SUNDAY 2024 05 12

MY TWO MOST RECENT PROMENADE COMPANIONS

Anyone who becomes homebound like me considers himself lucky if he/she (Swedish word for that is "hen" can count on having friends or other people who can accompany the homebound while hen takes a promenade.

During the week just past I took two of the longest walks I have managed so far and write to thank my promenade companions.

The first one, a new person came on Friday, a beautiful day on which I was promenade-eager. The second was my best friend Ann - see further down.

He was a young man, one of the group of promenade companions provided me by Göteborg hemtjänst (Home Services) each of whom can walk with me for 30 minutes. He was the newest in what is now a group of 5 or 6. I do not name any in this group nor  do I show any photos, but I do begin by noting the languages they speak, first and foremost their mother tongue and then others.

I asked him, and he first named Swedish and English with Swedish being the essential language given that ethnic Swedes have long life expectancies, greatest for women. I am not an ethnic Swede meaning that I was neither born here nor grew up here. I am a "line-of-descent Swede on both my paternal and maternal sides, and my Big Y genome shows that I share a line of descent with a group of 7 or 8 men all born in Sweden.

The third language my new promenade person named was Dari, the language spoken in Afghanistan that is related to Persian or Farsi.

Once I learn those things we have a good basis for conversation. But interestingly, he began by asking me what I had been in my adult life and  I replied Geology Professor and explained a bit because not everyone knows what geology is.

Then I tell my aide about my familiarity with people with background similar to his/her/hens. Familiarity thanks to almost 30 years as a Red Cross Volunteer at Red Cross Language Cafes in Linköping and Göteborg. I ask when my aide came to Sweden but do not ask any questions touching on politics here or in the home country.

As I have reported earlier, every such walk and every new walker brightens my life.

On Saturday, my best friend Ann turned up as usual, bearing food, even a gift, and ready to help with the usual chores, then take a walk, and then engage in always interesting conversations.

The gift was a surprise for this reason: I had said I had more or less lost interest in drinking wine but I had not given up and just wanted to associate it with special moments. That moment turns up below.

Then I said that I was sure on Saturday that I could manage very well walking to the stables at the edge of the forest, the stables that were Ann's home away from home when she was growing up at the Frodi home not far from the stables. We started walking, turned onto the main dirt road that leads up to the lakes, and came to the stables where in one of the electric-wire enclosures were two women caretakers going in to provide feed for two horses.

Ann established her credentials as an accomplished horsewoman with a long history of work at these stables, and she was allowed in and was even allowed, I believe, to give one horse an apple, otherwise not to be done.

This made her extra happy and we could then go to one of my favored destinations, part of the horizontal forest where many 100-year old or older beech trees lie on the forest floor. I was happy also, so we could walk back here to 3B.

Then with the sun now shining down on my balcony from its position on the southern horizon we could have fika - Coffee plus - and pick up again a conversation about one of my closest Swedish friends at the Red Cross in Linköping who could discuss American novels and novelists with me. a soecial interest of hers. She like her female age mates and close friends of mine at the Red Cross are no longer living but still rememembered fondly by me.

Written Sunday morning at 3B with a brilliant blue sky above my balcony. And yes, I sipped the wine Ann had given me, slowly while looking toward my forest. Perhaps I will manage to insert a selfie of that moment latet.