The cow Thea with a big old-fashioned T on her forehead

They were sitting with coffee and cookies when Disa asked whether Grandma had any old photos to show them. After some coaxing and assurances from Michael that they really did want to see the old photos, Grandma hobbled to the living room with them to take the worn photo albums out from the welsh dresser. Atop the beautifully curved dresser lay a crocheted table runner with several framed photos of all of Grandma’s descendants on it. Both the dresser and the dinner table were made of lacquered mahogany, as was the chiffonier in the kitchen. Probably a set. Grandma put the albums on the dinner table, which had a crocheted table cloth just like the dresser.

‘Well, sit down,’ Grandma said and flopped into a chair so she sat with her back to the wall and the grandfather clock.

Michael and Disa sat down on the other side of the table. Grandma opened one of the albums and a handful of various sized loose photographs fell out from a yellowed and worn envelope.

‘This photo is old all right, it was taken before I was born,’ she said about the first photo, which was slightly larger than the others with thicker paper. The black and white photo showed a small square wooden house in the background and a handful of finely dressed people in front. ‘That’s my mother and father, and those are my older siblings,’ she said and pointed at their faces on the card. ‘And a few others as well. You can see how they’re all dressed up in their best. I don’t know what it was they were celebrating, but it must have been something extra to for all of them to be lined up like that in such nice clothes.’ She barely looked at the picture herself, but still seemed to know exactly what it looked like.

‘I think the photo was taken by a relative of my mother who had one of those old box cameras that only worked in daylight. We didn’t have a camera of our own at the time, we only got that later.

‘That small house is where they lived when they first moved to Lövbacken, but then when my father built the bigger house, the old one was used as a woodshed,’ she said and tapped her index finger at the building that looked no larger than a shack. She pointed at others in the photo. ‘That is my sister May. She was always kind to me and took care of me. Gösta was a real ladies man and Sixten was good at helping out around the farm.’ Grandma handed the photo over to Disa, who felt she now had a piece of precious history in her hands. ‘They’re all dead now,’ Grandma said.

Disa looked at the photo and then passed it on to Michael.

Grandma held up a sepia coloured photo in a different size from the first one and pointed to their faces as she described them.

‘This is my grandmother and grandfather on my mom’s side and all their seven adult children with my grandfather’s brother.’

She handed the photograph to Disa. It had faded and was worn from being handled over the years, but the faces were still easy to make out. The grandparents and granduncle sat at a table where she could see coffee cups, a cream jug, and a sugar bowl made of some kind of tin-looking material, and a plate filled to the brim with cakes. Behind them, all the adult children stood lined up. All of them dressed in their best. This could easily have been the first photograph any of them had ever been in.

‘There’s mother,’ she said pointing to one of the faces. ‘I don’t really know when the photo was taken, but it’s probably quite old as well. Both my grandmother and grandfather died in 1926, so it must be from before that,’ Grandma said. ‘Well, of course,’ she laughed her chuckling laugh at herself. ‘Here’s one of us kids sitting on the pile of stone outside the house, and look, there I am.’ Grandma read out the names of her siblings, which were written on the back of the photograph along with the line: “Picture taken at Lövbacken year 1916-1917.” I would have been four or five years old then. And the next photo is of the horses.’ Grandma turned the photo over and read “mother and daughter, Vera and Blenda. Horses at Lövbacken year 1918.”

She gave both the cards to Disa, who passed on the one she was holding to Michael.

New fingerprints added to the old ones. It was a beautiful black and white photo of the horses in a snowy forested landscape.

'We had two horses, Vera and Blenda, they were mother and daughter. We had many animals. Cows, pigs, hens, and geese. And my favourite cow was called Thea. Sometimes my father could be mean. I remember once getting a dressing-down and a half. People used to buy milk from him and he had a milk diary to keep track of it. He had been sitting there doodling with his ink pen, but blamed me for doing it. I ran to Thea for comfort. She was my favourite cow. She had a white mark on her forehead, which looked just like a big old-fashioned T and that’s why she was called Thea. The cow lay her head down with the muzzle on the floor and I put my arms around her neck and wept. And the tears flowed from Thea as well. We cried together.’ Grandma’s eyes glittered. Over ninety years later, she was still moved by the memory.

Disa had heard the story several times before so was familiar with it. Grandma told it the same way as the first time she’d heard it. It felt homely and relaxed. Disa got the feeling this must’ve be how it was sitting around a campfire in the old day telling stories. They were told over and over to be passed on to new generations. It felt pleasant, comfortable somehow. Hearing a story you’d already heard before. No unexpected surprises.

‘Here’s a school photo of me when I went to school in 1921. And the next photo is from 1933. It’s from Lövbacken. You didn’t take pictures often back then,’ Grandma said.

The school photo had stiffer material and almost all the people in it had a black ink cross drawn above their head. How sad it must feel to have everyone around you die away until you’re the only one left, Disa thought. The other picture of Lövbacken showed their house in the background with Grandma, some of her siblings and their mother standing next to the horses in the foreground. A summer photo this time, taken twelve years later.

Grandma described how the same year, 1921, was the year her mother and father had gone to vote for the first time in their lives and that her mother wasn’t considered a legal person in control of her own rights until the age of forty.

She put the photos back into the old worn envelope. ‘There, you take them, if you want,’ she said and handed the envelope to Disa.

Disa thanked her, very pleased to get them. Grandma opened the photo album to its first page.

‘In the thirties we took more photographs,’ she said.

The pages held black and white photos from a time long gone by, the life on the farm, when it was time to plough and take in the harvest with the help of the horses, Grandma feeding the hens, a few of the children on skis, and someone’s confirmation ceremony.

Grandma kept turning the pages of the photo album. ‘Here’s one I took of myself and Margareta.’ She showed a photo of a young girl holding a six-month old baby meant to be Disa’s aunt in her lap. ‘I had one of those pinhole cameras and had darkened the room as you can see.’

Grandma pointed at something that looked like a sheet put up behind the grey and white chequered curtains. ‘It needed to be quite dark in the room for the photograph to come out well. Taking photos was quite the enterprise in those days. I remember that it was cold in the house and there was a cold draft around our feet. I had made a fire in the stove in the morning, but the fire was going low and it was time to add more wood to it. But I wanted to get the photo while Margareta was still in a good mood. I didn’t want to have a photograph of a crying baby.

‘How serious I look, do you see? In those days you were supposed to look like that when you had your picture taken. It was serious, it didn’t happen often in life and it wasn’t the time to horse around. But these days it’s more of a fun thing, full of laughter, right? Look how I dressed up myself and little Margareta. I even remember the smell of the room we were in, it smelled so fresh and clean. Imagine how well you can remember a smell so many years later,’ she said in wonder. ‘If that isn’t strange, I don’t know what is.’

The grandfather clock wheezed like it was taking a breath and range loudly once, the noise echoing around the room. Disa eyed the photo closely, it was no more than six by eight centimetres big. Grandma sat in a high-backed chair, dressed nicely in a white blouse and black skirt with a beautiful hairdo typical of the time the photo was taken. In her lap she had Disa’s aunt, who wore a dress, wool pantyhose and fine dress shoes. She also noticed the old, oversized water radiator under the window and that the chair the two were sitting on had dark cloth with light flowers on vines in the foreground. The floor was rough worn wood planks and the walls were in a uniform bright colour. A picture can say more than a thousand words if only you take the time to study it closely, Disa thought.

It was hard to imagine Grandma had been a young slender girl once, with her own dreams of the future like everyone else. And here she was sitting next to Disa with the answer to how her life had turned out. Had it been what she imagined it would be? Probably. Children and a family. Full stop. Nowadays there was so much more you needed to succeed with. Children and family. Studies. Career. Friends. Hobbies. The hobbies of your children. Personal development. Achieving happiness. Full stop.

‘There was only the one photo, as you can see, from all that effort,’ Grandma said.

‘But a very good one. You were beautiful in it,’ Disa said.

‘Well, maybe I was, but I didn’t feel I was at the time of course,’ she chuckled warmly.

‘It’s a lucky thing you took the photo when you did, all those years ago. It was worth all the effort it took, so that we could see it now. Imagine that you immortalized that moment. Maybe we could scan it so we have copy.’

‘You can have it,’ she replied and started working the photo out from its place in the album.

‘No, wait, you aren’t going to ruin the album are you?’ Disa said in surprise and tried to stop her. But the photo was already out and handed to Disa.

‘Here you go,’ Grandma said smiling.

Disa accepted the photo astonished. ‘It’s wonderful. I’m glad to have it, but you don’t have to spoil your album for it.’

‘What does it matter, I’m dead soon anyways,’ she said just matter of fact. ‘And until then I have the photos in my memory anyways. I know these photos inside out. I have looked at them so many times.’

In the past, photos were only taken on a few special occasions in life. Disa thought of the thousands of photos she herself had, but that she rarely ever revisited. Maybe she would get around to it when she was retired, she thought, maybe then she would have the time for it. And then they would be there waiting for her, in their thousands.

‘If there are any more photos you want we can take them out as well,’ grandma said.

This time Disa let her do as she pleased getting a handful of photos. The glue that held them in place was decades old and they came loose easily. She wrote what they showed on their backs.

‘Then it became a bit easier to take photographs when we got a new camera. You just pushed a button and it was done, we took more of them at that point.’

‘On that note, I would like to immortalise this moment,’ Disa said and took out her phone from her front pocket. She took a picture of everyone at the table and one of Grandma, so she could have a look.

‘Oh, look, I made it onto the picture,’ she chuckled. ‘But what use is a picture of an old lady. What will you ever do with that, hmm? Taking pictures of an old lady. And to imagine it went so fast to develop it, that you can see the photo right there on the camera. There’s no need to develop the film then?’ grandma said and looked up with slight surprise in her eyes.

‘No, there is no film roll here, there wouldn’t be any space, see?’ Disa said and showed her how thin the phone was. ‘The photo is saved directly in here,’ she said and tapped her index finger against the display.

‘The things they come up with.’ She said turning to Michael. ‘Isn’t it amazing? The things they come up with.’

‘So true,’ Michael agreed.

‘Have you seen what an old lady there is in there,’ she said and pointed with her aging finger at the phone while laughing hoarsely as she did.

‘I saw. But you look young for your age, not a day over a hundred,’ Michael said and looked amused.

‘You think so, hmm?’ Grandma said and turned to Disa. ‘What a charmer you’ve got there.’

‘Yes, I guess he is,’ Disa said and smiled affectionately at Michael. She put the phone back into her pocket.

Grandma kept leafing through the album, showing pictures from her youth. Small black and white photos of everything from visits to the beach to everyday life, with a beautifully handwritten cursive note in ink under each picture. One photo showed Grandma and Grandpa lying in each other’s arms on a blanket on the beach. Love existed even in the black and white era.

‘Maybe we should get going,’ Disa said and started to rise.

She placed the photos taken out for her with the others in the envelope. Michael stood up. Grandma quickly leafed through the last pages in the album, closed it and placed it back on top of the pile of albums.

‘And soon it will be Easter too,’ Grandma said.

The grandfather clock drew its hoarse breath and sounded two loud clanging rings.

‘There’s many days until Easter,’ Grandma said a bit despondently, as if she was talking to herself. ‘Many days to get through without knowing what to do with them. But I’m sure it will turn out alright. At least I have my newspaper and the TV, and the birds of course.’ Grandma looked out towards the park forest through the living room window and at her currently deserted bird box. No birds were visible. ‘The waxwings don’t come until dinnertime, they have their special feeding times,’ Grandma said.

Disa placed the photo, which was slightly larger than the others, at the bottom of the pile. At its top now lay the photo of grandma and Margareta, which Grandma had described so closely. Disa was glad she had received such a detailed description of it, otherwise she would probably have passed it over as just another black and white photo out of many. Now she knew that the moment which had been immortalised eighty years ago had come into being through Grandma darkening the room with a sheet over the window. She had had to, in order to at all be able to take a picture with the old camera. Disa even knew how it had smelled. Clean and fresh, and newly washed. Grandma had sat there in the drafty house with a six-month old baby, not knowing anything about the future. And a moment later life had passed her by. Disa returned the photos to the envelope,