MEMOIR/ESSAY
Arrival
A child is born
Were you to hug the eastern coastline as you sail north from the southern tip of Sweden, about halfway up the country (well into our northern lands by now) you’ll come upon one of those clearings in the forest we call towns.
This particular clearing prides itself on the bold name Örnsköldsvik, which translates to “The Bay of the Eagle’s Shield” no less, and it was in this clearing, during a 1948 October snowstorm, that I spied the light — making landfall as it were about a quarter to nine in the evening, as my mother Lisbeth informed me years later.
And it was she who also, the same years later, briefed me about the weather conditions surrounding the event.
As for me, I remember neither night nor storm.
But I took her word for these two tidbits, and to this day, each October 28, I keep one eye on the clock to acknowledge the event, these days allowing for the nine intervening time-zone hours between California and Sweden.
So, that was arrival: 8:45 P.M. (Swedish Time), 11:45 A.M. (California Time) on October 28, 1948.
I’ve not (yet) managed to establish (as in remember) where I arrived from (work in progress), but arrive I did, endowed with the customary number of fingers and toes, et cetera: a…
