Writing to Remember
During the fall of my sophomore year of college, I was given a writing assignment. It was perhaps one of the most general writing assignments I had received. The class was Art History and the assignment was to write an essay about the connection I have to my heritage. I automatically thought about the heritage my parents originate from: German on my mother’s side and Swedish on my father’s side. Growing up, I never encountered many German customs passed down from my grandparents besides the occasional homemade German meal. On my father’s side, however, I recalled a treasured Swedish custom that was almost forgotten.
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Old pic with my grandmother.[/caption]
The memories of visiting my father’s mother came flooding back to me while preparing to write the paper for my class. There was a nursery rhyme my grandmother used to sing to me and my cousins in Swedish, and I could almost hear the sound of it again in my head. Because I am the youngest grandchild on my father’s side, this nursery rhyme has gone unsung ever since I was around five or six years old. I couldn’t quite remember how the whole song went, but I knew the first words in the rhyme started with an “r” so I took to the internet and searched “Swedish nursery rhymes” with the letter “R.” Sure enough, the results were filled with a song called “Rida Rida Ranka” which fit perfectly with the vague memory I had of the words. The results even lead me to videos of other Scandinavian grandmothers reciting the same rhyme to their grandchildren while bouncing them on their knees. It was shocking to see other families doing the same routine with their children, but it felt amazing to see them enjoy the rhyme as much as I had as a child.
After doing more research I discovered that “Rida Rida Ranka” originates from the 1300s when the Swedish Queen Blanca sang it to her son. Every time she would recite this rhyme she would bounce her small son on her knee, which is why the title translates to “Ride, ride a rocking horse.” It became a tradition in the country to sing this to small children while bouncing them on their knee.
It was astonishing to find out this was not only a tradition in our family for years, but for generations of families all over Scandinavia. I was excited to write about my nearly forgotten Swedish tradition, but more so thankful that the assignment had lead me to find the name and translation of the old rhyme I used to love. Writing that paper took me back to the cherished time I had with my grandmother, and brought to light the importance of keeping our old family traditions alive.
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” This quote by Anaïs Nin, a French novelist, describes my experience with writing perfectly. It was through writing that I was able to explore my memory and connection with my heritage. The more I wrote, the more I was able to dig deeper into my thoughts and memories. After completing that paper, I grew an appreciation for writing that I never had before, and I continued to write on my own after the Art History class was over. I bought a journal that I started writing in it day and night, which soon became my favorite way of unwinding at the end of the day. Once everything is on paper, my thoughts just seem more clear and comprehensible. I love being able to look back on different periods of my life now throughout my journal, and reminisce on what life was like at that point. Life is changing constantly and my thoughts are evolving with those changes. But, no matter how my life continues to evolve, I will always be able to write in order to taste life once again.
