Emil Kárlsen – “Áhkku” (Grandmother).

   Last year, I shared with you a song by Resirkulert – a rock group from the north of Norway, in which Emil Kárlsen is the vocalist. – That song is one of the more popular songs by Resirkulert and, as far as I’m aware, is their only song in Sámi. It is a joik for Emil’s grandfather. Well, I’ve been listening to Resirkulert for quite some time, but only recently have I found also that Emil Kárlsen has also released some solo music, and collaborated with other famous Sámi musicians. It’s always a treat for me to come across new, good Sámi music, and I’ve been enjoying it very much. I was wondering what song by him I could share, but in the end I decided that, since I have already shared a joik of Emil’s grandfather, it would make sense to share one of his grandmother now. And it is also one of my most favourite songs by him. 

 

Question of the day, or more like a fun name game.

Earlier today I was just mindlessly scrolling through the Namenerds subreddit and found a fun game. I had actually a lot of laugh reading it. I was thinking for a long time that I’d like to do some name games on here like I used to for a while in the beginnings of this blog, since I’m into baby naming and all things names so much, but also wanted it to be light and not too demanding or full of rules, so that it would actually fit on a blog, and just couldn’t come up with any good idea. So thought I’d steal this one from Reddit, maybe you’ll like it:

What would you be named if your name had to be a combination of the names of your grandmothers/grandfathers (kind of like Renesmee from Twilight is a smoosh of Renee and Esmee)?

Me: My grandmothers are Helena and Stefania. I think Helenia sounds quite interesting. It does have a clear invented name feel but it’s not all that obnoxious. It flows really well. I love Helena and Helenia sounds even more dainty.

Stelena could be some trendy spin on Stella. I like Stella, and Stelena is not awful, but it does scream “I’M MADE UP!” Also I don’t really like when -ena names are pronounced -eena or -ayna (-ena with the short e is the only way to go in my opinion) and I think Stelena wouldn’t avoid the -eena pronunciation in English.

What else… oh, there are actually legit Polish names, or rather diminutives, Hania and Henia. Hania is from Hanna and Henia is from Henryka. But Hania is very popular for kids right now and it’s not really my cup of tea, whereas Henia is suuuuper elderly and not in a charming vintage name like Hattie has been in the US lately. 😀

Now that I think of it, I remember my Mum’s invention “Hestefa”. We call my grandmother Stefania Stefa for short most of the time. We were on a walk, I think I might have been about Sofi’s current age, and Mum was telling me something about my grandma. I asked “Which grandma?” to which she responded: “Hestefa”. We both laughed at that, and then I thought that it sounds like some German aristocrat, especially coupled withh our very German-sounding last name. Her Excellency Countess Hestefa von Z… 😀 Obviously I had to share that with Mum, and then we kept laughing at that all the way back.

Oh wait, Hestia! LOL. That’s interesting! I don’t love the name very much but I like the goddess Hestia and I vaguely remember that years ago, back when I used to do more social media, there was a sort of personality test going among my Twitter friends which told you what your goddess archetype was, and mine was Hestia according to it. Hestia is cool. I guess I could live with that.

But, as I keep thinking of it, I’ve convinced myself that Helenia rocks!

Your turn. 🙂

Question of the day.

Does your family have any dark secrets?

My answer:

Well, can’t think of anything particularly murky, aside from things which aren’t really suitable to be discussed publicly 😀 but one thing that comes to my mind that is a bit of a mystery and that isn’t obvious to everyone in the family is that, actually, we don’t know when is my grandma’s birthday. And neither does she. The reason is very trivial. She was bornn in the late 40’s in Russia, some time in autumn, no one remembered when exactly, not even a close date, which to me is a bit weird, and apparently it was extremely freezing. Her dad was supposed to go register her, but it was so cold that he kept putting it off, as there was quite a distance from their house to the register office. Whenn he finally did it, it was well after New Year and no less cold but he just probably must have felt pressured to finally do it. He knew that he’d be in trouble for saying that he’d been waiting so long with registering his little daughter, so when they asked him about her birth date, he said 2nd January off the top of his head. And that’s when my grandma always celebrates her birthday, but it is not her actual birthday. I don’t know what you have to do to forget your baby’s birth so effectively – I guess people had greater and more important things on their minds back then than we do now and a lot more problems – but her parents just didn’t remember when exactly that happened and never told her. Not that it matters to her, or anyone else. It’s just quite funny. Usually people just know that her birthday is January 2, and, quite understandably, she rarely tells people the whole story.

You? 🙂

Question of the day.

Hi people! 🙂

Here’s my question for you today:

In which way have you surprised yourself this week?

My answer:

Well, that wasn’t a very big surprise maybe, but I couldn’t think of anything else. It surprised me that, the night before last, I was crying in my sleep, because I am generally not a big cryer, or at least definitely not in such situations when I’m just plain sad, even when it’s very sad, or moved by something either positive or negative. My Mum and grandma both have eyes on a very wet spot and can cry about anything that moves them, but I usually only cry when really angry or overloaded and just pretty much physically can’t keep any more feelings inside. I had a dream about my grandma (yes, that same who cries so much) that she was dying. In the morning Mum asked me if it was corona that she was dying of, and that wasn’t clear to me what it was, but it’s possible because she had real trouble breathing. She was lying in her bed and there were loads of people in her bedroom – us, all my Mum’s siblings with their families, all my grandma’s siblings with their families, I guess even my grandad’s family. – She was praying, and we were praying with her. I am often more like an observer than participant in my dreams and see things in a kind of neutral, emotionally detached way, often either from the point of view of someone else, everyone involved or just an observer, rather than just myself. And so it didn’t feel like I was sitting there with them, I was sort of looking down on themm and hearing what they were saying and I was separate from them, I don’t think they could even see me.

My grandma is generally a very melancholic person, a huge worrier and catastrophist and I call her Fillyjonk – like Fillyjonk from the Moomins – but in my dream she was happy – just in a calm, peaceful, quietly satisfied way like I’ve never seen her in real life – usually when she’s happy in real life it’s because she’s moved by something, and then she cries anyway so it’s kind of bittersweet, or at least so it looks to me. At some point though, she started worrying and talking about someone, I don’t remember why, or maybe I couldn’t even fully understand it in the dream, but I know she was worrying about one of her grandchildren and her worries had something to do with school, so I think it could be my cousin who is currently experiencing some school troubles and to whom she’s very close because she’s actually bringing him up no less than his parents as they live very close. So she grew very nervous and worried what will happen after she died, people tried to calm her down, and the more she was nervous, the more she couldn’t breathe, and then she just died.

Then my point of view shifted so that I was more participating in the dream and only then it hit me what happened. The whole room was quiet, everyone was so shocked, and I suddenly started crying like I think I never did in my real life. It was as much strange that, while I do like my grandma and she is a really lovely person, I don’t have that much of a personal connection with her, same as with most of my family, so it was a really strange reaction and I was really surprised even in the dream.

Then I woke up and realised that my eyes were actually wet and that I must have seriously cried in my sleep, and as it was about Misha’s waking time – 4 AM – he was wide awake and curiously peaking out of his bed and had his paw on my cheek. 😀

That was really quite a strange dream, but strange dreams are intriguing, and I don’t mind them if they’re not sleep paralysis, even if their topic is negative. I think it happens to me more than most people I know that I cry in my sleep, but I think that night was probably the most emotional in that respect, and I was wondering about the whole sleep crying thing – since I often find it difficult to cry even when I want to, maybe it’s some sort of release of actual emotions for my brain, and that’s how it’s coping with some shit that I am at the moment unable to get rid of while being conscious and in control. – In any case, I think brain is absolutely fascinating, but sleep is probably even more in a way.

On a slightly different note, today I also had a dream involving death and quite emotional, but no crying. I dreamt that I met some friends online that I was getting along really well with – it was actually a whole family, parents and children, though I’m pretty sure all of their children were grown up already or maybe one of themm was a teenager, but they lived all together somewhere in the countryside, I have a vague feeling that it might have been somewhere in England, because some parts of my dream were in English, also the mummy had a bit of a Scouse accent and I think England was mentioned somewhere in that dream. – And for some reason I moved to them and lived with them permanently. They were really such cool people, I had something in common with each of them, I remember they had a huge house with a huge garden, what I know for sure is that they had loads of apples in there haha and they had a horse, we spent a lot of time together just because we genuinely wanted it, we read books together, actually I think one of the girls was a writer. One guy was called… yes! you guessed it! Jack and he was so funny. I also remember the mother particularly well, she was really smart and sweet. I bonded with them all really strongly and closely.

And suddenly they all got sick with something on the same day, were all really ill, and finally all died pretty much at once so I was absolutely devastated and so sad and missed them terribly. I woke up soon after that and couldn’t shake off that sad, longing feeling, I guess I could actually say hiraeth as they call it in Welsh, which is longing for something that has never truly existed, it usually refers to a place but i think it describes what I felt really well. And for a while I couldn’t figure out why I felt like that either. As it happened, there was also some really sad piece of music playing on my Spotify as I woke up, nothing better than having a soundtrack to your dreams! 😀 Of course I got over it when I realised that it was a dream, but I found it really sad, and when I recall the whole thing I still feel strangely sad as I seriously knew those people, and I kind of miss them. But I really enjoyed the part of the dream when I was with them. Maybe I’ll add them to my Brainworld or something so that they’d feel a bit more realistic haha.

So, how about you guys? 🙂

Linnea Henriksson ft. Stor – “Mamma Är Lik Sin Mamma” (Mum Is Like Her Mum).

Hi guys. 🙂

Here’s my favourite song from a currently very popular Swedish pop singer Linnea Henriksson. I can easily not care about her popularity in Sweden simply because she’s not popular anywhere else, and I think she’s a really good singer. And this is a really good hommage for all mothers!

Commitmentof a mother.

Hi guys. 🙂

I’ve been thinking about finally writing some other posts, other than my usual series, and looking forward to doing it, and I planned to do some more writing over the weekend, though, quite predictably, I was never able to publish anything as it was my Mum’s and my brother’s birthday, also I had some rather bad anxiety and quite a lot was going on here. Nevertheless, both my Mum, and one of the recent writing prompts gave me an idea for a post. One of the recent words of the day at Word Of The Day Challenge was commit, and recently me and my Mum talked about commitment and dedication in relation to my grandma. I’d like to write about my Mum, and how I admire her, and thus also generally about mothers and motherhood.

There are lots of things that I admire in my Mum, but the one I would like to focus on now is her commitment.

Her commitment and dedication to motherhood, to us, her children, and to our whole family. I really don’t know where we’d be if not Mum, and I’m not just talking about the fact that she gave birth to my siblings and me, but that she is like an adhesive for our family, and keeps together us and everything in our house and family. I am happy to say that I have a good relationship with my Dad, but it has never been as deep as my connection with Mum. And even if I was ony to say on behalf of myself, I also don’t know where I’d be without my Mum.

Being disabled, I need more help with many things than an average person, sometimes a lot more, and my Mum has always been there for me, ready to help me out with really different things. Even when I was away from home at the boarding school, she always tried ther best to find the time and possibility to visit me or take me home for the weekend while she didn’t really have to as there was a rather big distance between the school and my home. She also tried her best to make my life easier there, and when there was a time I was emotionally abused by some of the staff she was the one to notice it despite the distance between us, and she was the one to make it stop. I’ve heard many very positive comments about my Mum at school, both from the staff and my friends, that I am really lucky to have such a committed and involved Mum. Not that other kids didn’t of course, though such situations also happened sometimes as they always do, that some children came from families where they weren’t loved, but because she did so much more than she had to, and her involvement was very visible. I also have mental health difficulties, since years but that both me and some of my family became more aware of only in recent years, and while my Mum doesn’t always understand it, she’s still there for me, if not in any other way than at least happy to help me practically. She’d been helping me to get to therapy, picking my prescriptions, she is my “spokesperson” in all sorts of new or difficult situations when I feel anxious or whenever I’m just not fully able to stand for myself, and I appreciate help hugely. She’s done so many big and little things for me that I probably wouldn’t be able to acknowledge all of them in a single post even if I dedicated it only for such purpose. 😀

My Mum is definitely a type of altruist who gets easily engaged in what she does and is very responsible and caring, that’s her nature, but sometimes I wonder whether all those commitments she has made over the years since she’s become a wife and a mother, whether they sometimes don’t make her feel unfulfilled in other areas, like her professional career for example, or her social life that would extend beyond her family.

My parents got married when she was 22. Mum was learning to be a beautician and after that tried studying pedagogy but didn’t really have a heart for it and didn’t feel motivated so quit it and then, two years after their wedding, they had me. They had to go a long way until they realised that I’m blind, it wasn’t like that I was born and they were told that, my blindness was congenital but well doctors just didn’t notice it and left my parents to figure it out on their own, and as it has turned out there were some other things we had to figure out blindly, pun intended, even much later on, but that’s another thing actually. Anyway, when Mum finally did figure out that I’m blind, soon after Olek arrived so with two little kids and one disabled she didn’t even think about looking for a job, despite at those very beginnings the financial situation in our family was really not the best, and by the way it’s also partly thanks to Mum that now Dad has the job he has and that our situation is much better nowadays. But Mum, even when I went to the boarding school at the age of 5, still was a full time Mum and still is, even though both me and Olek are adults and Zofijka can mostly take care of herself during the day, and so can I for the most part. And we really appreciate her for that, but as I said, I wonder whether she doesn’t feel a little disappointed with her life sometimes, having so many commitments, many of which she really didn’t have much choice about.

They say though that you usually copy your parents in your life choices. ANd that would be true for my Mum, because the thing was very similar with my grandma.

She is a very intelligent, cultured lady, had great ambitions as a young woman, got degrees in such diverse fields as food technology and theology, but she is also a very gentle, sensitive, idealistic and actually naive person, believing that everyone is like her and has the same values. And during her food technology studies met my grandad – also a very intelligent, cultured, strong, manly, fiendishly ambitious and versatile man. – They were madly in love with each other like most couples are at the beginning, the thing was that each of them had their own dreams that were quite different from each other’s, and my grandad was incredibly stubborn and domineering, to the point that in our current standards I suppose we could call it abusive. His dream has always been farming, because of his huge interest in agriculture, so it was clear to him that his wife will have to adjust and live in the sh*thole and dedicate herself to him and breeding hens to help him grow his business.

I love my grandad, have had a pretty close relationship with him, he has always stood for me when I most needed it, even when no one else did, and I always feel very safe with him and like we have a strangely deep connection and understanding for each other, and overall he’s one of the people I admire most in my life, particularly for how comprehensively skilled he is, but although he has mellowed a whole lot in his old age, I feel really bad about him being so bossy and tyrannical to my grandma. He wouldn’t let her go anywhere on her own, he decided what she should do or not do, with whom she can meet, he forbade her to drive anywhere, have her own work or money or any personal life that he wouldn’t be able to fully control. I guess even if she was assertive she wouldn’t be able to resist this and stand for herself, but she wasn’t, at all. He even didn’t let her to go to church on her own, only when it suited him and he would be able to drop her there, which was a big pain for her because my grandma has always been a very devout Christian. Grandad was brought up in a Christian family too, but it was never a priority for them and I guess he was too proud to be able to live through Christian faith where you have to be humble and rely on God rather than on yourself. So he wasn’t really keen on that which was also a big problem for grandma. As the children arrived her life was focused only around the household/farm, selling eggs with grandad and mothering the four kids. Later on grandad started drinking too much alcohol and has once tried to commit suicide, and while it’s no longer a problem and he doesn’t drink at all, it used to be something that grandma really struggled with and couldn’t accept, and tried to desperately hide it from children in which she succeeded as my Mum only learned about his alcoholism when she was an adult. At some point as I told you grandma got a degree from theology and wanted to work as a religion teacher or something like that but then one of my aunts was born and there were quite awful complications and she was a very vulnerable and sickly baby even though now thankfully she’s thriving and perfectly fine.

Now my grandparents’ relationship is less stormy, as I said my grandad has mellowed a lot both to his wife and to his children and all his grandchildren love him dearly, though they’re certainly not madly in love with each other and grandma is still suffering because of grandad’s cynical/haughty approach regarding faith and that he treats her like she’s very inferior to him, but he does appear to love her in some way and cares for her in that controlling, possessive way as some people do since they can’t otherwise.

She has certainly had her fair share of sufferings, but, most importantly here, has been always so very committed, to her husband, children, and every other responsibility that life has placed on her. In a way I admire her for that, but on the other hand, the extend to which my grandma commits herself is sort of strange to me and I feel like I couldn’t do that without feeling frustrated. just every minute. She doesn’t actually have her own life. Her life evolves around her children and grandchildren, caring for her husband, their work, praying, and now there is a little bit of place for gardening, but that’s it.

My Mum is not like that, my Mum is stronger and more assertive, but still has that extreme ability to dedicate herself to others.

It makes me wonder how marriage and motherhood can really change you and your life so much. When it comes to me, I’m happy to help people, but I really don’t think I could commit myself to someone to such an extend and so unconditionally, it feels rather overwhelming and strangling. I still most probably have a fair bit of ife ahead of me and I know things can change, but so far I’m pretty sure that I don’t want to have children, and even if I would want at some point, I most probably wouldn’t be able to be a good mother for many different reasons. But I really admire my Mum in that, and other mothers who do it like this, silently and without shouting how altruistic they are, and I know that if ever my Mum would need someone to commit themselves to her, I will try my best to do it since I owe her so much. I am proud to say that now I can at least listen to her, and that even though it’s usually her who is the listener for others, I often listen to her when she has problems, and I  am the first person she goes to since I got out of the boarding school if she wants to talk about some stuff that affects her deeply. i am happy she trusts me and that I can give her at least that.

What do you think about commitments in relation to motherhood/family life? What are your experiences with your mum, or with your own parenting if you are a parent? Are you deeply committed to anyone, be it in a relationship or whatever? If you’re not a parent, do you feel like you could dedicate yourself to your children full time or is your professional/social/any other aspect of your life so important to you that you couldn’t give it up? 🙂

Fflur Dafydd – Rachel Myra.

Hi guys! 🙂

yesterday’s song was perfectly matched with the time and the weather we have here, but today’s one is more wintery, though I don’t think it should matter that much.

It’s a beautiful song written and composed by Fflur Dafydd in Welsh. Fflur Dafydd is a very versatile artist, she’s not only a singer/songwriter, but she has also written a few books, and I guess also some poems.

She wrote this song for her grandmother – Rachel Myra. By the way, I think Rachel Myra is a very interesting and vintage name combo. There is a line in this song “Rachel Myra, Ei henw’n gynnes yn y gaeaf” (Rachel Myra, your name so warm in the winter) and it kinda speaks to me because this name sounds so homely (I mean homely homey, comfy perhaps), kinda warm, like I usually have different sensory associations with words and names too and when I first saw the title of this song I thought that it smells like ginger, or like ginger tea with lemon and honey or something… so I was a bit shocked when I finally was good enough at Welsh to roughly figure out that this song has quite a wintery feel and then that there is this verse in it. 😀 That’s another reason to my theory that names do have some universal code, or something like this. Rachel itself, or Myra on its own, don’t give such a strong feel, althugh they’re also warm names on their own.

I really like this song, it’s melody is beautiful and it’s beautiful overall.

The translation that is in the video was apparently by Fflur Dafydd herself.

Question of the day.

Who is the oldest living person in your family?

My answer:

My family is quite big, all of my grandparents have a lot of siblings, cousins and all, so I also have a lot of aunts, uncles and cousins, many of whom I’ve never seen or only a few times and wouldn’t recognise them on the street, I’m in awe of my Dad who can remember all his aunts, uncles and cousins names, well maybe except for his cousins children as there are more and more of them and many of them have already their own children so it’s a bit hard to be up to date with everyone. 😀 But as for my immediate family, the oldest person is my paternal gramma, she’ll be 83 this December. Actually, you wouldn’t guess it, I think. She is quite a lively person for her age. She attends various meetings for seniors, leads pilgrimages, knows lots of jokes and stories and her jokes are very long, so she has to have quite an excellent memory, I think. My maternal gramma is much more of an intellectual type and much better educated, but now as the years passed I think my paternal gramma has more bright memory and mind, although she’s older. She’s very sociable and likes going shopping. My maternal gramma is younger than her, but although personally I’m more attached to her and like her slightly more, honestly I must say she looks older. She was always very sentimental and melancholic and now it is even exacerbated to the point I could call her depressive and hypersensitive, which doesn’t help your overall health and she doesn’t have that zest for life my gramma on Dad’s side has, for which people are always in awe. Actually I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me my dysthymic tendencies are the heritage after my gramma, I think she’d also fit to the cryteria od dysthymic disorder. So yeah I think if I wouldn’t know how old my grammas are, I wouldn’t know which of them is older.

How about your family? 🙂