Happy Birthday Opa

December is a very tender month for me.  So many memories, among which is my Opa's birthday.  He was born in rural central Sweden, the tenth of ten children and his mother died shortly after.  I don't know too much about my grandfather's life in Sweden.  His brothers and sisters drifted off to America and he followed.  Most of them stayed in Brooklyn, where my Opa learned to be a cabinet maker and builder of pianos.  Before he settled down, however, he traveled the American West, working the harvests in the Dakotas.  He would tell us just where to place your back pack while jumping on a train going 40 mph.  When he needed money he would put down a hat and find somebody to bare-knuckle-box with.  Opa was a big, strapping, strong Swedish farm boy.  He married another Swedish girl and set about having a life in America.  My Opa, called Opa because my parents lived in Germany after the liberation in WWII and my brothers learned German as a first language, was very proud of being American.  I only heard Swedish being spoken quietly in the kitchen.  English was their language now and they would use it.  I crossed the Verrazano Bridge countless times while growing up, attending family parties in Brooklyn.  I can sing Happy Birthday in Swedish perfectly, but the language was never mine, and with almost all the Swedes gone, I won't be learning any more.  Opa would like the fact that his descendants are so very Americanized.  He would never understand the farm thing.  Life on the farm in Sweden must have been very difficult.  They were so poor and their little farm could never have been divided up for ten children.  Opa chose to live and work in the city.  He was so proud when my father became a Civil Servant - a NYPD rookie.  That's okay.  The farm thing is mine, all mine.  Not too many understand my dream.  I know Mia does.  She loves the farm.  The Swedes are still in my range of vision, like so many clouds hovering above me.  I know I have their sturdiness and industriousness...but they would never approve of my housekeeping.