Do you dare to try a spinach/apple smoothie? Or should I head out to the kitchen and make you a coffee? Tea? Or maybe you’d rather take a short walk down to the old cobblestone streets of our town and go out for a coffee? To be honest, I have not been out a whole lot since Covid started, but all the café’s and restaurants are open. Lately I’ve felt a longing to sit at a cafe and slowly sip a delicious beverage, something I used to enjoy from to time to time before the pandemic. Still there’s this other side of me that tells me that I should continue to be careful a little longer. 

How is your week so far? It’s already mid weekend here (we are 6-10 hours ahead of my friends in the US, depending on time zone.) Work has been busy as usual, busy and good. Most of my free time this week have been dedicated to my daughter that has a (hopefully) temporary breakdown about living in Sweden. It’s hard to deal with. She is stressed and refuses to speak Swedish, which naturally complicates things since we live in Sweden now. She’s always preferred to speak English, but still tried her best with Swedish. Her Swedish is pretty good, but she doesn’t speak like a native, and now she refuses completely. She has a new teacher that she strongly dislikes (to put it mildly,) and that doesn’t help. Every morning have been a battle this week. My heart goes out to her, she’s always loved school and adored all her previous teachers. Now she don’t want to go to school at all. We could let her start a new school, closer to home, but at this time she doesn’t want that. I have talked to her teacher, she gives me one version, and my daughter another. My main goal this weekend is to make my daughter feel good about herself and school next week. Unfortunately there’s a ton of schoolwork we have to finish, since she refused to do it at school. Of course I’m not OK with her refusing to do the work her teacher tells her too. I just can’t do much more than reasoning with her when I’m with her. At this point no logical reasons matter to her. I believe it may be some underlaying loyalty towards her dad, that she haven’t seen in more than two years due to the pandemic. For that reason I arranged for the two of them to talk about the situation at school over the phone today. They talked for a long time. Her dad told her all the reasons I told her, why she needed to learn, and speak Swedish while in Sweden. The fact that we both agreed upon this matter made her even more devastated. It’s going to take some real effort to get over this hurdle. I’m OK, its just heartbreaking to see one of your children struggle like this, and to hear over and over that she wants to live in the US a gazillion times a day.

Have a refill on your beverage and tell me about your weekend plans! 

Thank you so much for staying with me, and an extra thanks to Natalie for hosting the Weekend Coffee Share! Have a fabulous weekend! 

Love,

Maria