There you are, November

November 2010 has, thus far, lulled me into a false sense of complacency.  Last year, November yielded not one sunny day.  It was the single most depressing month of weather I had ever witnessed - and I'm bearing in mind a five-month stint in London in 2001 where I counted four completely rain free days.  Swedish family and friends have told me that November is the generally the most depressing month of the year weather-wise.  So this year I have joyfully welcomed the daily dose of cool, southerly November sun and I have walked and/or run over half of this beautiful city during the last week trying to absorb enough vitamin D to sustain me during the coming months of darkness.  I even showed up for a lunch last Friday in my running clothes because I couldn't resist the urge to make my way there and home on foot. 

Today November, "the real November" (as I have taken to calling it) returned.  At times like this, I wish that I were half the photographer that our friend Alex C. is because words cannot adequately describe the weather in Stockholm.  Our building sits next to a normally calm lake and most days we have a clear view from our living room window across the water to Tantolunden, a cute section of Södermalm dotted with tiny cottages and lots of greenery.  Today, the view from our living room window brought to mind the intro sequence from episodes of Deadliest Catch.  Okay, maybe not quite that bad, but I still blinked several times to make sure that my eyes were not deceiving me.  There were breaking waves.  On a lake.   The fierce winds drove the freezing rain and snow in every direction, such that I could not distinguish between heavy precipitation and fog, much less the direction from which it was coming.  One moment it snowed.  The next it rained.  I sensed that the comfortable fall weather was duking it out with old man winter somewhere in the troposphere - and losing.

I know winter is coming.  The story is as predictable as an episode of Scooby Doo.  Yet, contrary to what my grey mood today may indicate, I'm looking forward to the season of brisk, dry air and blinding white snow.  It's the transition from one season to the next that I dread.  So, grudgingly I welcome November.  May it leave as quickly as it came.

A Trusting Nation, Part II

In my last post, I talked about a stranger in a coffee shop in Stockholm who asked me to keep an eye on her sleeping newborn for a few minutes while she went to the bathroom.  This shocked me to my core because this is soooo not the norm in the United States.  I have never once been asked to look after a baby under similar circumstances in the U.S., not even in my hometown of approximately 15,000 inhabitants in rural Pennsylvania.  


That post generated some wonderful commentary on Facebook and in my email inbox and I thank everyone for contributing their points of view.  I find it fascinating that several cultures, including Sweden, Turkey and Armenia, have adopted an "it takes a village to raise a child" mentality.  Under that rubric, parents are able to quickly assess a person's character and, having done so, to feel comfortable allowing that person to care for (i.e., not to kidnap or bring harm to) a child during the time it takes for the parent to, say, use the restroom.  


Perhaps it boils down to a perception of risk issue.  Whether and to what extent the perceived threat is real or stems instead from media fear mongering, I cannot say.  I do know that in Sweden one rarely reads of a domestic child kidnapping or murder.  Whereas in the United States it seems that one reads a scary headline about a missing or murdered child nearly every day.  In recent years, the U.S. government has even implemented a system to quickly notify the public when a child has gone missing, and it is used quite often.  Personally, I would never leave a child with a stranger even for the time it takes to go to the bathroom. That goes for Sweden, the U.S., or anywhere else in the world.  I know that it's statistically unlikely that the person sitting next to me at a coffee shop would kidnap or harm a child but I still perceive a risk, a risk that I would be unwilling to take.  


At the same time, I admire the Swedes for their ability to trust in one another.  (And not just on this issue.  Examples abound and some will surely make their way into future posts.)  While I will never reach the point where I would entrust the care of a child to a stranger, I hope that, among the many lessons from living here, I will gradually learn to have just a little more faith in my fellow humans.