swedes

Do you speak “Peterson?”

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‘Every family has its own language.’

Well, I guess I owe you all an apology again. I played hooky last week, and I don’t even have a fun reason. Last time I blog-skipped it was because I was out West playing with my Mom. Not this time.

Me, out West having a high old time speaking “Peterson” with Mom and Sis

Nope. This week I blame my goofoffedness on the fact that I had to travel unexpectedly into the City to deal with a sudden onset of flashing lights in my left eye. Those of you who are equally ancient will recognize the danger of a detached retina here. One would think, being married to an ophthalmologist and all, that I could just hop up on the kitchen table and have Dr. Dude sort it out. But no. One needs special gear to peer into the depths of an eyeball. Also, he’s not a retina specialist. So there’s that.

Non-retina specialist Dr. Dude admiring the view from the Great Lawn earlier this week when I convinced him to go with me on my morning walk

I’ll spare you the sturm und drang and back and forth, but suffice it to say that my eye is fine. Or as fine as a 72-year-old eye can be. I swear, once I turned 70 (See “Skirting the Issue” for a breathless account of my fab birthday bash), everything started to fall apart. I’ve started to identify with our ’98 4Runner or even our ’91 Honda — ’cause I’m always in the shop.

There I was, happily ensconced with Whitmore Family members in Amagansett when my eye started flashing

But back to the subject of the week, the Language of Families. My theory being that every family has words or catchphrases that they use with each other — sometimes to communicate, but more often just to crack each other up — that Outsiders simply don’t get.

Like, my Aunt Shirley used to call the soft tissue holding your teeth in your mouth your “gooms” (rhymes with “goons”) because she thought a medicalesque part of your anatomy simply couldn’t be just “gums.” My Mom and her sister Marilyn (both nurses) thought this was hilarious, and started calling the darned things “gooms” every chance they got, even when Aunt Shirley wasn’t around. Especially when Aunt Shirley wasn’t around.

That’s Aunt Shirley on the far left (also on the far left in the photo at the top of this post), hanging out with the Henry Family for a change. Maybe because they didn’t make fun of her for saying “gooms”

So “gooms” entered the Peterson Family Lexicon, along with “grocerots,” which was what my Aunt M. called “groceries.” Not sure why, but she always did. And then the rest of us of the Peterson Persuasion did, too. (Cousin Marcia, I bet you say “grocerots,” yes?)

The Petersons were Swedish (duh), like practically everybody else in their neck of the Northern Illinois woods (er, farmland). Once, when my Great-Aunt Florence had been chatting away to a neighbor for a while, her Swedish must have gotten “stuck,” because she remarked to someone that she was very tired and needed to go get “rosted ooop.” (Go on, say this out loud. Which we Peterson descendants do. A lot.)

I don’t have a photo of Aunt Florence, darn it. But this is my half-Peterson family hanging out at her house with her sister, Aunt Net*

Aunt Florence is the source of another bit of lingo that became a family catchphrase. Want to get a Peterson to snort milk out their nose? Just go “baw baw baw” in a really harsh, strident tone. That was how one of Aunt Flo’s neighbors used to rock her baby to sleep. I wonder if it was the same baby who, when asked its name, its mother replied, “Oh, for now we’re just calling him Squacky.” This is true. I swear on a stack of gooms.

Another shot of Aunt Annette (Net), this time with my Gramma, her other sister besides Florence. *We kids thought she was called Aunt “Net” because she wore a hairnet

How about your family? Do you speak your own language? Even if you don’t, I sure hope you take time out every day to crack each other up. Then you can go get “rosted ooop.”

Amagansett, New York. June 2023

 

She had a hat

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‘Wearing headgear well runs in the family. Too bad I didn’t get that gene.’

As you, dear Reader, know only too well, we’ve been slowly and-oh-so-surely settling in to the new Ken and Barbie House. All the Big Stuff has found a new home, and we’re on to clearing out the Little Stuff. (I am having nightly horrors about the Junk Drawer.)

We Henrys have been holding regular Family Facetime Calls with our dear Mother every Sunday, and on one of these, not too long ago, I happened to be in the middle of clearing out the coat closet. (How many mismatched gloves can one person have?!?)

My Oldest Younger Brother looks over my Facetimed shoulder and says, “Hey! There’s the Hat!” And goldarnit. There it was.

The Hat. Basically, the only one I wear. And not for “fashion”

It was easy to spot because not only is it large and furry and rather assertive and unmissable on a closet shelf, it’s pretty much the only hat I wear — being as how I only wear hats for function, not fashion.

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Out with the old year, but not out with the old stuff. Yet.

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‘I’m so not ready for Swedish “death cleaning”, thank you very much’

As if The Holidays weren’t bittersweet enough. (You know what I mean: You’re happy because it’s Christmastime, but then Christmas is over and you’re smack-dab in the middle of that weird Week-Before-New-Year’s and everyone is telling you they’ll “see you next year” and you’re deciding whether to put away the decorations now or wait and be confronted with them when you walk back into the apartment after your trip to Panama.) Or wherever. You get my drift.

And as if all this Seasonal Sturm und Drang weren’t bad enough, the other day I innocently opened the Times to find a review of this new book called, I kid you not, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. Continue reading

Hygge for the Holidays

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‘Making a list, and checking it twice’

Okay. Confession Time. First, the idea for this post, which is to make a list of Blessings, comes from a Blogger Who Has Many Many Followers. (Which is kind of a blessing right there, wouldn’t you say, Susie?)

Susie mentioned she had ‘Hygge’ in mind when she made her own list. I would define “Hygge’ for you, but (Second Big Confession Coming Up), I had absolutely no idea what ‘hygge’ meant until I googled it and found an article titled, aptly, ‘What the Hell is Hygge?’ Continue reading

What’s that in the road — a head?

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‘On Swedes and their noggins’

Last week, in ‘Close, but no cigarette’, I wrote about malapropisms. You know, like when someone warns about ‘upsetting the apple tart’ or says they put too much ‘canine pepper’ in the soup. (Thanks for that one, Ruth!) Infamous Chicago Mayor Richard Daley once mentioned ‘Alcoholics Unanimous’ in a speech. And, of course, Donald wants our nuclear weapons to be ‘top of the pack’.

This week, I’m going to write about Swedes and their heads, a subject dear to my heart, since I am in possession of a classic example. But first, speaking of heads, did you ‘get’ the title? ‘What’s that in the road — a head?’

When I was a kid, our mother would regale us with stuff like this all the time. Like, she would say (or sing, actually) ‘She has freckles on her but…she is nice’ (with extra dramatic flourish on that word ‘but’) and we kids would absolutely crack up. There’s nothing like the word ‘but’, with or without that extra ‘t’, to make a little kid weep with laughter. Incidentally, the next verse was ‘and when I’m in her arms, it’s paradise’. Continue reading

Proof that Swedes are geniuses

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As if we needed any more evidence of superior Nordic brainpower, watch this:

Heh heh heh. The BookBook. I can just hear Grandpa Peterson chuckling over that one. Right after he finished his raspberry pie and very-weak-but-constantly-present coffee.

Speaking of food, I’m glad to see that my fellow Swedes are concentrating their brains on what they are good at (witty commercials, impossible-to-construct furniture) because they are certainly no great shakes in the culinary department.

My Grandma Peterson used to serve a traditional dish called lutefisk every year at Christmas. It’s made from a fish that’s been Continue reading