Midsummer Girl

Today is Midsummer's Eve, possibly the most important Swedish holiday. Everyone who can goes out into the countryside to celebrate with friends and family. Traditional food is pickled herring several ways, new potatoes and strawberries. A Midsummer pole made of leaves and flowers is often made, mum learned how to do it from her grandma. Then everyone sings and dances around it, enjoying the near-to-midnight sun.

Unless it rains, which is traditional and the way the weather is today. Mum and me went out in the early morning to get fresh strawberries and pick wild flowers, not for enough for a pole but for a wreath of flowers for me and a boquet for grandma.

For reasons along the It's complicated line, we are celebrating in the city with grandma, grandpa and my children's father. I would have loved the countryside, but mum says my lawn will be all wet and it will be raining the whole day and that we will go there next week instead. Grandma makes the yummiest Alice-smörgåsbord, so anywhere she is, I want to be.

We wish all our friends a Happy Midsummer!