Personal Life Update: Sankta Lucia

Journal Entry, Monday December 15, 2014

         Sankta Lucia party _______ with the Swedish families

[Blondie] didn’t come this time; she’s still in CA and according to [German] her brother, doing very well for herself. She’d be coming up later for Tradition Day (my epithet for “christmas” nowadays). Their mom [EyeShadow] was there, too, but we didn’t talk all too much. I jotted notes down before bed last night (tonight?) to avoid forgetting details like names. [Snowball] was the shorter, oldest woman there, who it sounded like she said had been the one who started the Lucia get-together 15 (or 25?) years ago. She’s 80something, with a narcissistic (her word—to [Swede], who told us in the car going home) 50y.o. son for whom she has been paying rent in order to get him to move out of her house and stay out. I didn’t talk to [German] super much but I pointed out a key-fiddle on the wall in one of the rooms and noted that it features in Nordman music, and he was interested in song suggestions. At the dinner, [Bruno] and I talked with about 4-5 other older women, and the only one who was not Swedish, I think, was [Smiley], a [someone's mom from high school] lookalike who was very cute for what I’m assuming must be an early or mid-40s woman, since she referenced having a 15-year-old son (see below). Her husband’s name is [Smilie], and she made reference to him starting up a company 1½  years ago to comment that just having a degree, though I don’t have much more on paper to impress with, was noteworthy because it showed you’re smart and dedicated enough to persist until you learn something. She’s a [career] of some sort, and listened to [Bruno] explain his career track hopes: [redacted] She laughed at how he relayed that the [women coworkers] treat him, some joking that they could be his mother, and others straight up being mischevious (he had another time used the word “lecherous” to describe them to me, but I forget what word he used yesterday). After that point, she complimented both him and I that we were confident in speaking with older women, and that that was somewhat unique and a good thing. I can’t remember exactly how she put it, but she did use the word confident to describe us, as I parsed that phrase above. That was encouraging. In a text to [college friend] after coming home, I contemplated that her personal experience with young men perhaps not being comfortable speaking with older women could be in part due to her being sexually intimidating, more than just merely older. On the other hand, maybe [Bruno] and I are unique, as she suggested herself, because of [redacted] . I speculated further in the text I mentioned, that maybe young adult males in this culture have difficulty interacting with both pretty and ugly, both young and old women, for different but connected reasons, because of pornography consumption—that they are mentally conditioned so that it’s hard for them to relate to women in any way other than sexually. This was naturally not included in the table talk, but her delightfulness again brought to mind the same feeling I recognized in Fall 2012 and have written about a few other times, such as in my Plato’s Forms blog post—that something I see in her is appealing, and I know better than to think that I’m romantically attracted to her personally; instead, her engaging personality represents that which is my ideal that I desire: an attractive, elegant, intelligent, wise, motherly, mature, feminine woman who’s easy to communicate with and who I can relish in the joy of being united with at all stages of our lives together, both when young and when middle aged and when old. Rounding out the text, I speculated that if more people could recognize the difference between these feelings being inspired by someone, and having feelings for that person, that there would be a lot less adultery in the world. Right about when we left, and said goodbye to [Smiley], another lady  asked if we were her sons, to which she laughed and, patting [Bruno] on the shoulder, said ‘thanks for the compliment.’ And followed it by saying, “I do have a 15 year old son,” compounding the flattery by implying we, or at least he, looked youthful as a teenager. But the last people we talked to were [Green] and her daughter [Attila] , who it turned out [Bruno] had met and posed for a photograph with a few years ago (I only went to the event last year for the first time, because I’d been at college otherwise). She and he made grimacing furrowed-eye gestures at each other, and it amused me to note that the little girl’s forehead (she was 8) was nearly expressionless, having no forehead wrinkles to speak of. Having a number of fine lines there myself when I gesticulate with my eyebrows, it had not occurred to me that they’re a subtle sign of my age. She’d been dancing ballet since she was 2, and like most kids between 4 and 9, connected really well with [Bruno], whether she remembered having met him before or not. She impressed us by spontaneously offering to pronounce deoxyribonucleic acid perfectly, and I told her mom, who was holding her at that point, “encourage that.” [Green] said that it was nice that there was someone here [Attila] could connect with, indicating [Bruno] , and I affirmed that by philosophically stating that I think we can bridge the gap between youth and adulthood, and encourage young children to mature by, for lack of a better word, being a model of what growing up looks like. I told her the story of my Boy Scout experience, where the incorporation of a satirical fantasy written by another boy my age to deal with his difficulty taking directions from me became a sort of local mythology that allowed the younger boys (11-13) to be entertained without making a joke out of everything, and actually seemed to help them discipline themselves and be more receptive to what I would tell them as the SPL (Senior Patrol Leader). [Green] was impressed, and I said that in our position, [Bruno] and I are able to figuratively give a hand-up to those younger than us, to spur them on toward maturity/adulthood, but we’re getting on in age, so we’re doing the best we can, but soon we’ll be “pure adults”—though that wouldn’t stop us from trying to influence kids positively! In the car on the way home, [Swede] explained that [Green] had just gotten full custody over [Attila] , after having put her in school in Sweden for less than a year, but that having been interpreted as running away with the child, and leading to a prolonged custody dispute with an unreliable ex husband. [Swede] had gone in to be a (character?) witness for her in court, while that was happening. Apparently, the ex had amassed $65,000 in back taxes over many years, but did not own his house or cars, instead rented them, so that they could not be repossessed, indicating that this was a preplanned scheme, and before the divorce, [Green] had been advised to file ‘married filing separately,’ to avoid getting dragged into the financial ridiculousness that her apparently grotesquely narcissistic ex was creating. When the same judge who had judged the divorce finally judged the custody dispute, because of the ex’s known unreliability, he or she had awarded [Green] full custody.

It's weird to go hang out with mid-and-upper middle-class folks, being from the lower middle class myself. But hey, experiencing diversity and culture and stuff, that's good, right? Plus a little bit of immersion in a part of my heritage is bound to be beneficial somehow.

~ Rak Chazak

Random further reading:

http://welcometosweden.blogspot.com/2009/03/moving-to-sweden-public-holidays.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Lucy%27s_Day