This first-person column is written by Antonia Reed, a CBC producer in Toronto. This piece was written as part of CBC’s Doc mentorship program. For more information on CBC’s First Person Chronicles, please see frequently asked questions.
As far back as I can remember, I wanted to learn Swedish.
My mother started with the best intentions of having bilingual children. She moved to Canada from Sweden in the 1970s where she met my father and settled on a farm in Northern Ontario. When I was a baby, she started speaking to me exclusively in Swedish and she often told me that my first words were in Swedish. But by the time my sister and brother arrived, we were all strictly English-speaking children.
My mother never pressured us to learn Swedish and I didn’t put much effort into it growing up. But in my late teens, I came to believe that if I didn’t learn the language, it would be a major failure.
My desire to learn Swedish became acute after my mother passed away at the age of 47 from breast cancer. I was 20 years old, and in addition to mourning the woman I loved most in the world, I also regretted not having learned Swedish with her during her lifetime.
But a few months before my 40th birthday, I got a second chance.
I received a Facebook message from my sister who was traveling in Sweden. She discovered that our aunt Sophie, my mother’s older sister, had kept all the letters my mother had sent to our grandmother in Sweden during the 1980s and 1990s. There were storage boxes in her apartment which were full of them. Turns out Aunt Sophie considers herself the family historian and has never thrown anything away.
I thought to myself, “That’s it! I’m going to talk to my mother again.”
I had to see them for myself, so I flew to Sweden and collected all the letters from my aunt. To my dismay, I quickly realized that I couldn’t read them. The writing was a messy scribble, and the fact that they were written in Swedish meant I could barely decipher anything.
At the time, I had recently been diagnosed with major depressive disorder. I was torn between my family life and the office. I had two young children who I felt neglected by going to work every day. I certainly didn’t live up to the standard my mom set when she put her career on hold to stay home and raise us.
All I could think was that these letters might give me the motherly advice I needed – if only I could read them. I set myself the goal of mastering enough Swedish to understand them.
I had some basics that I still remember growing up with my mother and her family, but now I have actively decided to learn the language. I did Duolingo religiously, took in-person Swedish lessons wherever I could find them, and eventually found a Swedish teacher living in Italy whom I met for a weekly Skype language lesson.
One day my partner asked me why I was spending so much time and money talking to strangers when I could just call my relatives in Sweden and train with them.
The truth was that I was terrified.
When we traveled to Sweden as a child, my cousins laughed at my attempts to speak Swedish, and everyone I met would immediately switch to English when speaking with me.
But I knew I would never be satisfied with my own progress if I couldn’t talk to my family.
I called my aunt Sophie and cousin Helena in Stockholm and tried out some Swedish with them. My aunt promised to help me translate the letters, and I promised to call her back after months of intense Swedish practice. When I did, my aunt told me I was “good” at the language.
But there were still the letters, unread in my drawer at home in Toronto. With a boost of newfound confidence after my aunt’s praise, I decided to try reading my mother’s letters again after almost seven years.
As I read, my understanding of my mother’s language and life grew, and small details began to emerge: how my parents put up fences around the farm, sheared sheep and planted gardens. When my sister learned to speak, I was going to school; then later, when my brother – who was a handful when he was a baby – found himself in front of the TV so that my mother had time to write.
I got into a rhythm reading his letters, not caring so much about understanding every word.
I started adding details from childhood that I remembered: harsh weather with winter temperatures sometimes as low as -45 and summers when we were infested with black flies and “myggor” – mosquitoes in Swedish . There were also a lot of references to my dad on a business trip. My mother was on her own most of the time, looking after the animals and children, and I think she missed having her own mother’s support – just like I do now.
In a letter from December 1982, she asks if her mother “skulle komma till jul och fira” (Could she come and celebrate Christmas with them in Canada?). It is clear however by the next letter in January that my mormor did not come.
And I realized she was probably like me – overwhelmed and needed her mother. No wonder the teaching of Swedish fell through.
In a way, that was the message I was waiting to hear. It’s okay to ask for help. That it doesn’t matter if I don’t speak Swedish fluently, because I have other things to be grateful for. I really felt like my mom was talking to me and telling me to appreciate everything I had: an extended family in Sweden that supports my goal of being fluent, a deep love for Swedish culture. Also, to be grateful to have children of mine who might one day be curious about the grandmother they never met.
Antonia Reed is a producer for CBC Radio based in Toronto. She reported from Thunder Bay to Cape Town and a few places in between. In addition to her Swedish language skills, she knows some Russian from a year abroad in Moscow and still remembers some of her French from high school.
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