Electric mixer? I don’t have one

Grandma opened the door with a big smile. She accepted the offered flowers as Disa bent forward to put her arms around her huggable grandmother, who responded to Disa's hug with a warm embrace. The aroma of coffee was in the air and Disa breathed the lovely smell in through her nostrils. She had not heard steps from inside the apartment when she came, so Grandma had probably been standing beside the door waiting for Disa to knock.

Grandma lived quite near Disa's workplace, so she easily walked by before taking the train home. Grandma lived in a secluded retirement home with terraced houses, which all had their own apartment on the ground level with a patch of grass at the back. It was a nice, quiet green area. She could hear the faint sound of birds from the park forest beyond the terrace. This is how Disa would like to live when she was old.

She hung her handbag on a hook in the hallway. It was a little cumbersome to get past Grandma’s walking frame and old umbrella stand that stood in the way. She cast a glance at the worn leather rack which she remembered stood for years in the hall of Grandma and Grandpa’s old home.

‘So great to see you, it has really been too long since we last saw each other,’ Disa said.

‘Yes, you’re absolutely right, dear. And what beautiful flowers you have brought. You shouldn’t have,’ Grandma said but looked satisfied. ‘And lilies, which I love!’

‘Unfortunately there were no pink ones, but I hope you also like these?’ said Disa.

‘Yes, indeed. All flowers and all colours are so beautiful and especially lilies. Look how beautiful they are, have you ever seen such a beautiful bouquet?’ said Grandma, holding the flowers up to Disa’s face, right in front of her nose.

‘Yes, I see,’ said Disa and laughed.

‘But come in, come in, we can’t stand in the hall and talk. Come and sit down and get some coffee in you.’

Grandma led her the few steps into the kitchen to a table set with her finest china coffee sets. Store bought buns in a few varieties lay crowded on a cookie platter.

‘How nice you have made it. And your best coffee set, I’m very honoured,’ said Disa.

She looked at the lovely fancy coffee cups. They had a wide band of gold leaf around the top edge and were beautifully decorated with painted flowers in pink and pale red on both the outside and the inside of the cups. Disa had never seen a set also decorated on the inside of the cups like this. The saucers and dessert plates had wide wavy gold leaf bands around the edge as well, with an equally beautiful sugar bowl and cream jug. Years ago, Grandma had shown her a cigarette box that was part of the same set, too, but which she never used anymore.

Nowadays people only smoke outdoors. So there’s no need for beautifully matching ashtray on the coffee table. But things were different in Grandma’s time, when you would smoke indoors with your coffee. In fact, they still smoked indoors when Disa was young.

‘Oh, that old set is not much to celebrate. I was given it as a wedding present for god knows how many years ago. But you can still feel honoured, it’s so nice you are here!’ said grandma.

Right when Disa arrived at Grandma’s place she felt a harmonious calm. Even at the door, it smelt of Grandma, which felt so relaxing. It was like stepping into a bubble where time slowed down and dragged a bit.

Grandma picked up a beautiful glass vase as Disa followed her gentle movements through the procedure of putting the flowers in water – removing the cellophane, adding water that had to be just warm enough, and trimming the stems. With each step, Disa felt herself more relaxed. Grandma was more stress-relieving than tranquillisers.

The radio was on and Grandma turned it off. ‘Can you help me whip the cream?’ she asked. ‘I don’t have the same strength in my arms I used to.’

‘Yes,’ replied Disa obligingly. ‘Where is your mixer?’

‘Electric mixer? I don’t have one. It’s always so easy to whip a little cream. You don’t need an electric mixer for it.’ Grandma rummaged around in the kitchen drawers. ‘Here, you see, here’s my whisk,’ she said enthusiastically, and handed Disa a hand whisk.

The bowl with cream was ready on the counter, so Disa could only start whisking. As far as she could remember, she had never whisked cream by hand, but she set to and whisked with all her strength. She looked again at the beautiful wedding service.

‘When did you actually get married, you and Grandpa?’

‘In 1936. So we were married these many years before he was taken away from me five years ago,’ said Grandma sadly. ‘But we had a lot of good years together, which I am grateful for. And it ended with him going first, but me soon after,’ said Grandma as if it was an undisputed fact in a carefree almost wistful voice.

Disa did not think to disagree. When you were as old as Grandma, passed hundred, you had probably resigned yourself to death and hopefully done everything you wanted in life. Even so, Disa would miss Grandma when she was gone, and she selfishly hoped that Grandma would be with them for some time still. It had been so sad when Grandpa died. She missed him still.

‘Is everything well with you otherwise?’ asked Disa with warmth in her voice.

‘Oh yeah, head up and feet down,’ said Grandma, chuckling. ‘I’ve got a few aches and pains but it would be strange if I didn’t.’ Grandma was not much to talk about illnesses and quickly switched the topic with a counter question. ‘What about you, dear child?’

‘I’m fine. It’s a bit stressful at work, since it’s that time of the month, but otherwise things are good,’ replied Disa and changed the arm she was whisking with.

‘Yes, you have to be responsible for so many figures, it must be stressful. You’re the economist?’ asked Grandma with interest.

‘You could say that,’ said Disa and thought that her long title wouldn’t explain more to Grandma what she did at this point.

‘And you sit in front of one of those computer machines?’ asked Grandma curiously.

‘Yes, exactly.’ Disa didn’t want to go into too much detail explaining what she did. She knew Grandma wouldn’t understand most of her vocabulary and technical terms, so she tried a short version with a few simple words. ‘It is a business system that I make entries and do bookkeeping in, but there are also many meetings during the day and many emails to write.’

‘Yes, see those things I don’t understand. You are clever to understand them,’ said Grandma with admiration in her voice.

‘Thank you, but it is not as difficult as it may sound. If a customer orders a product someone enters it on the computer instead writing it down on paper of as before. And then it has to be recorded, and that is also done directly in the system by computer instead of on paper,’ Disa tried to explain pedagogically. She switched whisking arm again.

‘Right. And everything is typed on the computer machine? It is like a typewriter, then?’ asked Grandma curiously.

‘Yes, you could say that. The keyboard you use to type in the letters looks like a typewriter. But on a typewriter you have to put in the paper. On a PC, you have a monitor instead, like a TV, so you can see everything you write directly on the screen. If you still want it on paper, you can print it on your printer.’

She tried to explain with simple words, but this was hard. She tried to keep in mind not to resort to English words, because she knew Grandma did not understand any English and when at the last moment she used the Swedish word skrivare instead of printer, it didn’t make things much better. For Grandma, it must have sounded foreign and very cryptic: email, keyboard, screen, printer. It wasn’t every day you had to explain what a computer looked like. Most people had seen one these days. Next time she could bring her laptop and show it instead.

‘Yes, can you imagine. The things they come up with,’ Grandma said impressed. ‘Is the cream ready soon? It usually goes quick to whip a little cream.’

‘Well, now I think it’s ready. A little loose perhaps,’ said Disa, her arms feeling tired after all the whipping. Quick and easy to whip by hand it surely wasn’t, at least not compared to using an electric mixer. But it was a matter of habit, she supposed, everything had to be done quickly nowadays.

The boiled coffee had been left to stand and draw a few moments and Grandma took the coffee pot from the stove and poured the steaming coffee into the antique cup.

‘Dip now. Take some cream for the cake,’ Grandma said, walking with a limp to take a spoon from the cupboard and putting it in the bowl.’ The home service helped me buy some coffee cakes. They are so kind. I don’t go shopping myself anymore, I stopped that a few years ago. That’s when I stopped cooking, so they come two times a day. When you are over a hundred, it’s not strange if you can’t be bothered to cook anymore, is it? Still, I did cook all my life.’

‘You’re still fit as a fiddle, aren’t you! But it was about time you stopped doing household chores. I don’t understand how you managed so long,’ said Disa.

‘To think that I have survived my hundredth birthday. I would never have believed it. That I would live so long. For over one hundred years. Can you imagine. That I would be this old.’ Grandma pushed quite hard on her wrinkled cheek so that the skin pressed in and laughed. When she removed the curved index finger it left a pit behind.

‘Yes, it’s just amazing that you managed it, did you ever think you would when you were younger?’

‘Nah, I would never have believed it. That I would be so old. Can you imagine. Take another now, don’t be shy,’ insisted Grandma.

‘I’ll take some of the chocolate cake then, it looks really good. But really, I shouldn’t eat so much sweets!’ said Disa a little reproachfully, mainly meant for herself.

‘You are so slim, of course you should have cake with your coffee. Take a bun too!’ said Grandma.

‘I could stand to lose a couple of kilos, but mostly I think about trying to be healthy. But maybe a small bun can do no harm.’

‘No, definitely not. They’re good, and we are not poor any longer. We can afford it now. Can’t we? We’re not poor any more, are we.’

‘You’re right about that,’ said Disa and smiled. ‘But it’s not that we can’t afford it, perhaps, but that it’s not so healthy. We should not eat so much unhealthy things as we do today.’

‘No indeed. Do you think I should stop eating buns then?’ said Grandma with a grumpy look.

Disa wasn’t sure if she was joking or not, but laughed a little uneasily. ‘No, I don’t think so. Not you, but maybe I should think about it.’

‘So you think I can continue eating sweets then?’ said Grandma and waited defiantly for an answer.

‘Yes, absolutely! You don’t have to stop doing anything at your age, whether eating or anything else. If you have managed this far, you will certainly be fine for a little longer!’

‘Really, you think so. Well then, I’ll go on with it,’ said Grandma contentedly.

‘Please do!’ said Disa laughing.

The pendulum clock loudly struck the half-hour. The sound echoed out into the room and then only its hands were heard ticking time forward slowly but surely.

Disa always noticed it was so quiet at Grandma’s. The only thing to be heard was the clock ticking. Every half hour it struck once and every hour it struck the right number of times for the hour. It was the only thing that could be heard in the silence. So relaxing. Maybe she could buy a pendulum clock. Do they stop time, if only momentarily every second? Or was it the whole atmosphere here at Grandma’s that made her so totally destressed.

Disa took her mobile out of her jeans front pocket and saw the battery had run out. She had forgotten to charge it that night. No wonder it had not rung for so long!

The last call she took was before lunch. She would only stay with Grandma a short while longer, so she had to do without the phone for that time. It wasn’t many years ago there were no mobile phones, and people survived well enough. Now you could not be without it even for a short while, without feeling worried about being unavailable. She would simply try to take the opportunity to enjoy the tranquillity of being with Grandma all the more instead, since she could not even be disturbed by her phone. And she slid it back into her pants pocket.

‘You were poor, weren’t you, when you grew up?’ asked Disa. Grandma had never told anything about her childhood.

‘Yes, oh, yes. Life was hard,’ said Grandma reluctantly. ‘It was hard, poor, and hard to make ends meet, and it was a grind from morning to night.’

Disa knew that Grandma preferred to talk about current events rather than her childhood. She read the newspaper carefully, with a magnifying glass at the ready, for a few hours each morning and was well up to date with what was happening in the world. In the past she discussed everything with Grandpa, but after he had passed away she’d have had all that time alone and with no-one at all to discuss with. Now there was no one who could always be there to talk to her about all things imaginable. It would be nice to hear more about old times, but Grandma always avoided the subject.

‘It sounds tough. Can’t you tell me?’ said Disa and sat back more comfortably.

‘Well...,’ said Grandma doubtfully. ‘Can it really be something worth listening to, an old lady’s story.’

Disa nodded. ‘If you want to tell me, I’d love to listen. It would be interesting to hear a bit about the old times.’

‘Oh well, if you say so. Well, what should I tell you. You already know that we lived on a farm, like most other people at that time. Lövbacken. Sweden was a farming society. We were eight children in the household, a large family, but so were all families. The older children helped with caring for the younger ones. I was born at Lövbacken and was number five of the siblings.’

Disa felt so incredibly thankful for being born in what she considered the right time. Eight children. She could hardly cope with one. And when could the next child be scheduled? She couldn't understand how you could keep up with eight. Admittedly Great Grandma did not have a job to go to. Being away from home 11 hours a day and then doing everything else – family, household, shopping, cooking, doing the dishes, cleaning, washing, showering, bills, commitments in the kindergarten and now in school, parents’ meetings, activities with the job and friends – all in the remaining five hours if we were to get eight hours of sleep, which in itself seemed impossible. And then the house projects which came on top of everything.

But still. A farm and a family of ten. She pictured just the washing, the huge pile of linen it must have been. At that time, there were hardly any washing machines. With endless small children in the household they must have gone through a lot of nappies, not plastic nappies which could just be discarded immediately, but ones that had to be properly washed. By hand.

‘What a pain it must have been for Great Grandma to take care of such a large family. I am thinking just of the laundry. Did you even have piped water?’

‘In the beginning we didn’t. We had to draw water from the well in the yard and it had to be enough for cooking, washing, and the animals. Later they brought water into the house and we had a hand pump above the sink. Eventually, there was also a pump outside for the cows. Mum did laundry under a roof out in the yard with a washing mill and tubs. And the well was next to it.’ Grandma paused in her storytelling putting a sugar cube on her tongue. She brought her lips to the coffee cup and slurped a little coffee.

‘Washing mill, you said? What kind of a thing is that?’ asked Disa curiously.

‘Washing mill, yes. It’s like a kind of tub that you put the laundry in and then heated. Are you eating your buns now then? I don’t want to have to save anything, so it’s good if you eat it up,’ said Grandma pointedly. Disa looked at the overflowing platter with all the buns and cookies. There was no way everything would be eaten.