Satu Blomerus

Memories, 2024

Memory, that personal image folder that we all have. Stored within are both the good and the bad moments collected throughout our lives. Some have dimmed, as if their colours have faded. That is usually what happens to old photographs. 

My childhood took place during the late 1950s and early 1960s.  

One of my childhood memories is strongly connected to summer. We lived in the countryside in a small grey cottage that fit all my close relatives. I was raised by my grandmother and aunt. Behind the cottage was a paddock for cows and a road that ran across the paddock to the summer villas by the lake. Right behind the cottage was a gate you could use to enter the road. I eagerly took the job of opening the gate for the summer visitors and their guests. At the time, there were not many cars in the countryside other than a milk truck and a bus that came twice a day. It was thus easy to spot the visitors driving up to the villas and be at the gate in time to open it. At times, I was rewarded with a cup of berries or a few coins that I spent on gummy bears. I remember my visceral disappointment when the visitors who were unfamiliar with the custom left me without any reward.  

I also have two childhood memories of Christmas.  

In addition to special Christmas dishes, our Christmas traditions included putting up a Christmas tree and a visit from Santa Claus. I remember this one Christmas Eve when Santa had with him a cheery little elf who looked suspiciously like my sister who was a few years older than me.  

The next day I told my sister about my suspicion. She, however, had a very imaginative explanation for it: “You see, for every child there is an elf that looks just like them. Just you wait and one day Santa will visit with an elf that looks like you.”  

Now that I am 69 years old, I’m starting to think my sister made that up.  

Another one of my Christmas memories relates to the Christmas tree and its ornaments. When I was a child, the trees were decorated with hand-made ornaments like paper stars, real apples and real candles as well a selection of wrapped Fazer sweets. My grandmother gave as a strict order not to eat any of the sweets on Christmas Eve, but wait until Christmas day. As it happens, that evening my sisters made their beds under the Christmas tree. You can imagine how immense my disappointment was when on Christmas morning there were only beautiful but empty wrappers left hanging in the tree. The sweets from inside them had found their way into mouths of my sisters.  

Today the memory makes me smile, but that was not the case on that Christmas morning. My two older sisters sometimes became fed up with their little sister that kept tagging along with them – me. I, of course, looked up to them and their things and their secrets.  

Thoroughly fed up with me they came up with a way to distract me so that they had time to slip away and go their own way. Both would peek out of the window and with wonder-struck voices yell: “Oh look, look, there’s kittens pedalling on straw bicycles.” Of course I ran straight to the window to see this miracle myself. And what a shame that I was always too late and the kittens with their straw bicycles managed to ride somewhere out of sight. How I could fall for this trick time and again is beyond me.  

Dear reader, you might now be thinking what awful big sisters I had. I can, however, assure you they were not awful. Once I became a bit older, we found we had a lot in common and my sisters offered me support and safety in many stages of my life. We also share a lot of fun memories together, but those belong to another photo album of memories.