Comforts
Before I moved to Sweden (before my life was completely transformed by the wonderfulness that is Björn) I bought bedsheets every so often whenever the old ones seemed a little, well, old.
Björn had a shelf in the linen closet that was stuffed full of sheets when I moved in.
I thought that I would clean it out a bit. Get rid of some of the older ones.
It was not to be.
Turns out that most of those sheets came from Björn's beloved grandmother's home when she passed away. He's marvelously sentimental, and those sheets were not going anywhere.
When we started cleaning out Björn's dad's house, I knew that it was highly likely that boxes of things would be coming home with us that we didn't really need, but which would have meaning for Björn. I'm not talking about things of material value - I'm talking about things like simple kitchen implements that Kjell used so many of the evenings that the four of us had dinner together in his kitchen. And things like sheets.
But my own need to keep some of those everyday things surprised me. I packed bags of clothing to be donated to the Salvation Army, but I kept an old windbreaker that Kjell wore one day when we had a picnic together in the forest. I kept a pair of scissors that he always had handy by the TV table to clip out quotes, articles, recipes from magazines.
It was me, and not Björn, who was working in the closet where the sheets are stored.
Today I needed to better organize things here in the bathroom at the cabin. We have about a million sheets, you know. And not a single one of them can just be tossed out.
Because they are precious to me. To us.
Björn had a shelf in the linen closet that was stuffed full of sheets when I moved in.
I thought that I would clean it out a bit. Get rid of some of the older ones.
It was not to be.
Turns out that most of those sheets came from Björn's beloved grandmother's home when she passed away. He's marvelously sentimental, and those sheets were not going anywhere.
When we started cleaning out Björn's dad's house, I knew that it was highly likely that boxes of things would be coming home with us that we didn't really need, but which would have meaning for Björn. I'm not talking about things of material value - I'm talking about things like simple kitchen implements that Kjell used so many of the evenings that the four of us had dinner together in his kitchen. And things like sheets.
But my own need to keep some of those everyday things surprised me. I packed bags of clothing to be donated to the Salvation Army, but I kept an old windbreaker that Kjell wore one day when we had a picnic together in the forest. I kept a pair of scissors that he always had handy by the TV table to clip out quotes, articles, recipes from magazines.
It was me, and not Björn, who was working in the closet where the sheets are stored.
Today I needed to better organize things here in the bathroom at the cabin. We have about a million sheets, you know. And not a single one of them can just be tossed out.
Because they are precious to me. To us.