By Carina Sunesson
My grandmother, she would have been a hundreds years now, this week, maybe today. My grandmother, daughter born out of wedlock, daughter of a poor farmers child, Anna Sofia and “Father unknown”, Henrik, the son of a merchant. A family that never existed, a family that never was to be. A love story between two young people, living in the same little town but in different worlds, at another time. A child is born, a child that fifty-three years later would become my grandmother.
Her father was a vagabond that she never met, other than through his words. Words on letters, words on postcards, glowing and sparkling words, he was an artist and he painted the world with his words. He was one of eight siblings to a merchant from the south parts of Sweden, a man of adventure and respect who moved to the North parts of the country in his early years. He opened a bookshop, he opened another one, and another one. By the time he met his wife to be, Brita Catharina, the daughter of a shipper, he had stores all over the North parts of Sweden, he was a man of respect and honor.
Sometimes he went to visit his grandmother, who lived just outside town on a wealthy farm. The small road was covered by the endless forests of Sweden on both sides, and small typical houses of poor farmers was the only sign of life he was pass on his way to
visit his grandmother. The houses were simple, made in wood and painted in red, most of the houses where put close to each other, and they became tiny villages by themselves. In one of those houses a girl was living with her father, they were the poorest people around, the man of the house smelled vodka and lost dreams. But his daughter! It was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, she was like an unreachable dream and Henrik fell in love. Henrik invented errands to his grandmothers house, just
to get a glimpse of Anna Sofia, and they started to see each other, they talked and they laughed, they loved and they played.
All of a sudden Anna Sofia was pregnant. A sign to the world of their forbidden love. New demands and terms were to rise in their lives, and their destinies would change for ever, their lives would never be the same again. Marriage was out of question, Henrik could never marry a girl who had a father who did nothing but let time and life pass by. Now was the time to make decisions and to make life regular again, back to normal.
Anna Sofia was sent to Stockholm before people would notice the accident and start gossiping about who the father could be. The father of Henrik paid for the arrangements, an investment to avoid shame and to maintain the respect that his name had. Anna Sofia could come back home later if she wanted, she could adopt the baby, or give it away, anything but keeping it and bring it back.
A baby girl was born – my grandmother, in the month of June when the flowers are bursting in Sweden, when the summer nights are warm and soft like velvet. The sun was gentle the day she was born and Anna- Sofia never came back to her hometown. For ten years she did not live with her daughter, she was placed in a foster home at Mami Noa, one of Sweden´s most famous writers of the time. Anna Sofia visited her every weekend, my grandmother thought it was an aunt that came to see her. But the heart of Anna Sofia was breaking, she could not live the lies anymore. Her father was dead, she had no one, she wanted to be a mother, the love for the child was not possible to keep inside anymore. Anna Sofia went to get her child, and she never spent a day without her for as long as she lived.
Henrik was sent to America, he could spend a few years with his uncle who had emigrated a few years earlier, time would heal and people would forget about this story if he left for some time. Everything the uncle had written to his brother was not exactly true, life was more difficult than he cared to tell his family back home. His wife Anna had fell in love with another man on the ship over to America, she moved with him to Utah together with their children. The children did not carry his last name anymore, he was all alone, he went to California and he had no plans what so ever to care for a newphew. Life was hard as it was.
His uncle, Per Oscar, he had dreams of going to Brazil. He longed for happiness, some money to get by, he wanted to be alive! All those years when he had saved money for the tickets to go to the New World, all those long days when he sold his merchandise to the houses back home. No one had any money to buy his things, he started a bakery instead, he did anything to get his family and himself to America, to the adventure and to the possibilities in life. This all seemed so distant, just like it never existed. And there, in America, he was still no one, they spoke a language he did not understand, they had cars and horses and shops. No one needed him for anything, he was a stranger to everyone, one of hundreds of thousands, he was a stranger to himself. So no thank you, no nephew to care for. He went to Sao Paolo, he had met Kristina from his home village, love was once again embracing him. Per Oscar from a small village in Sweden, had found his place in life, and he became Pedro, a man living in Sao Paolo.
Henrik knew nothing about this, he left for America, eager to see his loved uncle again. In February 1910, a few months before his daughter was to be born, he entered the ship Tasso from the city of Trondheim in Norway. He wanted to see it all, America, Caribbean, the world! He wanted to travel where the winds brought him, he lived and he lived for life itself, for every breath, for every moment.
When my grandmother died, we found a cigar box in one of the closets. It was full of old letters and postcards, they were colored by time, worned but still painted with the breaths of time, still full of life and love. Caring, glowing and shining. She never told anyone of these letters, they were safe as a poker hand, it was her only piece in the puzzle that was her father, the only way she could talk to him, touch him. The letters belonged to her only, they were the deepest room of her soul. The last letter is dated 1955, the same year that Henrik died in San Francisco, California.
Henrik visited the Caribbean too, on the backside of a postcard he tells my grandmother about the stars in the round sky protecting the Caribbean nights. My grandmother never came here, she born in a time when travelling was not an option, a time when someone who emigrated was lost forever, and maybe existed in a few letters, if even that. The closest she ever came to this Caribbean island was by reading the words of her father, and through the life long journey of her heart.
Henrik never returned to Sweden. He left that day in February 1910 to never walk the grounds of his homeland again. He stayed out there in the world living his adventures, and my grandmother stayed in Sweden waiting.
They never met. Time goes by, never resting, days and nights turn into years, generation after generation arrive and leave life, and the great grandchild of Henrik was the one who ended up living under the stars in the round sky, protecting the Caribbean nights that he told his daughter, my grandmother about.
It was me.
