Where I was born…

When I drove home on Tuesday I visited the agricultural school where I lived from I was born till I was almost seven years, the Forslunda gymnasium approximately 5 km outside Umeå in Västerbotten. This school is still an agricultural school. Dad was teacher at this school, and then all who worked at the schools lived at them, in official residences.

On all the other schools we lived later we had own houses. But on this school we had a flat, but this flat was fairly big, I now realise when I see the pictures and have visited the place and house again!!!

We lived in the whole bottom floor, with three bed-rooms, a living-room (a lounge), a dining room (small) and a kitchen (of course)… Thus in a flat containing five rooms. The innermost rooms weren’t possible to use in the beginning because they were too cold. But later they became isolated and warm… When the family grew…

The window nearest the outer-door (to the right of the outer-door) was the window to the kitchen. To the right of that window was the window to the dining-room. The broader window on the gable (gavel in Swedish) was one of the windows to the living-room (lounge). The balcony is the same as when we lived there!!! And it lies outside the living-room. The living-room had an open fire-place… Which we seldom used, as it was so many small children in this home??

All rooms were fairly big!! Except the dining room…

Between this house and the school (or actually the head-masters house) laid a pond, which mom was afraid we should fall in. So I guess one dreamt night-mares about this pond.
I took a picture from the headmasters house (which was the headmasters house then at least, I don’t know if it is now, don’t think so) over the pond on the house we lived in, the gable of it was turned down to the pond.

Memories are coming: Me and my one year younger brother was put in a kindergarten for music when I was five and he four, which we joined once a week I think? And they bought the GrotrianSteinweg-piano even earlier, which still exists in mom’s home, when we were very small, my oldest brother a baby and I a little more than one year. This piano was bought on dad’s wish. He took singing-lessons when he studied at the agricultural college in Uppsala. When he grew up he took lessons in violin-playing and for me this is a bit surprising, because I don’t think that was especially common then, and least where he grew up.

Mom didn’t have these opportunities in the home where she grew up, but she sang in the church-choir there for many years and with great eagerness.

So music has always existed, but never professionally until my studies…

During our living here dad visited an eye-doctor and she (??) took a lot of money; and dad said that I should become an eye-doctor when I got grown up. I never did. Didn’t live up to all expectations… But in a way the pressure hasn’t been of that kind either… But probably another sort of pressure, not expressed… I can’t really describe it…

At this school there was a well-known stallion-breeding (hingstuppfödning in Swedish) of a Swedish breed, nordsvenskar, a carthorse (arbetshäst in Swedish), lighter than the Ardennes carthorse, some are even clever trotters (duktiga travare in Swedish)!

So we grew up with beautiful and “wild” horses with a lot of temperament and own will running in the enclosed pasture lands round the house, which there was then. Now there are school-houses there. This horse-breeding is even mentioned in the National encyclopaedia (NE)!

I was a bit afraid of them, had a lot of respect for them… I have a couple of memories connected to them… And I still have a lot of respect for horses, despite I later have been riding fairly a lot and even driving horses a little. Or because I have done that!???

Dad came home from work and poured out his frustration and anger… His patience was very short!!?? He had difficulties to have someone above him?? To have someone bossing him? (In fact the therapist I had in the Gestalt-group said she was that sort of person too! She had to be her own she said).

But when dad retired he said he was satisfied with working, he didn’t miss his work at all, opposite to the feelings mom felt when she retired from her work (but she had been home many years with us, sacrificing herself!!?? We were a burden and nuisance? With our existence and needs? “Some of us” enormous needs!!? Too big? Unnaturally big? One of us got a quite big crisis at the age ten, I don’t say who, hmmm…).

Mom was very insecure and lacked confidence in herself, entirely, despite she too had an education; she was the first in her family with such a long education as she had… But such feelings come from other things, has other roots?? No successes in the world of any kind can cure that? And she was extremely anxious we should fall in the pond, and anxious for a lot of other things. So I wonder if she forwarded this insecurity further on top of other things that made us (me) insecure?? We were over-protected in a way? And in another way not?

Some pictures are taken from inside the car. And it rained more or less when we visited this school, which you also can see.

See map: The first two are the house we lived in (number 7 on the map). The third (number 21 on the map) a house where the staff under the headmaster and teachers lived. The fourth the headmaster's house (number 19 on the map). The fifth from the headmaster's house over the pond to the house where we lived. The sixth and last from the economy-buildings as we call them here... :-)

Where house number 5 lies there was a summer cow-house, and where all the houses 8-11 including the parking-lot (number 12) were enclosed pasture lands where horses ran... The history of this school you find at this page (only in Swedish). Already 1859 initiative was taken for an agricultural school in this area. 75 years ago the school was moved to the place where it still located. In fact I didn't know anything of what stood on this page!!!