Mitt barnbarn E, 12 år, går i Engelska skolan. Under sommaren fick de i uppgift att intervjua en äldre släkting. Hon har gjort en bra uppgift, men jag ser att hon tagit med det som hon själv tyckte var mest intressant. En del missuppfattningar blev det, men det är inte min sak att korrigera någonting i efterhand. Hon uppfattade svaren så som hon skrivit. Jag lägger ut hennes lilla uppsats - jag lämnar inte ut något om min person, som jag inte kan stå för.
Interview with my Grandmother
My grandmothers name
is Kajsa and she was born on the 20th of April in 1939. I will now tell you
what it was like for her when she was young.
Kajsa grew up in a
Swedish town named Västerås. In the old days, Västerås was a much smaller town
than it is today. But my grandmother still thought that Västerås was a nice
town.
Kajsa lived with her
grandparents and her big brother. They lived in a very small apartment. The
apartment had one room, a kitchen and a dining room. K and her brother slept in
the dining room.
Her big
brother was often very mean. He was always teasing my grandmother and sometimes
hitting her. Her grandparents were nice but her grandmother was very strict.
K´s father went to America in the
fall in 1939 to work for a Swedish company. He was drafted to the U.S. army and
re-married after the war. K´s mother was
alone with the children so she couldn´t take care of them. She worked full time
at the Swedish post office. There were not many women who had full time jobs at that time. But they still met
their mother for holidays.
After World War 2,
some people had difficulties in getting food. But K and her family always
had food because her grandfather had his own grocery store. She worked there
sometimes.
K liked school
from the beginning. She loved her teacher Gunnel in the first grade. Her
favourite subject was Swedish but she hated sports.
My grandmother
thought that she had too many friends. K and here friends were out a lot.
They did a lot of stuff like football, rope-skipping, balls on the wall,
hopscotch and they played a lot of marbles.
There weren’t many
cars on the streets in those days, so K and her friends played a lot on the
street. One day, a lady cycled past. K and her friends played with a ball
that accidentally hit the woman’s bike. The lady fell and got really angry and
called the parents. K and her friends got punished but she doesn’t remember
how. In those days, there was a lot of punishment.
Her first real job
was at a small office when she was 16 years old. She did a lot of invoices and
she worked there for a year. The good thing about the job was that her
colleagues had many parties and gave many presents, but the bad thing was that
after a while it was not any callenges so K decided to go back to school.
Another reason that she went back to school was that she liked to see what the
secretary was doing and she admired her very much. She wanted to study more
languages and short hand.
After two years in
business school she got a job as a secretary at ASEA. The first time my
grandmother went abroad was, besides Denmark,
to America.
She was on leave and emigrated to America at 1960
when she was 21 years old and stayed there for 8 months. She worked for her
father´s travel agency in Long Island not far from New York. K typed many business letters
there.
After 3 months she
took a job as a nanny at Hyannis
Port. The Kennedy´s had their
summr residence quite near. She never saw them there, but she thought that it
was cool. Later in the fall she saw Bobby Kennedy passing by when the president
campaign started.
The family she
worked for was very rich and the parents were nice. But the parents were often
away so K didn’t see them very much, nor did she children. My grandmother took
care of 4 children and one of them was drinking the bottle and one had a hip
problem, so it was a lot of work. The children and their parents were not very
close. Money can’t buy love, you know.
My grandmother
thought that living so long ago was an easy and a social life. There were no
telephones and no TV´s. They sang and went to church every Sunday. They also
played a lot of cards. It was simple, but nice.
She was also happy
for her childhood, and she said that she didn´t want to grow up today. Almost
everything was different from then and now.
It was a more social life then, because now everyone just sits and
watches TV or play on the computer.
I chose to interview
my grandmother because my mom told me that my grandmother had been to America when
she was very young. Then I thought that it would be interesting to interview
her about America
but also about how she grew up. I also chose her because she was the only old
person that lived quite near me.
Inlägg
