…and the livin’ is easy

Today is midsummer’s eve.

The traditional way to celebrate midsummer in Sweden would be to put flower garlands in your hair, eat lots of food, jump like frogs around the midsummer pole, drink too much strong liquor  dance on a quayside, then go out in the night, the neverending light night, to pick seven wild flowers and jump over seven wooden fences, then put the flowers under your pillow and dream of your future husband.

Surprisingly many still honor these traditions, and when I was younger I loved all of it. Now, not so much though. This year we hadn’t really planned anything, but we managed to find a midsummer pole to watch, and it is always entertaining to see people of all ages participate in the awkward dances.

When we had had enough we went home, and I decided to take my sweet Dell out on the balcony. When I started to put up the umbrella – for the first time this year – I discovered an unpleasant surprise. Inside the umbrella, there was a round, white, paperlike object the size of a tennis ball. A miniature rice paper lamp? No. A wasp nest.

I’m not afraid of wasps, and I’m always the one to tell Andre to calm down whenever he panics because a wasp is in the kitchen, but this totally freaked me out. I threw the umbrella back down on the floor, and ran inside. I grabbed a bug spray and went out again; spraying the umbrella, smacking it with a stick… there were no wasps inside, but when I very carefully, from a distance, lifted up the umbrella with the stick to get the nest out of there, big fat wasp worms fell out alongside with the destroyed paper ball. Eewww!! I poked them, and used my miniature golf skills to get them out of the balcony. Eeewww!!

Eventually I got it all out of the umbrella – all of this without actually touching it with my hands - and somehow got it up and unfolded with the use of a wooden stick. I’ll admit that part of me feels kind of sad thinking of that lone wasp, which we have seen so many times buzzing around the umbrella (now we know why!), and which will feel disorientated and confused when it returns and finds that not only the handcrafted house but also the babies are gone. Another part of me doesn’t ever want to fold that umbrella again.

After dinner it was time to put Alexander to bed. I offered to read him a bedtime story, but today was a special day: Today he read me a bedtime story. I didn’t know that he could do it, and I don’t think he knew either but the look on his face when he turned that last page…  My little boy is a big boy now, and he has a very proud mamma.

one of these mornings
you’re gonna rise up singing
then you’ll spread your wings
and you’ll take the sky
but, till that morning
there’s a nothin’ can harm you
with daddy and mammy
standing by