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Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Story Of My Life

I love biographies. I have always much preferred them to works of fiction, in fact, I find a lot of fiction terribly hard to read. It doesn’t matter what kind of outlandish scenarios the author has come up with – if it isn’t based in some kind of reality, I lose patience pretty quickly. But biographies. I get sucked in. The more recent, the better – if I can get my hands on a book about someone who is still alive, I might finish it in one sitting.
Even better if it was written by the person themselves. Example – The Dirt by Mötley Crüe. Written by the guys in the band, and their lives and careers were insane! Read it in one night (I mean one night – started it in the afternoon and finished it by morning. Couldn’t put it down).

I loved “Yes, Please” by Amy Poehler and “Bossypants” by Tina Fey (then again, either of them could come out with a line of laundry soaps and I would, realistically, find it genius).

Right now, I’ve got my eye on “Born To Run” by Bruce Springsteen and “Believe Me” by Eddie Izzard. I love a good memoir, but every time I start one, and the author talks about their childhood and youth, I always wonder how the hell they remember everything?

If I was to write a book about my life, it would a) probably be a thin one and b) not very interesting at that. It would be more like a short user manual – “How To Feed and Care for a Dork’, by Maja With a J. I wouldn't know where to start!

I remember things from my childhood but not a ton of interesting stories. It was a regular childhood, I suppose. Regular childhoods seldom lead to fascinating lives, it seems. I can’t think of a specific story or event that “shaped me” or “made me become the person I am today”. Although, I suppose, everything that happens to you does in one way or another.

When I think of my childhood, it’s always summer. My mom was a teacher so she had the summer off and we usually spent most of it at our family’s cabin in the archipelago not far from Stockholm (where I was born and raised). My maternal grandparents owned the cabin, but next to it was a meadow or field, and on the other side of that field was a cabin that was owned by my paternal grandparents – still is owned by my last surviving grandma, myself, my sister and my uncle. I think this must have been where my parents met, but they never told me much about their early years as a couple. I don’t know why. Maybe they didn’t remember either?
We usually stayed at Mormor & Morfar’s (maternal grandma and grandpa) place. It was slightly bigger and had a small secondary cabin as well. The smaller cabin used to be the only cabin, until they build the “big cabin” the same year I was born.

Look at the things it turns out I know and remember!

There were lots of kids in the area and I remember playing with Sandra (who still comes there with her mom), Sarah, and Jeanette, who was a bit older than I and mostly concerned with her appearance and having a boyfriend. There was also Christina, whom I still keep in touch with on Facebook. I don’t know what the hell we did all day, though. Hang out in the woods? Yeah, we did that. Go swimming? Yep, did that a lot. We rode our bikes and went to see the horses at a small ranch nearby. I don’t remember the name of the guy who owned the horses, but they were named Tara, Nova, and Melinda. Sometimes they were in their barn and sometimes they were outside in the meadow, which had an electrical fence around it and I was obsessed with touching it.

(That part may explain a lot, actually.)

So I guess I remember some things. I guess that if I ever were to write a book about myself, that’s where I would begin. The summers in Rörvik with my grandparents and my mom and dad, and the rest of my family. I guess if I thought long and hard, I could come up with some stories about what happened there, maybe even something that had a great impact on me or explains me.

That’s where I would start.

- Maja (With a J)

Little Maja picking some flowers by the Big Cabin

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