Thinking of moving to Sweden?

www.helentyetalkin.com Had enough of Trump? Thinking of moving to Canada - historically the default for Americans - or why not Sweden (Sverige)?  Three months ago my dog Monty and I did that very thing and this is the blog of my experience of reverse-immigration, with a few Swedish words that might come in handy if you decide to do the same thing one day.  Here's Monty chillin' at LAX before take-off.

I was very nervous about taking him all that way, his first flight.  Worrying about Monty proved to be a successful displacement strategy for my own anxiety.  I was moving to Sweden from California, where I had lived for twenty years.  California was the land of hope, where it was rumored the sidewalks were paved with gold (guld).  Swedish immigrants of the nineteenth century had believed this anyway.  It is also pretty much warm all year round where I lived in Lompoc, Santa Barbara County.  I raised my three children (barn) in California, survived a marriage break-up, divorce (skilsmässa) with attendant legal and financial disputes.  At least my ex- and I hadn't squabbled over custody of the dog.  He was always mine.  Amazingly Monty survived the journey apparently unscathed and emerged bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at Arlanda, Stockholm's main airport,14 hours later where he promptly performed the longest pee (kiss) in the history of doggikind.  Here we are outside the airport with my cousin Bodil's husband Per. 

Yes, I have relatives in Sweden.  My mother is Swedish and grew up here.  Her family all live in Sweden, with the exception of her Uncle Eggert who emigrated to the USA in the 1890's, married an American woman who owned a ranch and who's name I unfortunately don't remember but will check, had a son, Cousin Donald, of Cherokee, Iowa.  Donald never married or had any children, he was gay at a time when such subjects weren't mentioned in my family, or at least not by my mother, who raised me.  My children and I are thus the only descendants of the Andersons of Liljestad clan who now live in the USA.  Except that I no longer live in the USA.  I now live in Sweden, since my arrival here on the 31st of July, 2018.   That was nearly three months (månader) ago now, during which time the year has turned, gradually sliding into a golden fall that has lately shown signs of quickly being swallowed up by a sharp winter.  I work at a local elementary school (skola) as a teaching assistant in first grade (ettan) from 8:00 to 14:30 Monday through Friday.  I've found my niche here surprisingly quickly and am the default art teacher, a subject known simply as Image (Bild) in Swedish.  The first-graders and I do painting every Wednesday (onsdag) morning (morgon).  This week our theme is mushrooms.

Swedes know their mushrooms (svamp) and love to go picking in the forest (skog) come autumn (höst).  The knowledge is passed on early to the children, a life-saving and useful lesson.  The great thing about first grade is that pretty much everything the children learn is damn useful (användbart).  As a Community College Instructor of twelve years vintage who has seen three children through middle and high school in California, I know that unfortunately this can't be said for everything kids learn in school.

There's only one problem with my current employment as far as I'm concerned.  It doesn't pay much.  I am ridiculously over-qualified for the job as I've just about completed a PhD in Depth Psychology at the rather expensive, even by American standards, and seductively attractive, Pacifica Graduate Institute in California.  I did some research on the experience of accompanying children in the dependency system as a Court Appointed Special Advocate, aka CASA.  I interviewed 14 participants, all CASA volunteers, was sworn in by the Judge in Santa Maria and worked as a CASA volunteer myself for over a year with a sweet little 7-year old boy, whose father came from El Salvador at the age of 14 and who's mother is Mexican American.  He lived first with a foster family and then with his father, step-mother and three step-siblings in a small trailer in a dirt-compound outside a small agricultural community in Central Coast California.

During the time I was working as a CASA volunteer and doing my PhD research I started to experience various forces coming into play in my life, that I can see looking back now were pulling me in the direction of Sweden.  This blog traces those forces that began like an almost imperceptible breeze, then gathered momentum like an autumn storm over Slätbaken, the body of water beside which I now reside.  Forces that blew me half-way across the world from California to Sweden.  To a place where I am now planting tentative roots, that seem already to be reconnecting me with a deep and ancient myccorhizal system of which I am a small but important part.