Interview with my Grandmother

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.