought you dreamt of, but end uncertainty; the hopelessness of the weakness, limitation, and shortness of human life, getting old, getting poor, getting lonely, disappointed or heartbroken. In that, the only consistent goodness, the only unchangingness is God. Always the same in character and in relationship. Not impeded by time or distance. Always the I am. I am past, I am future, I am present. This is hope and solace.

midsummer, mullets and midges

It's 10 p.m. and the evening has cooled and paled, the sky the gray-blue color it stays all night. Midsummer in Sweden is close to magical -- for me, anyways. Short, never-dark nights. Four a.m. sunrises. A racket of birds, smaller ones shrieking and dive-bombing a crow skulking about their nest. Wild lupine everywhere, purple and pink mostly. Green -- rich, bright, bold or dark -- so much lush growth the air is thick and fragrant with it in the morning.

Not everything is perfect mid-summer. The biting midges are horrible little things, near-invisible as they saw into you and leave red welts. My brother has 60 such welts on one leg. I watched him count them. You can feel them on you but are helpless to fight them off, as they are so small they sneak under clothing and under hair lines. Jordan said: "For such small things they are heavy walkers." I laughed.

We spent the eve of midsummer in traditional fashion. With family, attended the midsummer celebration and dancing around a pole and wreaths of wild flowers and forest greens. Ate delicious "classic midsummer" torte of cake, custard, cream and whole strawberries, an offering of my mother-in-law Lisbeth.

The evening of mid-summer I won't quickly forget. A rain storm passed, Martin, Jordan, two German friends and I arrived at the edge of a lake -- fog at its edges, still and silent until we arrive. We build a good, hot fire, drank hot chocolate and sent off a considerable amount of fireworks. (Jordan had a near miss with a rather large firework, unstable and ill-fired, turned 180 and torpedoed him directly in the leg. He jumped and ran as we shouted in fear; all's well that ends well. His leg is still attached.)

Past midnight we psyched each other up to go for a swim. Admittedly I didn't swim much, the cold was shocking but moreso in the dimness and calmness I could only think of swimming with the 10+ kilo pike we were fishing for the week before. Those double rows of teeth and I thought of them paddling for the ladder on the dock.

After midsummer I gave Martin his first haircut. My first time cutting someone's hair. Our marriage withstood the pressure, thank goodness. I gave him a bit of a mullet, I think. And I like it. Maybe its my red-neck roots showing through.

a knot of cool damp hair

Overlooking a twilight garden on the eve of Swedish midsummer. Listening to my brother sing and play Ben Harper's waiting on angels, wondering how he got so darn good in just a year. The bun of wet hair, fresh from the shower, soaks the back of my t-shirt and I think of my father saying "my back is cold -- it's damp". I hate a cold back. I mowed the lawn tonight and the smell of fresh-cut grass was too appealing. I threw the bathroom window open and showered with the coolness of evening air, overlooking my handiwork. Grateful and amazed with this place; here I can shower with a wide open window and not a soul about. It's the same feeling as when I am hanging our laundry to dry, bras and panties and boxers, looking over to see my neighbors' skivvies blowing in the breeze and I love this place.