I have to make up for not posting at all since mid-March, right? I only wrote 4 posts in March (before I left for the US) and I’ve only got a week and a half left of April, so I’d like to at least match March. Or beat it! We’ll see.
HAHA! While I was in the US, Sarah connected to my Spotify account on her phone so we could listen to my playlist while we were driving around. And just now, HERE IN SWEDEN, I am listening to Spotify’s Discover Weekly and it was hijacked by her car! I will have to write her and tell her to log out, so we don’t have Spotify wars, like I used to with Karin. Or else I’ll have to queue up “Bajs i Bastun” for her. 😀
I’m sorting the photos and papers that I brought home from my mom’s, many of which are letters that either she wrote, or I wrote. While I was in the US, we packed up and then unpacked and sorted through over 8 boxes of family papers and photos. My mom had all of HER photo albums and papers, and all of her PARENTS, and all of my DAD’S PARENTS, and even a box worth of stuff from one of her aunt’s. It was a…lot. There was an entire box that was full of papers from my dad’s dad: his school essays and letters, and invitations to the lecture series that was named for him after his death in 1970. Some of my granddad’s papers are still online even though they were written in the 1950s (sample title: “Field cancerization in oral stratified squamous epithelium; clinical implications of multicentric origin“).
Just fell down a Google hole trying to figure out if it is “grandad” or “granddad” and apparently “granddad” is the usual American spelling. Urgh. I spelled it “grandad” first, and then thought it looked weird (and I was right, haha). There is a place near my mom’s home in South Carolina called “Arrowood” and it drives me crazy because I think it should be “Arrowwood”.
ANYWAY, we threw all those essays away. And my grandparents had saved every letter that my mom had ever written them, and every card that any of their grandchildren had ever sent them, even if all they had was our sloppy signatures, and all the very basic thank you letters that we sent them for every birthday and Christmas. We threw them all away, too. My great-aunt Leta had also saved every card and letter from everyone. And my other grandmother, ditto. I know it was the age before the internet and email, but seriously. EVERY LETTER. I felt very hardhearted tossing them, but toss them, I did. I also threw away multiple printouts OF EMAILS.
I saved two letters that I wrote to my dad and one I wrote to my mom and one other that I wrote to both my parents, because they were hilarious. And I saved several letters my mom wrote to her parents, and part of a journal that she started when we moved to Belgium in 1976 because I have promised to digitize them for my siblings. Good thing I’m a damn fast typer, eh? I have my own college essays and papers (sample title: “Getting to Do the Fun Stuff: Some Aspects of Role Models for Young Women in Children’s Literature“) saved in a notebook, but now I’m thinking I need to be hardass about them too, and pitch them. Otherwise I could let my kids do it, hahahaa. Or their kids! Wouldn’t it be awesome if my someday grandchildren were forced to read through MY papers and then pitch them, because honestly, WHY DO WE SAVE SO MUCH CRAP?
Some of the stuff I brought home is to be added to the family history notebooks I have, as they are family trees and other documentation that seemed worth saving. I don’t know if my kids will care at all about any of that, but they have it if they want it or are interested in it later. Anders saved a notebook full of family history on his father’s side that his uncle Ingvar had researched so they’ll have it for both sides. I don’t know what good any of it does in notebooks and envelopes and boxes on my bookshelves. I supposed that’s yet another project, to maybe get it online, but all of it will eventually disappear, I suppose, some day in the future after I’m gone and my domain expires and my blog goes dark.
Dang, just realized it’s already 9:30 pm and I have to work tomorrow, so time to end this and get ready for bed. Slap in the face to have to work again after a 4-day weekend that has gone by far too quickly. And we never even colored eggs. I think that’s a first miss for Easter since I had kids. Sad.
Mood: nostalgic
Music: Super700—Life With Grace