One Year Requiem

It was hardly my intention to live in the Forest of Fika.

I'm a big city kind of person. I grew up 40 minutes from New York City and at 18, I moved to Manhattan to start NYU. For the better part of 15 years, I lived in the 5 boroughs (well 3 of the 5 anyway) with shorter stints in London (1 year) and La Paz, Bolivia (5 months). We moved to the dark forests of fika in late July 2011. That ball started rolling at this time last year.

I never wanted to live here. I never wanted to have 3 kids. Stuff happens. Destiny hands you funny cards sometimes.

A year ago, my dear darling Grandmother died at age 89 after a long battle with chronic heart issues. My grandma was much more like a second mother to me than a regular grandma. She lived with my parents in my childhood home and raised me while my parents were working. We were extremely close. I never wanted to be far from her.

Prior to this day last year, my husband and I had been debating two issues and we were locked in a stasis. I wanted to have another child. He wanted to move back to Sweden. He said that he would not add to our family unless we moved to Sweden. I would not move to Sweden until my grandmother was no longer living. I couldn't bear to be permanently far away from her. When she died, I okayed the move to Sweden. When I agreed to move to Sweden, my husband agreed to add to our family.

S. had a job offer here in his hometown. In the same internet cafe in Sucre, Bolivia that I learned of my grandma's passing, he signed and emailed a PDF job contract to the firm in the dark forests of fika. A few weeks later, whilst on vacation in Los Yungas(a lush jungle 3 hours down the mountain from La Paz) the twins were conceived, though I obviously didn't know at the time that we'd created 2 rather than 1.

After Bolivia, we spent 10 day at my parents' house in New Jersey, then flew to Galway, Ireland for a working vacation and eventually made our way to the Forest of Fika. On July 31, I finally realized that a certain monthly visitor had never arrived. The deal was sealed: We had moved to Sweden and I was pregnant.

Some nights like tonight, I look out my window at the silent and empty rain-slicked streets and I think how the hell did I end up here? Will I ever live in a city again? I look at my sleeping 1 month old twins and I think of how different their early lives will be from their older brother who was born in New York and has lived in La Paz.

The Earth moved for me a year ago and my life will never be the same.