Going Home

I leave tomorrow. It will be nice to be home. It will be wonderful to - soon - see my little chick again. But it's going to be hard to leave Stockholm. So, I pause to reflect.

Things I like here:

• Fewer people using their cell phones as stereos on public transport. And, as a result, a much lower desire to feed people their own phones.
• When I'm out walking and I'm not taking pictures, I am usually still looking at people. And, when I look at people, I make eye contact. And people here look back. And here's the cool part - they smile. I couldn't be happier.
• There are a lot of red shoes. Not a lot, I guess, but relatively more. Red shoes are good.
• There are beautiful children playing, which makes me almost unbearably happy and sad at the same time.
• It feels safe and orderly, but not as though a 70 year-old Swiss woman is about to pop out and hit you on the head with a broom, if you know what I mean.
• I saw a woman with her 3 kids carrying hockey sticks. Hockey sticks are good.
• I think Swedish is a cool language. My Swedish friends had told me that it was like Swiss German. Sure, there's a little more up and down than English, but it doesn't sound like anyone is about to cough up their spleen.
• There is a certain agelessness to a lot of the women here. I'm crap at guessing ages, which is why, if you ask me to guess yours, I will just say, "I don't know". And then I'll wait for you to talk about something else. But here, it seems even harder than usual. There are a lot of women who, I get the feeling, are somewhere between 25 and 40, but they could tell me anything in that range and I would believe them.
• The city is small enough that there are some people I've seen several times, and I think that's pretty cool, for only having been here a week.

Things I don't like:

• Smoking isn't allowed inside, except in my friend Johan's apartment, where it's mandatory.
• Some women are not just wearing leggings under shorts, but shiny leggings. Like super-hero costume kind of shiny.
• It's about 9 CHF just to take one ride on the metro. That's just way too much.

Something I've been thinking about:

I've seen a lot of parents of fairly young children who are tired of walking, who seem to be dealing with it poorly. They either just have the kid, crying, trailing along at the end of their arm, or, I've seen the family actually leave, go into a building a 100m away and wait. Eventually, they came back for the little boy (who was sitting, rather resolutely, where they had left him - seems this had happened before). Here's what I think.

Maybe those 3 year-old legs are just tired. Maybe you skipped naptime. Maybe he's hungry. So maybe you should carry him for a while.

And, even more to the point, maybe she just wants to know she is loved and valued. I don't know, but perhaps if those parents would just stop and crouch down and say, "You're tired, aren't you? Me too. I love you, and we have a little more walking to do before we can stop. Shall we sit here together for a minute before we go on?" there would be a lot less crying now and a lot fewer feelings of abandonment to work through later on. Maybe.

Anyways, time to pack!