My paternal grandmother Matilda emigrated from Sweden at the beginning of the 20th Century. Like many other young, impoverished Scandinavian women, Matilda got a ticket to America in the form of a job as a domestic for a middle class East Coast family. When her new employers in White Plains, New York opened their door to greet the new Swedish maid on the day she arrived in 1905, they beheld a massive 19-year-old farm girl, a bit more than 6 feet tall, with an immense steamer trunk marked “Ostergötland Sverige†at her side.
For the next 10 years Matilda did the baking and cooking, laundry and housecleaning for a family of 7. She also chopped firewood and hauled coal, did carpentry and plumbing repairs, tended a kitchen garden, and in general toiled like a stevedore from before dawn to past dusk six days a week. On her days off she attended meetings of the International Order of Good Templars, or IOGT, a temperance society she had joined in Sweden, or sometimes other social gatherings of young Swedes living in the White Plains vicinity.
Matilda had been raised in a rural area but wasn’t uneducated. She read English as well as Swedish and was a voracious reader of all types of literature. Like many of her friends she had a passion for poetry and oratory, and at meetings would often take part in patriotic tableaux, or give dramatic recitations in her commanding, thunderous voice. With her impressive size and imperious demeanor (my father said: “She could have given emperors lessons in how to be regalâ€) she frequently portrayed American presidents and other historical figures and icons, such as Lady Liberty, or, more often, Uncle Sam.
For several years Matilda carried on a penpal correspondence with a fellow IOGT member named August. August had emigrated from Sweden some years before Matilda, and had been working his way around the country as a railroad clerk, iron foundry worker, surveyor for one of the copper mining companies in Michigan, and finally as a union organizer for the IWW . He’d done his share of carousing and hard living, but when a drinking binge resulted in alcohol poisoning that nearly killed him, he swore off alcohol completely and joined the IOGT. For the remainder of his life he would be an active member and a frequent speaker at IOGT functions. At 5′6,” August stood a half-foot shorter than Matilda, but his oratorical gifts, eloquence and abundant charm gave him a formidable stature all his own.
After ten years Matilda gave up her life in domestic service, and in New Britain, Connecticut in 1915 Matilda married August. The couple soon moved to Minnesota, where they settled in Minneapolis and raised one son, born in 1925, my father Carl Gunnar.
Matilda worked all her life on behalf of a number of causes, including temperance, communal farming, the Salvation Army and the Red Cross. At the American Swedish Institute in downtown Minneapolis she lectured on the evils of alcohol. During WWII she participated in Swedish-language radio broadcasts beamed at Europe. I have a newspaper clipping from 1943 that makes me laugh every time I think of the headline. It says in big bold letters: “MRS.[last name deleted] BLASTS AXIS”! and then in smaller letters beneath: …”in weekly radio broadcast.”
Hubert Humphrey, who was a crusading, crime-busting mayor of Minneapolis in the ’40s, knew her well, as did many other members of city government and social welfare organizations over the years. In 1963, in recognition of her lifelong public service, the King of Sweden bestowed on Matilda the medal of the Vasa Order, the highest non-military decoration given by the Swedish government.
With all of this in mind, I have to say that she was the most terrifying woman I have ever met.
Farmor (”Father’s Mother”) scared the living bejesus out of me. To be the captive audience for one of her many lectures on Truth, Hard Work, or What Makes America Great was agony. To be caught in her steely gaze was to know the true meaning of fear. When the family went to her house for Sunday dinner, she would greet us each at the door with a flurry of comments and questions which instantly summed up all of our many imperfections. In my case the Sunday litany from Farmor usually went something like this:
“Ya. Well then. I see you’re getting fatter. Your skirt is too short. You have a lot of pimples today. Don’t you wash?”
She was never malicious, and, in a very self-effacing, Scandinavian Lutheran sort of way she was always more than willing to point out to us all of her own faults and deficits, but her words still stung. I lived in abject dread of her for almost 20 years.
By contrast, my Farfar August was a little roly-poly gent with twinkling eyes–like Edmund Gwenn in “Miracle On 34th Streetâ€. I was only 3 when he died, but I can still remember the warm sound of his laugh, and the joy of sitting on his lap while he read me the special poem he composed for my birthday each year. I loved him with the entirety of my being. That this charming little old elf should be married to that great hulking terror of a woman made absolutely no sense to me.
As my sister and I were growing up, it became more and more evident that we were going to physically take after our strapping 6’3†father rather than our Betty Grable-ish blonde bombshell mother. I compensated by becoming a softspoken individual who tried, especially at social gatherings, to achieve the ludicrous and hopeless goal of blending into the wallpaper. This enraged Farmor, who would take me aside and mutter short sharp angry bursts of Swedish in my ear. I never understood a single word, but I’m pretty sure it was something along the lines of: “Head up! Shoulders back! Chin up! What are you afraid of??!”
Eventually, even I began to appreciate what an amazing person my Farmor was. My parents brought her along to visit me at college one weekend in 1970. She was then in her 80s and hip surgery and arthritis had slowed her down somewhat, but I can still see her purposeful stride as she walked forward to greet me and my motley, rainbow coalition gang of friends in the campus coffee shop. Farmor said hello to me, then turned to slowly survey the faces of my friends.
Her gaze stopped at the dark countenance of an enormous philosophy major and black militant named Davis. In his every glance and motion Davis bristled with barely-concealed contempt for not just white folks, but also, and particularly, *old* white folks. My tough old battle-axe Farmor stopped in front of him, planted her feet, and said: “Ya. Well then. It’s good to see boys like you off the streets and into college.â€
[Total silence. One beat. Two. Oh Jesus we're all going to die.]
Then, mirabile dictu, Davis smiled and simply said “Yes. It is.†And we all started to breathe again. My Farmor was a life force unto herself, with dignity that could not be denied.
Years after she died, I found a cache of letters stashed in the bottom of her steamer trunk—-the one she’d hauled to America from Sweden all those years ago. The postcards and letters were from the years 1905 to 1915, and were from a variety of friends, but mostly from August, who became her husband. Every single card was addressed to “Tildyâ€, or just “Tildâ€. I was dumbfounded. My stern, ferocious Farmor Matilda was a “Tildyâ€? A frivolous, lighthearted, girlish name like that for an imposing presence like her? And not only “Tildy” but sometimes just short-and-sweet “Tild”?? Apparently so. I’ll bet she loved being called that, too.
When I started writing I wanted to have a pseudonym, and I searched for just the right one. I wanted a name that had power I could draw on; that could give me courage to write what I dreamed of writing, and then more courage to lay it all out for the world to read. I didn’t have to search very far. I’ve been “Tildy”, or “Tild”, for many years now. I hope I can always be worthy of her name.
Posted: February 7th, 2004 under General.
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