FEBRUARY 23, 2025 – (Cont.) The datometer aboard the time machine was restless—again. It began spinning, slowly at first, then faster, faster into a blur before slowing again and coming to rest at February 19, 1981, the date of (my sister) Jenny’s letter. I stepped from the machine and sat down in the garden paradise behind the Winther’s house, with Aunt Jenny sitting nearby and Harry having a cigarette and reading the newspaper.
I’d always been interested in people’s penmanship—as unique as fingerprints or a voiceprint. Jenny’s was abundantly familiar, as was the handwriting of everyone else in our family. During the many years that we were all away at school, regular correspondence among my sisters and me and between each of us and our parents, had in many ways brought us closer together than we would’ve been all living under the same roof. Jenny’s cursive style, even when hurried, was well-ordered, but it always projected energy and optimism. It smiled, and as I read her missive, I could “hear” her enthusiasm and encouragement.
2/19/81
Dear Eric,
I think there’s something you forgot to send me—a list of places where I can write to you!
I hope you are having a “laid back” time in Cupertino before you start your adventure. I am so excited for you! What a great thing—to “see the world.” This being my 4th trip to Europe, I’m still excited, but not as thrilled as the first time. Germany—I can take it or leave it, but Switzerland is what I look forward to, Zug and Chur, among other places. One of these days I too will get to New Zealand and Australia. You haven’t even been there yet, and already you have me convinced I must go!
Two days ago I quit my job so I could get in some good practicing and organize myself before this tour. The important thing, as you know, is to be in good physical shape. I’ve been getting up early and running and trying not to eat too much.
Say hello to the Winthers for me. I know you’re being treated like a king.
Now Eric, you be very careful, but of course, have a wonderful trip. The main thing is don’t be too naïve. Please send me some postcards or letters just to let me know what’s up. I’ll be thinking of you a lot! I shall also miss you a lot!
I love you!
Jenny
I refolded the letter and returned it carefully to its envelope.
In early June two years before, she and I had traveled together to visit our Swedish cousins. We’d met some of them two, three years earlier, when they were traveling all over the Western Hemisphere, but except for Dad, no one in our family had been to Sweden. Jenny and I were the trail blazers.
We’d enjoyed a fabulous time visiting our relatives in Sweden and spending time at Husjönäs, our ancestral home and farm near Ryd in Småland[1]—the province in southern Sweden that was home to a majority of Swedish emigrants to America. Dad had fond memories of that idyllic place and had told so many colorful stories about it. As far as we knew from Dad’s descriptions and old photos, little had changed over the past half century since he’d last been to Husjönäs. By 1979, Dad’s (and the Winther’s) cousin Gunnar (Jenny Winther’s nephew) and his family were well settled into the big red-with-white trim (the standard issue color scheme of farm homes in much of Sweden) two-story farmhouse[2]. Gunnar’s elderly parents, meanwhile, had moved down to the little “stuga” (cottage) at the far end of the hayfield that stretched down a gentle slope behind the big house.
On that visit Jenny and I had been treated as royalty, and we both carried away the deepest sort of memories that form in such an unforgettably beautiful place in the world, especially one that held such meaning for generations of our ancestors and therefore for us.
There at the Winther’s in February 1981, I felt so fortunate to be able to visit with Aunt Jenny about her childhood home and environs, including the country schoolhouse, still standing, which she and my grandmother had attended down a narrow, winding dirt road from the farm, and the little village of Häradsbäck a bike ride several kilometers in the opposite direction.
As I reveled in the memories of Sweden—which, naturally, I would revisit several times again during my Grand Odyssey—I recalled Dad’s story about Harry’s misadventure in Sweden after World War II. Last stationed in England, before returning to the U.S., he decided to visit his relatives on his dad’s (Sigurd’s) side in Norway and his mother’s (Jenny’s) family in Sweden—specifically, back in Husjönäs and nearby Bjellerhult. Unfortunately, he was unable to navigate to either place. As I recall, he couldn’t even find Ryd, the nearest town of any consequence. He was confused, no doubt, by all the other small towns in Småland that ended in “ryd” (meaning “clearing” in old Swedish). According to Dad, when Harry returned home to California and informed his mother (Jenny) that he’d failed to visit any of the Swedish relatives, she was downright angry with him; unable to grasp why he couldn’t find them. The way Dad told the story—and by the fact he repeated it a number of times—suggested that Dad was as dumfounded as Aunt Jenny had been. Years later Harry would find his way to Husjönäs and Bjellerhult, most likely because he was accompanied by his mother.
But that was then. Jenny was hardly one to hold grudges (or to be angry in the first place) and Harry, I was sure, had gotten much better at map reading. In the present I basked in the bright company of my aunt Jenny and savored the warm send-off expressed in a letter from her namesake, my sister Jenny and fellow traveler. (Cont.)
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
