I didn’t get anything that I kind of should have done, like finishing my traineeship report or my thesis workplan, done today. But still, it was a really agreeable day. Seriously. I haven’t had such an agreeable day in a very long time. It must have been the heat and the sun and all the open windows, the breeze, that blew any kind of ambition out of my head. Instead, I cleared half of my desk. Watched Luther and Gilmore Girls and fine-tuned my newly discovered embroidery skills. (I will write about it one of these days, Gilmore Girls. There’s more there, behind the shallow silliness of the show, that makes me feel safe and go back to it, time and time again. There is a thought forming about it in me, but it’s not done yet, the thought, so I’ll just wait until it is.)
And I walked around in the breezy apartment. I don’t know if it was the influence of the heat on my thought patterns or that I haven’t had this much free time for ages, but I started to see things differently. Details in this home. It’s mom’s apartment. Almost every single guest that comes here comments on how nice/cozy/homely the apartment is, and I always answer that my mom has good taste. Because that’s what I’ve been thinking. Me and Lina are living in mom’s apartment, with her furniture and her art. But, while walking around in the breeziness and light, I realized they’re there. The signs. We have left our mark on this place too, Lina and I. Small things that can say something about the people who live here, for anyone who has the presence to look for it. Traces of a life lived. The details that make a home.
My attempts at croquis covering the bathroom door, the broken balloon rubber still tied to the door handle since October, when Hannes put it there.
The little chest of drawers that I saved when I was helping dad to clear grandpa’s house in November. And the dried and gilded branches that were part of aunt Kaarina’s birthday bouquet to mom for mom’s 60th in December, that I saved from the rotting tulips and ferns. They’ve been in a vase in that forgotten corner next to the bathroom ever since. I chose the warm yellow color in the hallway when uncle Kalle tore down the kitchen wall years ago.
Stuff on the kitchen counter. The Tinga Tinga tray that dad bought in Tanzania and gave to grandpa, and I then saved when the house was cleared in November. The bowl that I bought for mom when dad and I were on Sifnos in Greece, in, what, 2001? The mechanic scale that I bought when I had just moved to Uppsala, and that I used to weigh all the apples that I stole from the villa gardens at night.
Mom’s morning coffee left on the kitchen table. The single candlestick that Hanna gave me for Christmas sometime in our teens. The ribbon, that originally was attached to a bottle of wine that Vivi brought for one of all the dinner parties that I’ve hosted during the past year. Lina’s penis cactus at the far end.
Above the stove. Before Christmas, I crocheted so many potholders while learning about regime shifts and resilience assessments in class.
The book shelf in the kitchen. The metal Masai statues bought at Slipway in Dar es Salaam in 2000, the bus has been part of mom’s home decorations ever since I was a kid and she brought it home from one of her work trips to Zimbabwe. The photo a Christmas gift to mom, taken by me during the field trip we did to Namibia in 2010.
Hanging from a hook in the hallway ceiling. The dried roses a birthday gift from Kirke, I can’t even remember how many years ago now. I don’t like getting flowers. I can’t justify the long transportation required to get them here, when their only function is to look pretty. However, Kirke often buys me flowers anyway. The balloons are still left from the party in October. I’m planning an October party volume two, to celebrate the balloons’ one-year-anniversary. Also, I’m leaving for West Africa in October, so I guess it’ll be a goodbye party as well. Possibly Christmas-themed. I’m already looking forward to doing all the Christmas baking in October.
My door. The Little Prince postcard was a gift from Lina when she went to Paris with her mom last spring.
My bookshelves, this summer almost completely hidden behind Jessica’s stuff that I allowed her to store here. On Monday, Dries will come to drop off his stuff here too. I’ve become a regular storage facility for Belgian students in Stockholm.
The doors of my cabinet. During a period in my teens, I spent a lot of time in cafés, and there I developed an interest in collecting free postcards, the kind that actually are advertisements. This is where some of them ended up, together with some old photos of friends and family as well as some of the analogue photos that I took and developed in the lab in photo class the last year of high school.
My bulletin board, full of mementos from all over the world. Mr. P. The mask I bought in Venice when I was there with dad and Hanna in 2003. The front of the box of Swedish Fish that I bought when I went to that Slovakian movie at the Seattle Film Festival together with Miles and his girlfriend. The brochure for the Carl Larsson exhibition that I went to last fall as the second date with the guy who later that evening grabbed my ass and ever since is known as the ass-grabber among my friends. I did not go on a third date with him – not really because of the ass-grabbing, but. School just forced me to drop everything that wasn’t essential. The note where I wrote down the name of the nerve that refuses to agree with me sometimes, paralyzing half of my face: trigeminus. The medical student that I was seeing in the fall of 2008 looked it up for me. He didn’t stick around to teach me the names of any more nerves, but I kept the note. It’s already happened three times, complete face paralysis, statistically I would say that the risk of me getting the face paralysis again is significant. I might just as well know the correct name of my tormentor.
My bedroom window, as seen from the outside. My mint and my basil, Lina’s chili and the spider plant that I’ve been trying to kill for more than a year.
Funny, how re-discovering your home can turn into such an adventure.
Then Frida and Marita came, we went for a swim and then made dinner together. A quite unmemorable, utterly perfect day.
Katja Malmborg 
This may be my favorite post of yours ever. A little tour. I remember the Swedish Fish. You were also quite fond of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. And I think a creepy drunk guy gave you a flower on the bus on the way to that movie. I see him in my neighborhood often and remember that moment.
Oh yes, I remember the flower 🙂