How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons

Last weekend, the husband threw a big party at work and had our former neighbor, L., the chef, cater the food. Which she did with her usual panache, I heard - I was at the 25th birthday of a pop star, sipping soup and yammering away with a half-Danish, half-American girl who is a VJ on MTV Europe. I can yammer with the best of them, but it turns out I am an old fart, without a doubt.

But that's all beside the point. Which is that when we went to return to L. all the heaps of Moroccan bowls and plates and platters, the glasses and the elaborate footed metal steam tray that had been used at the husband's party, it meant going back to our old neighborhood on Söder and, worse, seeing the old apartment house.

It was most peculiar walking up the steps and then looking out the window at the courtyard, which is beautiful and green and new and so much nicer than our current courtyard.

And then looking at the galleys for L.'s cookbook that is coming out in the fall, walking in L,'s apartment through rooms with different colored walls, different furniture and different tile, but nonetheless are virtually the same as the rooms in our old flat, more peculiar still.

It felt a bit small, a bit low to me.

It felt sad to the husband, who is still mourning the move.

I figure he'll have recovered sometime in November.

In the meantime, I plan to enjoy every minute.

The Swedish words for the day are gullviva, mandelblom, kattfot, blå viol. They mean cowslip, meadow saxifrage, cat's foot, wild violet.

- by Francis S.