A Perfect Day For Playing Sick

The perfect banana bread served in a suribachi along with black coffee. When my son was a baby, I baked banana bread all the time, using a variety of different recipes. I baked them so often, I had to give them away. We always brought some with us when we went to the pediatric clinic for check-ups. They call this the “Best Ever Banana Bread”, and I think I agree. I changed it a bit by using chopped walnuts instead of pecans. 

 My friend Sandra calls it “having a duvet day”. I call it playing sick. I’m referring to those days when you can’t for the life of you get out of bed, even though you aren’t really sick or anything.

A few years ago, I had so many days like these and so close to each other, I seriously thought perhaps I’d just stay in bed for the rest of my life, you know, like Miss Rollings in the film True Stories? But then I had to get up, because the baby got hungry.

It’s funny really, that it took me so long to figure out how to make the most of a perfect playing sick day. In reality you need only two things: A good enough excuse and a good, trusted ally. Then you need to work on whatever guilt you may feel. Let’s actually take that last piece before we move on. Seriously, don’t we all deserve a free day every now and then? A free days that isn’t exactly planned? Of course we do! We’re pretending to be sick, we’re not committing a crime, we’re not spying or housing terrorists. No need to feel guilty.

For many years I used my mom as my ally in this, and that wasn’t good because my mom is too honest and law-abiding. She wavered and she waffled and that made me feel unsure, and then the whole “playing sick” project collapsed. An ally’s job is to give you permission to stay at home. And that permission has to be given without an ounce of hesitation. Magdalena is a good friend and an excellent ally, because when you call her and sound helpless and sort-of-but-not-quite-sick, she doesn’t dither. Right away she says:
“Honey, you need to stay in bed! No arguments! Call in sick right now, and then go straight to bed. You heard me.”

If that doesn’t kill you sense of guilt, then I don’t know what does.

Once permission from a trusted ally has been granted, you need to find an appropriate reason for staying in bed when you call the office. Obviously you need to avoid the use of serious diseases. You also need to avoid diseases that Karma can use against you later: A friend of a friend once called in sick saying she had the stomach flu and diarrhea, when in reality she was in bed watching crap TV and eating Cheetos. Well, wouldn’t you know it, a week later she really did get the stomach bug and diarrhea. See? I have found that the more vague you are about your symptoms the better. I will go so far as to say feel free to invent some allergy, but make sure you use the Latin name for it when you call in.

Since most “playing sick” days are not planned in advance, it’s vital that your kitchen is always stuffed with goodies just in case. I don’t know what your preferences are when it comes to staying in bed all day, but I prefer to munch on green grapes and fruit yoghurt and my fridge is always stacked with both. I don’t watch TV, but I have a pile of Agatha Christie books and old New Yorker magazines waiting for this type of day.

When you’ve done all the footwork (found an ally, come up with a good reason, and stocked your fridge), then you just wait…  The perfect day for playing sick will come, and when it does, do me a favor and enjoy it!

Alice in Wonderland II

Cherry smoothie. Cherries are packed with antioxidants, and when paired with almond milk and a few drops of vanilla, you’d almost think you’re having an ice cream! For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a thing for Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll. Years ago, I found this book, which is a fine partner to Carroll’s books about Alice. It's well-written and richly illustrated and will give you a sense of who Carroll and Alice Lidell (the real Alice) were.

Once upon a time there was a girl who was quite bright but quite bored and one spring day when she had nothing else to do, she saw a rabbit hole and decided to jump. It wasn’t her first rabbit hole and it wasn’t the first time she jumped. You could say she had an affinity for jumping down rabbit holes.

The first time she jumped down one she discovered Alain Robbe-Grillet and crème du menthe.

This time she discovered a wonderland right up her alley: Stranger than strange yet seductively familiar and all wrapped up in humidity and heat. In other words, far too exciting to pass on. It had a name: Texas.

Here women wore hose even on the hottest day of the year (“hose” was a new word, she had thought they were called “stockings”), and those women were loud and had “pancake” make up and sprayed their hair into stiff platinum clouds. Men wore tight jeans tucked into Western boots, said “Howdy, ma’am” and tilted their cowboy hats. Cars weren’t just vehicles to take you places, they were destinations in and by themselves, refrigerated little things, well not so little really. They were temporary dwellings in which you flowed down the highway. Highways, highways everywhere. And take-out restaurants so you didn’t even have to get out of your car.

She learnt about so many things. Such as spray-on hair for the balding and clap on-clap off lights for the old. She saw roaches for the first time, and raccoons, and even an armadillo.

Is it any wonder she got sucked in?

Everything was bigger in Texas. And louder. Big and loud and proud Texas. When she asked for an ice cream, she got a whole truckload of it, “Texas style”, wheeled up in front of her and served complete with chocolate sauce (or “fudge”, another new word), sprinkles (not to be confused with “sprinklers”), vanilla wafers, whipped cream (sprayed on in the same fashion as the spray-on hair) Maraschino cherries, and five sliced bananas.

She spent hours walking up and down the air-conditioned aisles of the supermarkets. She’d never seen so much stuff, so much food in her life. The white bread in Texas was spongy and bouncy like a rubber ball. She once threw it on the floor to see if it would bounce back at her. She began wondering what they put into their food. Everything came in plastic.

And then she got depressed. Everything is bigger in Texas, so also her depression. Suddenly there were days when she didn’t feel like getting out of her bed (with its ruffled, mauve bed skirt) and into her car (a liver paste-colored old Chevrolet). Days when she didn’t feel like walking up and down the grocery aisles. Days when she didn’t feel like doing much at all.

She tried treating her depression with a variety of techniques, and found that the Houston Symphony was the best answer. She sat through concert after concert. And afterwards she’d peruse used bookstores in search for something to ferry her over a night of insomnia. 

Then one day a friend invited her to come visit New York. She left Texas on a Delta Airlines flight. When the plane landed at LaGuardia a rainy, gray day, she overheard someone say in that nasal twang of the East coast:
“There are no endings, Sweetheart, just a string of beginnings”

And that sentence, and New York itself, became a brand new start.

The Hanged Man

Lingonberry muffins. I don’t have access to lingon here in the U.S., but I thought I might use canned lingonberries for muffins, and the recipe turned out good enough. If you want to make them and like your muffins on the sweeter side, I suggest adding a couple of tablespoons of sugar.

I mixed 2 cups flour with 3 teaspoons baking powder and ½ teaspoon salt in a bowl. In another bowl I mixed one egg, 1 cup milk, and two tablespoons melted and cooled butter. I poured the wet ingredients into a well in the dry, stirring lightly. Then I added 1 cup of Felix lingonberries. I baked them (12) in 420F for about 25 minutes.

Last week, I was given a tarot reading as a “reward” for an online book review I’d written some time ago. Although I’m pretty familiar with the tarot deck and the meaning of the different cards, I’d never before had a professional reading. It was more exciting than I’d expected it to be, and I thought about it for quite some time afterwards.

One of the cards that came up in the spread was the Hanged Man.

The Hanged Man in tarot can indicate a lot: A temporary pause in life, a need for patience, uncertainty, deep thought, and meditation for instance.

But the Hanged Man also invites you to look at things from another perspective (in his own case this perspective is upside down). So I decided to look at some things in a new or at least different way.

Maybe we all have areas in life in which we tend to get stuck for some reason or other. Perhaps because we secretly like it that way, or maybe because we’re too lazy to change or we might not even realize we’re stuck until we get unstuck by accident (or luck).

My sticking points are some undesirable patterns in my relationships with my son (the screaming duels I get lured into when he refuses to do his homework), my husband (when I become a sarcastic nag because he leaves the kitchen in a mess), and, most importantly I think, the relationship I have with myself.

I don’t know if it’s possible to get a view of one’s self that’s not skewed. I can feel myself swinging like a pendulum from one extreme (thinking I’m actually very good at something) to another (believing myself to be completely and incurably stupid). Rarely do I think of myself in an even, lukewarm way. Most of the time, I am actually quite mean to myself, and when confronting a mirror the words I say to myself would definitely be filed as verbal abuse if hurled to another person.

And I don’t think I’m alone. I think we often tend to be overly harsh with ourselves.

Isn’t it time that we cut ourselves some slack? I don’t mean kicking up our legs with a glass of wine because “we deserve it”, I mean being proud of what we’ve accomplished. Last night my son did a drawing of a castle, and he was so openly and unabashedly proud of it. It was a good drawing and I told him so.

“You should be very proud of yourself,” I said. “You worked very hard on that drawing. Look how many different colors you used and see all those little details.”

I wonder at what point we’re considered too old for that sort of encouragement. Because it stops at some point, doesn’t it? Suddenly we’re deemed too adult to need it. Or we get paid, and that payment is the encouragement. But however nice and welcome money is, it’s not the same as a pat on the back along with a few words.

I think therefore that it’s important that we give this kind of encouragement to ourselves. We all have gifts and talents that we’re using on a daily basis. And I suspect we are aware of them, even though we might be too embarrassed to admit it.

So here it is, the advice of the Hanged Man this Friday: Be proud of your accomplishments, of all the things you’ve done! Don’t be so quick to see what’s “wrong” with you and rush out to “fix it”, embrace the good stuff. There’s plenty if you look for it, sometimes you just have to shift your perspective a little bit. Have a great weekend everybody and see you again on Monday.

The Hanged Man from the Rider-Waite tarot deck, invites you to look at things from another perspective.

The Transfiguration of Aunt Irène

I'm all for cheese. Cheese, if you ask me, can be eaten any time of the day. Above my son's favorite: A ripe brie on dark grain bread with yellow peppers, tomatoes, and chia seeds.

Some people die suddenly. Others fade away slowly. 

Aunt Irène didn’t really die at all.

Not in the proper sense of the word anyway. Of course the doctor declared her dead when her heart stopped beating. But as Aunt Irène herself would’ve said:
“What’s a heart? Nothing but a muscle. A clenched fist of a muscle.”

And wasn’t she somehow more than that?

Aunt Irène was one of the most different persons I’ve ever met. I don’t know what word to use to describe her but “different”. She looked different, for sure, but she was different too. I suppose one could call her “crazy”. She laughed loudly in church and had to be ushered out, she peed in flowerpots on the days when she didn’t feel like leaving her room, and she loved dead men. All of that I’ve written about. At the same time, she was a most generous woman. She was curious and always wanted to learn new things. She was kind, fascinating, and fun to be around.

When she died, we all had this feeling – this sensation – that she didn’t actually die but merely transformed into something else.

My adopted French family lived in a very small town called Toul in the north-eastern region of France. It’s not a very exciting town. It’s a sleepy place. A day would be dull as dull can be when suddenly Aunt Irène would decide to take a walk in her peacock-colored frock and her purple heels and her turban. You’d see her, a most glorious vision, coming out of the pâtisserie on Rue Docteur Chapuis heading for the fountain at Place des Trois Évêchés. And the sun hit the rooftops just so, and the sky was lavender and pink. And suddenly it would be dull no more.

It was the summer of peaches. An abundance of peaches everywhere. There was always a bucket full of them in the garden by the hammock. Maman had washed them; we’d just reach down and grab one. They were mostly red and so ripe they threatened to come apart by the slightest touch. The juice from those peaches splashed everywhere, on our hands, on the hammock, and on our clothes. We laughed at that. And I said:
“How come in French the word for peach is the same as the word for fishing?”

But I can’t remember if anyone explained it to me.

And Aunt Irène threatened to come apart also and nobody could explain her either.

In the park there were nine muses, nine sculptures, and Aunt Irène liked best Terpsichore, the muse of dance. There was also a reedy little pond, into which the little children threw pebbles. And behind the hawthorn hedges a bench, hidden from view. We sat there, enveloped in the scent of the hawthorn. Lazy days. And we talked about horoscopes and fortunes and futures. Aunt Irène said the two big sloping lines from between my thumb and the rest of my fingers down to my wrist were separated, which showed independence. And Edith, her real niece and my friend, looked at her own palm and saw how in hers, those lines were interlaced. Quick as a weasel, Aunt Irène swat Edith’s hand away.

“Never compare hands!”

It was a bad omen in Egypt.

It was in this park we sat, Edith and I, long after I put the gemstones by Aunt Irène’s grave when everything was quiet as if over and done with.

“It’s bizarre,” said Edith.

Then we were silent and there was a chill in the air.

“Do you believe in a parallel universe?” she asked me.

But before I could answer, a green bird swooped down in a flash, landing on the hedges. It was very green, an unlikely green, like lime, a tropical bird that had escaped its cage. We held our breath as if breathing would scare it away. But it didn’t leave. We walked up close to the hedge where it sat. Still it did not leave. When we were close we saw that it looked at us and cocked its head in understanding. Its round black eye had a human quality to it and there was like a crown of light around its head. And that light had an aura of humanness about it.

“Aunt Irène?” Edith whispered under her breath.

And off it flew, the tropical bird, making an arch in the air like a green promise or a question answered.

Müsli

This morning's Bircher müsli brings back memories from my childhood.

I can remember the first time I went into an American grocery store. One of those giant ones. It was in Houston, Texas in the mid 1990’s and to say that I was bewildered is to put it mildly. I especially remember the cereal and shampoo sections, because to me they seemed so incredible excessive. Over the top Texas style. I mean, how many different shampoos can you possibly come up with? How many varieties of breakfast cereal?

In Sweden back then there were maybe five different breakfast cereals, and I only liked one: Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. I liked soggy corn flakes. I would deliberately leave my corn flakes in a bowl of milk until they had turned into a soggy mush.

Before my Houston grocery store experience, I’d never seen cereals with pieces of chocolate in them. Or candy. To me it seemed almost indecent. Candy for breakfast? At home when I grew up that would have been pretty much illegal. But here it was, out in the open, and rows upon rows of the stuff to boot.

After I had gone through every single American breakfast cereal, I found myself longing for the breakfasts of my childhood, which can be summed up in one word: Müsli. I could find no müsli in Houston, not even when I looked for it under its Americanized heading “muesli”. Not back then. There was granola, of course. And it was good. It was crunchy. And there was a big selection of it: Naked granola, honey granola, very berry granola, tropical granola, protein granola… But I wanted müsli.

When I grew up there were two müsli brands I was addicted to. One was Doktor Ritter’s, which was quite expensive and had to be purchased in special health stores. This made it a rare player in our kitchen. The second one was cheaper and thus more frequent in our home, and it was called Eterna. I ate Doktor Ritter’s müsli or Eterna with milk in the morning for breakfast, and when I came home from school I would make myself another bowl while I pored over my Asterix comics.

So what’s the difference between granola and müsli?

Well, like granola, müsli is made with grains, fruit, and nuts. Unlike granola, however, müsli is not baked nor toasted and has no additional sugar. It’s raw. While Dr. James Caleb Jackson in Dansville, New York, developed granola in the late 19^th century, a Swiss physician named Maximilian Bircher-Benner, created müsli specifically for the patients in his hospital around the year 1900.

Yesterday I was just going to buy my favorite müsli here in the States, when I remembered a recipe for Bircher müsli that I hadn’t yet tried. It’s probably a bit modernized because it involves chia seeds, but it nevertheless turned out very tasty and müsli-like. The portion was rather huge; I had to share it with my son. This is how I made it:

Ingredients to overnight Bircher müsli

1 cup rolled oats (not instant and not steel cut)

2 Tablespoons chia seeds

11/4-cup milk (I used almond/coconut)

a dash of vanilla extract

dried fruit

I mixed all ingredients (except the fruit) in a small bowl, covered it and put it in the fridge overnight. In the morning before serving, I stirred and added a few prunes. A real Bircher müsli, I think would also include nuts, but I had none at hand. I think almonds and hazelnuts would be great.

Agnes in Eslöv

The dreamiest of breakfasts when you're feeling a bit low. Brown rice porridge pretty much drenched in maple syrup and topped with almond flakes. So good! 

When I was in my late teens, I worked one summer as a “nurse’s aid” in a nursing home in Eslöv, which is a very small town outside Lund, where I lived.

Being a “nurse’s aid” meant I helped the nurses and spent time with the patients, all of whom were elderly and most of whom suffered from some kind of dementia.

This is how I met Agnes.

Agnes was in her late 90’s then, sweet and spry. It was obvious that she had once been an attractive woman, but now her thin, white hair stood out like a weak halo around her head, and her cheeks had lost their color. Her inky blue eyes were mischievous. She would wait for me to arrive in the mornings, standing in the doorway to her room, picking a little at some button on her dress.

“There you are,” she would say and motion for me to come inside.

I loved to talk with Agnes. At first, I didn’t quite grasp how serious her dementia was, so when she asked for a girdle (“because there are so many handsome men out there in the corridor”), I went out to the storage room and looked for one among the adult diapers, the pillowcases and the wipes.

“Where do you keep the girdles?” I asked. “Agnes needs one.”

The nurses nearly collapsed in laughter.

Agnes had a son – I can’t remember his name now – whom she often spoke about. She told me how well he did at school and how she had made a little skating outfit for him, for when she took him skating on the pond. The skating outfit was a dark blue with lighter blue stripes. She told me how they’d go have hot cocoa afterwards. I pictured a little blond boy with cheeks like red apples. And I pictured Agnes, a much-younger and very beautiful Agnes sipping hot chocolate in some café. I imagined Agnes in some fashionable winter coat and a stylish hat.

Agnes shared her room with a woman named Martina, who was almost completely deaf. Martina, or Tina as we called her, sat in an armchair all day long, with an empty smile on her face.

“I tell Tina she has to exercise,” said the ever-energetic Agnes. “I tell her ‘Jump a little up and down in bed, Tina’ but she won’t listen to me.”

I felt sorry for Tina where she sat in her own little world. Once I leaned forward and said loudly:
“What a lovely dress you have on today, Tina!”

She nodded absentmindedly. I doubt she had heard me. Agnes, however, had. Later that evening, when I had already gone home, Agnes got hold of a pair of scissors and cut Tina’s lovely dress to shreds.

There was also Water, an old man who surrounded himself with vintage photos in black oval frames and antique furniture that smelled faintly of wood polish. Walter always sat on his bed straight as an arrow.

“May I kiss you?” he’d whisper to me. “May I kiss you?”

He was a bit hard of hearing, Walter, so I nearly had to scream back at him:
“I DON’T THINK THAT’S A VERY GOOD IDEA BECAUSE I’M ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED SOON!”

The trick was to get him to talk about his youth. I loved hearing his stories, because Walter had been a tap dancer on Broadway back in the day, and he had once danced with Fred Astaire!

As summer progressed, I got more and more involved in the lives of these people. Agnes’ birthday was in August, and I gave her a pin with two bluebirds holding in between them a silvery ribbon. She was so young somehow, I felt as if we were friends. A few days later, the phone rang at home. It was Agnes’ son, who wanted to thank me for being so sweet to his mother. They’d like to meet me, him and his wife, and they happened to be down south right now. A meeting was arranged. I don’t know, but something died inside of me when Agnes’ son came towards me with a little bouquet of flowers, an outstretched hand and a formal smile. Agnes’ son was a retired lawyer. He was balding but youthfully tan from a recent trip to Tuscany. He wore a short-sleeved red Polo shirt and khakis. I don’t remember the wife at all. I don’t remember what anyone said. I just remember thinking that this then, was what had become of Agnes’ little boy in the homemade blue skating outfit.

Spring & Summer

Super juice for breakfast with green apples and kale. And Pär Lagerkvist, a most wonderful Swedish author. In the past, when I still considered myself very much Swedish and worked hard at spreading Swedish culture wherever I went, I would almost always bring a book by Pär Lagerkvist as a gift to whomever I visited. In Poland, I found a bookstore that carried his most popular titles, and they were so cheap I bought twenty of them, and handed them out whenever I could. Pär Lagerkvist (1891-1974) received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1951. He wrote poems and plays as well as novels. His novels are short and easy to read and most importantly, unforgettable. Above Barabbas, but there’s also The Dwarf and The Sibyl. All of them short, easy reads.

This past winter was particularly hard and long here on the East Coast, and spring seems slow to emerge. Though we’ve had a few beautiful days, of the kind when you can discard your jacket for a couple of hours, spring still hasn’t really arrived.

In New York, spring is a dreamy season because it is so short. Sandwiched between a cruel, cold winter and an intense, hot, and sweaty summer, spring is a couple of weeks of perfect weather. In Sweden a spring jacket is a necessity. Here, I find myself rarely using one. You literally go from a winter coat to no coat at all.

I clearly remember the arrival of one spring back in Sweden. I was a college student and I had this job cleaning a shoe store. Sundays, I’d take my dog with me and walk over to the store, clean it, and then walk back home again. This particular Sunday was as lazy as usual, the town streets sleepy and empty and me and my dog were the only ones out. There was still a bit of snow on the sidewalks, but the air was high, the sky baby blue and the sun clear and strong. Then suddenly, I heard the chirping of birds! It is magical really, how delicately spring announces its arrival. Bird song. After you hear the first birds of spring, doesn’t life somehow feel different? A little bit of bird song and you feel like skipping.

I first visited New York with my mom when I was in my late teens. It was in July and it was so hot I could barely stand it. I thought I’d faint standing in line for the ferry out to see the Statue of Liberty. And actually, a few summers later, I did faint: In the street in front of the Roosevelt Hotel on 45^th Street. From heat syncope. It took years for me to get used to the heat and humidity of summer here. But last summer, when I’d been away from New York for a year, the heat was one of the things I most looked forward to. I have no problem with it anymore; I now like my summers sizzling hot.

The one season that I cannot bear is winter. I guess I’ve had my share of winters. As if Swedish winters weren’t enough, I also experienced winter in Greenland, and I doubt it can get much worse than that. I won’t go into a lengthy description of it. Only this: By the water in Nuuk – which is the capital of Greenland – stands a statue of Hans Egede, its founder. This is the saddest, most dejected statue I’ve seen in my life. Not so much for how it looks, but for what it looks out over: Endless, icy seas with no hope for warmth whatsoever. No hope at all. It was a dark and dreary November day, the day I saw that statue. The skies were brutally black and gunmetal gray and merged seamlessly with the roaring, angry water, which was of the exact same color. The winter wind ripped and tore at my coat, my scarf, and my hair sticking out from under my hat. You couldn’t speak for that wind tore your words too. And there, on a little mound, stood the steadfast Hans Egede with his cane looking out over the water, and I knew exactly what he was thinking:
“Oh, if only spring would come soon!”

Hans Egede, the founder of Greenland's capital Nuuk, stands on a mound overlooking the Labrador Sea. When I saw this statue, there were no beautiful northern lights behind it; instead angry, dark waters in front. Image courtesy of Profil-Rejser.