my mother's last day on the beach

In August I took my mother on her last trip ever to the summer cottage. 

She is 91 years old, with grave dementia and various other ailments that have now confined her to a wheelchair most of the time. Despite some help, I have almost run myself into the ground trying to take care of her during the last couple of years. 

We had coffee on the beach, watched the birds, enjoyed the sun. She insisted on taking off her shoes and socks - loving the barefoot feeling, just like me. She was happy.

Pushing the wheelchair over the uneven lawn and helping her get to the outdoor toilet completely wore me out. I held back my tears until I was alone. 

So I decided this was my mother's last time at her beloved cottage, where she has spent so many happy summers. She won't miss it - she doesn't remember it when she's not there, and she was content to go home. 

But I grieve for her. She is slowly leaving me.

final report of summer 2025

A car with a locked wheel, mental mentor meeting, almost moving my mother into a care home, three weeks of full-time vacation, several weeks of half-time vacation, almost every weekend at the cottage, fetching a dead eagle from a deserted island and sending it by post, two magical boat trips to summer islands, a little family time, lots of alone time, pondering vocational singleness, a small but exquisite church concert, Midsummer celebration as usual, Kuddnäs and the history of Topelius, selling crêpes at a church conference, wheelchair excursions with my mother, grilling sausages on a rainy day, books, a heatwave so strong it melted glue in the bathroom, weariness and tears, road trip to Pensala and Purmo and a country fair in Jeppo, cottage renovations, funeral of a beloved aunt, Kristinestad with friends, garden cafés and the most gorgeous B&B I've ever stayed in, the Stundars museum, a month-long break from TV, Night of the Arts with yarn crafts and decadent red wine, my mother's last trip to her favourite place, end-of-summer celebration, hospital visits.

I am made of words & rivers & winds & wildflowers. 

I am part grief & part hope & all love.

(Victoria Erickson)

how to sneak up on a whooping swan

How to sneak up on a whooping swan, send a dead eagle through the mail, watch an almost entire match of women's football: things I've learned this summer.

How to enjoy extreme heat, structure a holiday well so it doesn't end in tears, handle a boat: things I've still not learned this summer.

fairytale stage

Alone in the wilderness again. The moon is a wonky orange, the sea is spilled ink, the mist blurs the edges - a fairytale stage. Hundreds of honking geese take flight with a sudden thunder of wings, unseen in the dark.

The fire is roaring happily in the wood stove. I'm in the cottage, flimsy curtains drawn against the thick, black night. This fairytale stage is set for me and my writing. This is me.

I don't even care that my car is broken and I don't know how to get home.

hazy horizons

July dawns with hazy horizons, rain, fragrant clovers, a croissant with hummus and coffee, solitude and turbulent emotions in a quiet cottage.

midsummer: boredom wanted

Midsummer - the fragrance of a thousand flowers, blackbirds and chaffinches and everybody else singing for me. The world's greatest show, pulling out all the stops whether anyone is watching or not. I never want to lose this sense of wonder. I never want to miss this feeling of grace.

Midsummer week had it all. I watched two elks swim across the sea and climb wearily out of the water. I called excavators to dig up a leaking waterpipe. I worried about the sudden revolt in neighbouring Russia. I witnessed death stalk my family and wondered if I would get a call saying someone had been taken. I celebrated Midsummer with old friends - eating grilled chicken, fish and potatoes, strawberries and chocolate, drinking homemade birchleaf mead. The sweetest taste lay in the old memories and undying friendship - and in beating the boys at darts.

Midsummer with extra everything, including mosquitoes. 

Now I've withdrawn to my summer paradise, alone, to see if I can still find the old me somewhere. The one who writes blog entries and feels wonder and feels the heat of summer despite a chill in my heart.

wildlife, various approaches

One week of vacation between the sea and the forest. Mostly alone with my books and the laptop and the wildlife.

I'm tip-toeing around nesting sandpipers, chasing away swans, swearing at mosquitoes, carrying spiders out of my bedroom, laughing at blackbirds because of their haughty indifference when our paths cross.

last night, and all the stars are there

Just as it was getting a little too cold for another weekend in the summer cottage, I went back there one more time. 

My addiction made me go. Addiction to the silence of the old fir trees, silvery and dripping with cold rain, and to the hooting of swans gathered in the darkening bay.

The grass and the alder trees were going grey, looking weary and old. Birches were turning a cold lemon colour. The sea had the unforgiving shade of chilly steel, making me shiver just to look at it.

I did a bit of work, huddled up under a scratchy blanket with my laptop and feeding firewood into the stove. I pulled on a thick hoodie and cleared away the remnants of the bonfire we had on the beach the weekend before, the end-of-summer weekend. I read a novel, solved a few crosswords, wrote a little fiction, and slept the sleep of the blessed as the night chill crept back into the cottage.

That intense solitude, far from other people, never really feels like loneliness. But there is an aching melancholia in the autumn stillness when birds leave and everything goes to sleep for a long, frozen winter, when all life withdraws into a tiny core that is hard to see or hear. So I was delighted when my sister showed up on the second day.

That night was one of the highlights of the year, better even than the balmy summer evenings we have spent together in the same environment. Perhaps because of the September darkness, which descends so unforgivingly with absolute blackness and turns the cottage into a tiny beacon of light and warmth at the edge of a vast and unknown space.

We pooled our resources of chocolate, crisps, nuts and melon slices, uncorked a large bottle of sparkling lemon water. Then we squeezed into a narrow single bed to watch National Treasure, a favourite movie, on the laptop. Outside, the night was a black abyss but the fire spread a comforting warmth and the dog snored at our feet.

Before retiring to our own beds, we went down to the beach at midnight. We turned off the flashlight and let our bodies adjust to the icy darkness.

All the stars in the universe frolicked around us. The bay had gone still and invisible, ringed by forests. The atonal hooting of the many swans nearby turned into a concert of flutes and oboes and bassoons, its echoes travelling five miles to the opposite shore and returning unhindered, waves upon waves. A goose or two inserted a raspy contribution. Something that went unseen and unheard by us suddenly scared all these large birds and hundreds of them took flight at once. We could see nothing in the darkness and just gasped at the eerie sound of heavy feathers beating the air, as if the timpanist of this odd orchestra had suddenly got into his thunderous solo.

We retired to warm beds and happy dreams. When welcoming the autumn, it's best to do it with a sister.

how open and wide the sky

As a city-dweller I'm always awed when I'm dropped in the middle of the countryside. 

I'm amazed by the forest, the fields, the quiet villages that seem completely deserted even though they are not. Amazed by nature. How immense it is, how silent, how open and wide the sky, how empty and yet teeming with trees and plants of every size and description, bursting with life even when nobody is looking or noticing or benefiting.

How peaceful, how wild, how unstoppable and uncontrollable, how independent of man.

summer moments, the good ones

Reveling in summer heat by the glittering sea, sun and salt and blue nailpolish on my bare toes, as my mother naps in the cottage nearby.

Blueberries, strawberries, raspberries with cream and sugar, dark coffee in old mugs, singing "Happy Birthday" and meaning it.

Lighting a candle and watching a film, wrapped in a wool blanket older than me, while the rain pounds on the roof.

Falling asleep in the white nights of June or the pitch-black nights of August, in the peaceful silence of the forest.

Making banana pancakes while kitchen windows steam up from the heat of the frying pan, the smell of fruit and vanilla filling the air.

Making the same lame jokes as we've done for years, around a red table as twilight falls and the dog is trying to sleep.

Staring out to sea and the silhouette of the islands, knowing they are always there for me, holding on to my happy memories and my melancholia.

Walking along a tiny forest road, feeling the weight of the mystery, feeling the peace.

assortment of motorcycle people

Laptop on my lap, rain at my elbow, smudged mascara from last night, woollen socks, a glass of wine on the porch.

Last night, friends who arrived on a swarm of motorcycles: the blonde who quickly jumped off to hug me, the unsmiling physician, the nerdy one with the best jokes, the introvert who walks off in silence, the one who's learning a new life, someone's new girlfriend who seemed superhuman but really nice too, and a small boy who splashed in the water and giggled infectiously. 

Tacos in the evening sun by the sea. At twilight, volleyball and joy.

welcome, icy clarity

Ah, to finally be past the emotional funfair that is August - with its wild carnival laughter, colours, a bewildered heart - and safely land in the ordered world of September!

The memories of hot sand, summer nailpolish, whirling ideas and cool grass are fading. I note that I did some of the things I had planned for this summer. There were mojitos, friends, drives through lush fields, the saving of a seagull chick, excited smiles on my mother's face, walks among fragrant pine trees, boat trips beyond the horizon, exploration of things unknown, Netflixing alone in the cabin between the sea and the forest, love and languages.

I still welcome the chilly nights of now, the starry skies dripping ice. The smell of the gym I haven't set foot in for months, the pilates balls, the dancing shoes, the volleyball men with their muscles and the exhilaration of sweating off all that sadness. The delicious lunches in the cafeteria at work, the business meetings around laptops, wry smiles, plans. The new knowledge that is placed before me, the Excel charts and the music course and all the books I haven't read. Beautiful clothes. The feeling of setting off.

I loved the summer but I was lost and confused. I mourn the loss of a hot sun and birdsong, of being so close to nature that I can hear it breathe.

 I revel in making schedules with early morning work and evening classes, and the peace that comes with sticking to them.

Welcome, icy clarity of autumn.

on a dark coast

A tiny cabin lit with coloured lamps and a wood fire in the stove, hidden in the forest and all alone on a dark coast. 

In the middle of the night, I hear the absolute silence of the starry skies dripping ice on me. Other nights, rain or restless seas sing me to sleep. 

I could disappear here.

desperate measures: banana pancakes

Cold rain lashing the windows. Woollen socks not keeping out the chill in primitive holiday cabins. Low moods. The summer being difficult again here in the almost-Arctic.

When heat and sweet smells are desperately needed, you take out a frying pan and make banana pancakes with vanilla sugar and fat, juicy blueberries from the forest.

can't see a marvellous comet

I'm in the middle of summer, in a canary-yellow sun hat and bare feet. I'm in sadness and happiness.

I breathe in pines, a thousand flowers, a quiet sea with thunder on the horizon. I cook dishes my mother has never tasted. I cut firewood for other people's children. I take my grandmother's ancient bike to the village and listen to the silence of the barley fields. I dip my toes in salt water and speak gently to someone who needs it. I drink coffee and lick chocolate off my fingers.

There is peace on the wind and restlessness in a hot sun. I want to see the world and learn. I'm wild with envy towards those who make their dreams come true, because I don't know how.

I want to be anywhere else. I want to stay here, watch the flowers grow, sing with the blackbird and the rosefinch.

I'm one of those who can't see a marvellous comet pass by because their sky is too bright.

daisies first, then breakfast

I planted daisies before breakfast. I walked in the rain, saw merganser chicks sleep in a huddle, dozed by the fireplace. I dreamed of impossible journeys.

seafarers and lullabies

Ordinary events by the sea: a man I admire sailed in and someone sang Mammas lilla gullgull - my childhood lullaby (of unknown and possibly ancient origin) which still makes me sleepy.

exhausted and spider-bitten

Summer is for intense living.

There has already been wine on picnic blankets, seagull chick rescue operations, thunderstorms, flower picking, reading six year old magazines, heatwaves, tantrums, crossword puzzles over bad coffee, lilac planting, blisters and spider bites, mojitos, primitive living, expensive chocolate cakes, lawn-mowing in way-too-hot weather.

I'm exhausted, is it autumn soon?

planting lilacs

Digging soil and planting lilacs, hot sun, salt water, a spider bite, barefoot in a hammock, feeling at home.

God and the July sun

It's on the loveliest days of summer that I plan my life.

When my bare skin is heated by a July sun and chilled by blue waters, when the vista around me is sky and sea and forest, when I'm deeply immersed in nature, when I feel safely at home and excited about new adventures at the same time. Then I dream and plan for the year ahead.

This year, my plans were modest and extravagant: I would learn what it is to be loved by God. To really feel it. How free and fearless I would be when that love was literal truth to me!

But in the icy winds of October, I go looking for that love and it's as far away as the July sun.

In theory, I know it's there. Sometimes I feel it - when I allow myself to feel it instead of try to earn it.

But I need to have it deep inside my body, immerse myself in sky and sea and forest.

The world is too cold for that.

I read and I pray, and maybe I'm inching closer, but my skin is still cold to the touch.