Celebrating Azaleas, Belle Mead, N. J.

 

I recently told my friend Annette about the over 500 azalea bushes that grew more or less wild in our garden in the Sourland mountain, outside Princeton, N. J. 

Instead of attaching the photos to an email, I decided to share them on my blog. 

I'm sorry they have faded with time. In real life, the flowers were brilliant.

The azaleas were there when my first husband, Mike, bought the place and they pretty much took care of themselves and thrived. Some plants were more than 6 feet tall. 

Every spring when the azaleas were in bloom, Mike and I threw a huge party. 

Friends came from far and wide, my Swedish girlfriends, my friends from work, Mike's Hungarian friends from all over the East Coast, his colleagues from the university, as well as visisting scientists from the Institute for Advanced Study, they all came to admire the flowers and have a good time. 

In those days, the mid to late 1960s, the scientists were all men who came with their wives. 

Since this was the era of cocktails and punchbowls, everyone had a smashing good time. 

I was fortunate to meet many interesting and brilliant people while being married to Mike.   

Better yet, I met some wonderful women, young women as we were while we lived in Princeton.  

A few of us have remained friends for all of our lives. Annette from Denmark is one of them, Christina in Sweden, another. 

Those lasting friendships are what I value most from the early days of my life in the United States.

Memories ~ The Rocky Mountains

One more post about how I fell in love with the American West. I wrote more about this in the A - Z Challenge of 2013, posted in  Pages above. 

While in the Rocky Mountains, my friend Bill and I spent a day in Leadville. Situated at over 10,000 feet, Leadville is the highest incorporated city in the United States. 

I don't remember anything about Leadville, but was pleased to rediscover the city in Wallace Stegner's marvellous and Pulitzer Prize winning book, Angle of Repose. The best book I've read about the Western frontier. Actually, one of the best books, period, that I've ever read. 

My friend Bill was in his 60s, married to a friend of mine, Anne. His work frequently took him on business trips to New Mexico, so while there, he offered to take me on this journey across the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. 

We also stopped in Central City to see the city's famous Opera House. Bill and I were both opera fans, as was my soon to be ex who just happened to have an opera quality bass/baritone voice. With which he was always asked to delight fellow guests at the oh, so frequent Princeton dinner parties. 

I could write an entire post, if not a book, about the dinner parties of Princeton, N. J. back in the mid to late 1960s. 

As we approached Denver, we stopped at Red Rocks park, a stunning place, I actually still remember. 

In Denver, I caught a Greyhound Bus that would take me to Salt Lake City, where I would change to a bus headed to Idaho Falls. 

After seeing me off, Bill would take a plane back home to Princeton. 

And thus begun my real adventures in the American West and my life as a grownup woman, responsible for myself. 

Independence, indeed. 

Thanks to my friend Jane for noting the serendipitous connection between Indpendence Pass and my own independence, which may well have started anew right there. 

Memories

Looking through my blog photos the other day, I came upon this one of me at an elevation of 12,095 feet, unthinkable now with my present breathing issues. 

The year was 1969, I was 29 and on my way to get a no-fault divorce in Idaho. One of the few states that offered them at the time. 

I have a talent for making adventures out of adversity. 

This may or may not be true, however. 

It could also be called having fun while running away from issues and negative things. 

That perhaps need to be dealt with. 

But that's a story for another day.

This journey to Idaho Falls set the stage for where the rest of my life would be lived. 

I fell in love with the American West, the mountains, the wide open spaces, the high deserts, the skies at nights, so many stars...

It took a few years, but I've lived in California since 1972, and as it turned out, this was the best place for me to spend the rest of  my life. 

Life ~ The Early Years

If I look half asleep here. Is it a sign that I would never become interested in fashion? 

This picture ends my earliest years. According to my dad's note in the photo album with my name on it, I was 17 months here. So November 1942. 

My brother would arrive in March 1943 and after that we were two in most pictures. 

After his birth we moved to our house. 

These were good and peaceful years, when I didn't know anything about the world outside of our home. This world where grownups were fighting a second world war; where mean kids and bullies would soon make me miserable; where polio, the horrific illness that so often affected children, would cause so much fear and would hit so very close to home. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I think I want to write about my life until the end of my early  teenage years, fifteen maybe. Watching my great-nieces growing up, the difference between their lives and mine are astonishing. 

Life ~ The Early Years

 

This made me smile: 

It looks like I'm demonstrating how to cook something. Or serve some pretend tea, perhaps. 

Look at that big spoon in my hand. 

I also look like I'm in charge, like I know what I'm doing. 

And my little friend is so good, paying attention to what I'm showing her.

And those bows! I guess they were practical in that they kept our hair out of our eyes, but still...

Life ~ The Early Years

 I was born in the evening of the summer solstice in Stockholm, Sweden. The city is too far south for the midnight sun, but June nights are light and lovely there. I have always been happy about the timing of my birth. I'm a Friday's child.

I was long and skinny when I arrived. Later, some chubbiness set in. 

We were a small family. My dad had one brother, my mom a brother and a sister. I was the first child, much wanted, much loved, much spoiled, but also much trusted. Their trust in me was the most important gift I received from my parents.  

My first memory is of ants. I was fascinated by a structure built by ants.

More than half of Sweden's land area is covered by forests, mostly pine and fir trees. As pine and fir needles drop to the forest floor, ants pick them up and use them to build amazing ant buildings, or stacks as they are called in Sweden.

During my first year or two, my parents rented a small cottage on an island in the Stockholm archipelago where we spent our summers. I don't think we owned a boat in those early days.

The rest of the year, we lived in an apartment building in a city suburb. The building was located at the foot of a steep hill and was surrounded by woods. The hill was a lot of fun in the snow. I was totally unafraid of riding down it in one of the above pictured kaelke, a small sled of sorts. 

The winters of 1941 and 42 were very cold with lots of snow I've been told. And I have these pictures to prove it. Looks like I've  loved snow forever.

I was born in 1940, so for the first five years of my life war was raging outside our borders. My dad was in the reserves and was often away, preparing for an eventual war. Above, I'm shaking hands with my soldier dad. As you can see, my dad was tall too.

This is my favorite picture of mom and me.

How awful it must have been, with  the rest of Scandinavia occupied. Finland with its own winter war with the Soviet Union. Was Sweden able to help enough, I hope so. A couple of families in our street took in Jewish refugee children. 

But there were happy times as well. By the time, my brother arrived in the spring of 1943, we needed a larger home. My parents bought a house in a lovely street, where the homes were built at the tail end of the city of Stockholm's first suburb, Enskede.  Some day, I hope to tell the story of this suburb, as its history and how it came to be is quite interesting. 

My brother and I enjoying our very own green grass at our brand new house. I know my parents must have been so happy.

 

Life ~ Looking Back

 

My dad was an avid photographer with a Hasselblad* camera. My dad loved his camera and since I was the firstborn, and quite the ham, pictures of me as a young child are everywhere, some of them organized in a photo album with my name on the cover.

 

I hope to post some of my dad's photos here, every now and then, with an accompanying story of a time and place. 

This will be fun for me and I hope it will be for you too, my friends who visit my blog. 

*The Hasselblad is a Swedish camera and one of the best there is. 

 

Thoughts On Being An Emigrant

emigrant

noun

a person who leaves their own country to settle permanently in another

It was November 1962 when I arrived in America. I was 22 years old. I didn't know it then, but I had in fact emigrated to the United States. At that time, I thought I had come for a year or two and it took a long time before I knew I was here to stay. Before I became a citizen of the United States.

Much is said and written about immigrants, but few of us probably consider that each immigrant is also an emigrant. Someone who left family members, friends, country, culture, language, a common religion, a common ethnicity, nature, food, and so much more. 

I have a picture in my mind of a grandmother somewhere in Central America, left behind, standing in a doorway, TV cameras pointed at her. For me it was my grandfather. I loved him so much. In 1962 he was 84 years old. 

My grandfather, Karl Blomqvist.

Some leave poverty, war, or lack of opportunities. I left because I was unhappy in Sweden. In a spoiled youthful way of being unhappy. I wasn't suffering, but I needed a change, some adventures before I finally settled down to become a grownup.

Perhaps some never look back, but I believe most of us do. 

I wonder if the things that I miss as I remember Sweden even exist anymore. 

My friends are still there and I miss them. Christina came to visit a couple of years ago and there was the ease of sharing common values, culture and background. The ease of understanding. The certainty of being understood, something I'm never quite sure of here.

Trolls by Swedish Illustrator John Bauer

When I was little, my grandmother would tell me old folktales of deep forests where trolls were known to come out at night, giants too, who had to retreat to their caves before sunrise or they would melt. She would tell me stories of goblins and of misty ponds where elves danced. 

Are there any grandmothers left to tell those fairy tales? Does anyone care? Are there just ipads now, ipads and smartphones for the kids? I seriously don't know.

There are still glittering lakes everywhere. There's the almost midnight sun on my birthday, light midsummer nights, fields of flowers, islands full of summer cottages. Snow, ice and dark  winter days too. 

Stockholm, my home town, is still there. Old Town with its cobblestone alleys and ancient buildings that lean into each other, with wonderful cellars where jazz was played when I was young. 

And the Stockholm Opera, where I fell in love with Verdi's music and the drama of his operas. It was so easy to get a ticket back then and sit on the highest balcony. 

I believe the concert hall must be there still. In the center of the city, where I went to a Louis Armstrong concert when I was 15 and just about fainted from the excitement of it all.  

In Stockholm, ferries plow the waters and ancient steamboats head for the archipelago. 

When I sit down to write about Sweden, I think of those things. 

Things that shaped who I am. Before I emigrated.

Blueberries, granite rocks, tall trees --  a Swedish forest.

Memories, Horses, And More

Thank you all for listening to my travails and for your comments on my previous post. A while ago, I saw the author Barbara Ehrenreich on the PBS Newshour discussing a new book. Something she said stuck with me. She told the interviewer, "I'm old enough to die." When he asked what she meant, she told him that she now eats as much butter and other goodies as she wants to and should she be diagnosed with cancer, she will not go through extreme treatments just to be kept alive for a few more months. 

I liked that idea. I don't feel like I'm there yet, but I hope to understand that I am when I reach that point. Right now, I'm willing to try the medicines the doctors recommend, but not if they will ruin my present day life. Particularly since diabetes is the only negative I have. My heart and all the rest are just fine. 

After witnessing what Errol went through in the liver transplant ICU, I made sure to include specific instructions to just let me go in my Living Trust. This is something I think everyone needs to do. He had not, so there I was, making life or death decisions for him. 

On to more fun things. My friend in Denmark and I have been looking back on our younger years in Princeton. It's almost scary how easy it is to find old friends and lovers online. She found me online and now she found several people we knew back then. I was happy to see that they have lived good lives. Particularly a few that I had been concerned about. 

This inspired me to organize and begin to read the letters I sent back home. My mother saved most of them and I brought them back with me after she died. I never read them, they were stuck in a box all these years. This week, I went through and read about my first year in Princeton, 1963. 

Most things were as I remembered them, but many were not: 

All these years, I thought that after my Jewish boyfriend split up with me for a reason I understood, but didn't approve of, I never spent any time with him again. I guess I assumed I got mad and that was it. But I learned that we continued a very excellent friendship for a couple of years after that, had season tickets to the Shakespeare festival at the local theater even. I have no memory of that whatsoever. Alec Gallup, of the Gallup polls, was a friend of mine. I know I worked for him for a while, but I was so certain that was in 1970, after my divorce, not 1963. And that was a reoccurring problem - the timing of things. 

Back to the present. Yesterday, I was so upset with my diabetes control that I decided to reprogram my insulin pump myself. I knew I needed to make some drastic changes and had wanted to do this in the company of my diabetes nurse/educator. But I couldn't wait. My changes worked well overnight and for most of the day.

These are Joyce's horses. Sometimes, they get out and come galloping down her road. To see and also to hear them thunder down the hill is thrilling. 

How 14 Things About Me Became a Mini-Memoir

Welcome Jiller, a new follower of Desert Canyon Living. Jiller, you didn't leave a link to a blog. If you have a blog, please leave a comment to provide a link so I can visit you.

 I owe you 14 things about myself, seven for each of the awards that I received recently. Did you think I had forgotten? I didn't forget, but since I have done this before and posted the usual things about myself, I have been trying to come up with some unusual stuff that, hopefully, will amuse you. What I ended up with is a miniature memoir, way too much information for this purpose, but I had a hugely fun time writing it, so I hope you will have fun reading it.

1. When I was young in Stockholm, you could go to the Royal Opera House and buy an inexpensive ticket for the upper balcony where you could sit and enjoy all the great operas and opera singers. I went often and I have loved opera ever since. One of the operas, The Masked Ball by Verdi, tells the story of the assassination of the person responsible for building this very opera house, King Gustav III of Sweden.

Two Burmese pythons. It's not Sahara, but she looks like the yellow one.

2. I once kissed a snake. Her name is Sahara; she is an albino Burmese python, rescued by my friend Rachael. Sahara is a vital part of Rachael's animal education program, Sydney's Legacy. She is now 14 feet long; at the time she was "only" nine feet.

3. I once heard Louis Armstrong and his All Stars perform in the Concert Hall in Stockholm. The year was 1955, the concert  was fabulous, and the evening unforgettable.

4. I cannot dance. I cannot find that second beat. I also cannot sing. Totally tone deaf. So now you know!

5. Even so, I have many favorite songs; I think my most favorite of all is A Change is Gonna Come, sung by Sam Cooke.

6. I once dated a State Department guy, a China expert in the Nixon era, who taught me to eat with chop sticks, and introduced me to Dean Rusk. If you don't know who Dean Rusk was -- well, he should be in the history books. That's how long ago all that took place. 

I hate when this happens to my pictures.

7. Two of my most favorite country songs are on Willie Nelson's 16 greatest hits: Angels Flying Too Close to the Ground and Always on My Mind.

8. I once, very briefly, dated a spy! Well, an ex-spy, he was ex-CIA, fascinating, remote, and somewhat elusive. It didn't last long, but still…….

9. I really don't like to cook. I can tell that my husband sometimes gets tired of cooking and who can blame him. I wish I had that feeling in my heart that all great cooks seem have and even those who, perhaps, are not so great but keep plugging along. That feeling in my heart of love and wanting to feed and provide for my husband and my friends. Even my dogs. I do cook, both for my husband and my dogs, sometimes, but I don't have that love in my heart and I don't know where to find it.

10. I once was part of an ad campaign in Sweden for Norman Granz and his Jazz at the Philharmonic and got to meet and hang out with Gene Krupa, who was one of the great jazz drummers of the era. Being part of an era, sure makes me feel real old. Ancient!

11. I love a scaly critter. His name is Sydney and he is a bearded dragon lizard, native to Australia. He too lives with my friend Rachael and her critters and is a huge part of her animal education program that bears his name. He is one of the most adorable animals I have ever met.

12. I once went elk hunting with cowboys out of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where I spent a fall and a winter. Since I didn't want to hunt, they parked me on a plateau with the horses, made a nice fire for me, and took off looking for their elk. There was a ravine and then another flat plateau across from it. As I sat there, I heard a bang, bang, bang noise and when I looked up, there were the bighorn sheep, duking it out. It was fall, rutting season, and their power was mesmerizing. It went on for a long time. Their herd was there also, up and down that mountain. An unforgettable experience.

13. That winter in Jackson Hole, I worked as a waitress in an Italian restaurant. I also cleaned a rich woman's refrigerator once. All to make a living for the winter. At that woman's beautiful home, I was greeted by several moose that were hanging out in her backyard. I will never forget neither the refrigerator nor the moose. All very big!

14. When I was in Sweden in 2001, my cousin and I went to the south-western part of the country to look for our roots. We knew the village where our great-grandfather and his family lived. We knew about, and found, a couple, both in their 90s, who actually knew our great-grandfather. It even turned out we were remotely related to the old man, Ivar Carlsson. When we, two strangers, knocked on their door and told them we were looking for our roots, they invited us into their immaculate home for coffee and home-baked cookies and cake. Ivar had a church/county registry that went back for generations and he was able to show us one very determined man, named Anders Anderson. Anders was Ivar's great-grandfather's brother. It was through him we were related to Ivar. Anders lived in the early 1800s and married three times.  His first wife died in child birth, and the twins she gave birth to died also. His second wife died too. But Anders did not give up and finally had children with his third wife. One of his children was our ancestor. It has been very interesting to realize that if this guy, Anders, had given up on having kids a long time ago, I would not be here today.

I leave you with that thought….what if? Interesting, isn't it?