All the other people

Being in Copenhagen and sensing the Danish everyday culture with the biking parents, buzzing schools and coffee drinking teenagers in quiet hip cafes reminds me of what an odd life I live. And it reminds me of what I could have had I had not been academically ambitious and had a desire for living in the US ever since I was little. I could have been the mother of 2 children, with a Danish husband making 50% more than I, despite us having the same level of experience after our university degrees, because I took the full year of parental leave with each of the children. I would have been the woman who happily picked up my kids from daycare and school every day, biking home with them in the Nihola bike compartment, covering their little heads with rain covers for 30% of the days.  Living in a 4 room apartment in the neighborhood where I grew up (Østerbro), the kids would share a bedroom because the apartment was structured with a living room and a dining room, leaving the dining room as my handsome blond husband's office. The apartment would be decorated with Danish design furniture in pastel colors similar to all the other apartments my friends would have, complete with a PH lamp over the eclipse dining table and Arne Jacobsen chairs. I could have been the mother talking on her phone, saying things like "Honey, I'm just gonna stop by Irma* to get a bottle of white wine, I think it will be good for my sore neck" (I actually overheard a woman saying this, while pushing a Bugaboo Cameleon with a cute little baby). My biggest problem would be how to make it from the oldest girl's dance class next Sunday at 11am to the youngest boy's friend's birthday party in half an hour, cursing that my husband always played tennis with his high school friend exactly during those hours on Sundays.

But I don't have that kind of life. Instead, I live somewhere between New York, Stockholm and Copenhagen, apartments in two of the cities, friends, phone numbers and bank accounts in all of them. Instead, I'm working during my vacation at least 4 hours per day, trying to keep up with my eight papers with ten people on four different research projects. Instead, I sit in cafes talking on the phone saying things like "Honey, I think you should get me a business class ticket because if I don't get my passport back in time, I need to be able to change the flight". Instead I read goodnight stories over skype to my daughter every second evening and text old Danish babysitters in an attempt to have them look after Zoe in Stockholm so she can maintain her Danish language. Because I'm also the person who has that kind of life where I cannot bring by daughter with me to New York where I now live and work unless her dad would agree. And her dad thinks it is more important to get some kind of revenge on me leaving and make sure that I will never have a good life again, than to actually think about what would be best for our tiny 5 year old. One part of what is best for her, is for her to have a happy mom. And the majority of that happiness lies in New York.

Perhaps I should have taken the easy way out in life. Perhaps I should have married the Danish handsome blond guy and had my 2 children, one during my PhD and another during my post-doc. I would have been a full professor by now, having slowly but surely moved up the ranks. Then at least, I would have been able to kiss my kids goodnight every night.

*The nicest of the grocery stores here, not entirely unlike Whole Foods

A Swede in America

Zoe and I had arrived at our home for the next two weeks: a house where we are renting a bedroom that includes unlimited kitchen and living room privileges. But it did not include food and we calmly ventured into town with her borrowed stroller, not because she can't walk well by now, but because I really worried she would have one of those "I'm too tired to do anything but lie here on the street"-fits that occasionally comes with jet lag. And it would be easier to carry the groceries. After a spot of lunch (dinner?) I found a posh organic market that would normally be for specialty foods or for splashing out, pretending to be rich and wanting to display one's concern for the environment, but this time, it was simply the closest grocery store that had all the basic things we needed. Zoe found a shopping cart in her size and we managed to buy 79$ worth of salad stuff, bread, cheese and a box of extra cheesy cheddar bunny rabbit crackers. As I went to pay, Zoe lay down on the couch (yes, this posh organic supermarket/cafe had a couch next to the tables in the veggie area) and I started chatting a bit to the cashier. I really enjoy the ability to just chit chat with shop people, something I cannot do back in Sweden for two reasons: My miserable and question mark inducing Swedish and the general Scandinavian attitude that any excess words exchanged means you are weird. Why would anyone have any interest in you as a customer? Or if I say anything to you other than the final amount, you will think I'm coming on to you.

"So where are you two visiting from", the cashier asked. "We live in Stockholm", I happily replied, "we are here for a couple of weeks". "Arh, I thought I detected a slight accent", he continued and I instantly got annoyed. He thought I was Swedish. "I didn't say I was Swedish", I cheekily replied and he said something about me then at least picking up the accent already. Meaning the Swedish accent. I wanted to scream that a Swedish accent was probably the least of any accents in this world that I possess but at this point he had finished tallying up the groceries and asked if I wanted a bag. Still wanting to seem cool and super environmental, I said that half could probably fit under the stroller so if he just gave me a small bag I would be fine. He switched the big paper bag with handles out with a smaller paper bag, but I was so confused about him trying to bag them for me that I didn't noticed that the new bag didn't have handles. I had completely forgotten the tradition of cashiers bagging your groceries here, both because I want to forget all the annoyance I always had with them putting one thing in each bag and heavy stuff on top of the eggs, and because I ended up going through the self-checkout 90% of the time back in California, *just* so I could bag them myself. So in my attempt to stay cool and "American", I just popped the heavy stuff in the bottom of the stroller and put the small handle-less bag in the seat. Fetching Zoe from the couch I hoped to get out of there in a rush, but when Zoe saw the bag she let out an elaborate scream "where am I gonna sit?" I rushed her out the door, not wanting to embarrass myself anymore and juggled even more with the groceries outside. Finally, after dropping tomatoes and pepper on the ground, I managed to wedge the bag between my own bag and the back of the stroller so Zoe could sit in it. I walked away with my head held high, but knowing very well that I'm not American because 1) I have a weird Scottish/British/American/Louise accent and 2) I do not instantly expect cashiers to bag my groceries. But I so much want to be part of their small talk tradition and chat to people I interact with. I want people to smile at me when I pass them in the street and I want them to come help me in an instant when I can't open the door while pushing the stroller. That's one of the best things I love about the US and well, many other places apart from Scandinavia. So perhaps that's one of the reasons I take such offense of being presumed Swedish.

Everything is banned in Sweden

Growing up in Denmark it was a running joke that our Swedish neighbors had banned everything. The notion of "forbuds-sverige", difficult to translate into English because "forbud" is a bit more than simply a ban on something, roughly encompasses the few stark differences between Swedish and Danish culture: Sweden for example has a licensing system for buying alcohol, it is only available in state-owned shops with limited opening hours; Denmark has a similar system to most other European countries where alcohol is available in supermarkets at most hours. But the Swedish banning culture is not just government inflicted official rules, it sticks much deeper into the Swedish culture, also reflected in the "duktighetssyndrom", the "do-good-syndrom", which I encounter on an everyday basis from Swedish friends and colleagues. As a Swede you are supposed to do the correct, lawful thing. Pedestrians don't cross the street on a red light (and if you do, you are promptly being yelled at, using the c-word, as happened to me a couple of weeks ago, but that's material for another post). People follow guidelines and the many unspoken rules such as how you are supposed to put the dividing stick after your groceries at the check-in belt, god forbid you forget, the look from the person behind will illustrate the unforgivable nature of this.

And this brings me to one the few times where I have actually lost my temper with people in public (note, I have never lost my temper with anyone in public in the US or the UK where I spent the majority of my adult life, at least not that I remember). On Friday Zoe and I were going to the grocery store after I picked her up from daycare. I had had a very late lecture to go to and picked her up as one of the last kids so she was tired, I was tired, but we needed milk. After an almost smooth walk around the grocery store where I convinced Zoe that she could only have one snack (she chose an ice-cream, which she partly regretted later as she got cold eating it in the early spring weather), we got to the register where we queued a bit to Zoe's complaint. "It takes long, long time", she said but finally it was our turn. She was hesitant to give up her ice-cream so the guy could scan it but stopped complaining after I agreed that she could sit on the little shelf for packing the bags, after the belt. I had about 6 things to pack in the plastic bag and popped Zoe up on the shelf so she could watch. She was happy. I was happy. I had packed perhaps two of the items when the register guy said: "She can't sit there". I looked at him. "Tell that to her, I said, she will get mad. This will take two seconds". He repeated it to me and I realized he was serious. I told Zoe that she was not allowed to sit there and took her down. She exploded. Crying, screaming. I threw the last four things in the bag and grabbed her hand, dragging her out. But before that I yelled at the guy a lot of not-so-nice words. "Two seconds it would have taken! Two seconds!" From just managing my overtired, hungry little girl to having a hysterical almost 3-year old who was upset and didn't understand why mommy yelled at a guy, the afternoon was ruined. Luckily we still had the ice-cream and after I explained things to Zoe (Stupid Swedish people don't understand that Zoe wants to sit there) she stopped sobbing. We walked home and she was quicker in gaining back her good mood than I was.

But here is the thing. After thinking a lot about I still have no idea why Zoe was not allowed to sit on that little shelf. Don't tell me that it can take 5 full grocery bags but not a 15 kg/33lbs kid. Don't tell me it is because they are worried she will stretch the 20 inches over to the moving belt and get her fingers stuck. I don't recall ever hearing about any fingers getting hurt in a grocery belt but I could be wrong. Perhaps Swedish grocery belts are specially designed to trap little fingers. Instead, this was a clear example of the ingrained Swedish culture of "bans": you are simply just not supposed to do that, so you don't do that. And there are lot of things you are not supposed to do. Growing up in Denmark enables me to recognize these situations and articulate them but worse, my international living experiences help me hate them even more. I could not ever imaging anyone in the US tell me not to do something with my child unless it was clearly dangerous, I sense this would be an invasion of my privacy. In addition to my limited language skills, this is yet another reason I find it so difficult to live in Sweden with its many unspoken rules and regulations. I keep reminding myself that daycare is great and virtually free to make up for the bad things.