How I got my nose

My father's grandmother was one hell of a woman. She wasn't even 5 ft tall and bow-legged due to malnutrition as a child and had a distinctly upturned nose. I have that too. In fact, it's part of our family lore that the first thing my mother said when she saw me was "God, she has Great Gran's nose!" It's called a 'norrköpingsnäsa' in Swedish, very aptly, since my great grandmother actually was from the town of Norrköping.

She was born in 1901 and grew up mostly fatherless, because her father took the family savings and went off to America to build a better life. The idea was that he would send for his wife and daughter as soon as he got settled. Instead, he vanished without a trace. We still don't know if he died or just decided to start anew, but the latter seems rather more likely, given the circumstances and human nature.

At 17, she left the small town behind and moved to Stockholm. Exactly what went on there, I don't know, but as she never talked of it beyond the need to repent for her youthful sins, I suspect it was something interesting. At some point, she worked at Berns Salonger, which stills looks more or less the same as it did then. She also got engaged to the illegitimate son of a French variety singer and had a daughter with him. They never married and at some point the gentleman disappeared and remained MIA until the '60s when my father found him, surrounded by a new family.

When her labour started, she didn't have enough money for a tram, so she walked straight across Stockholm, an hour long walk or so, to the women's hospital. Unfortunately, it turned out she couldn't support my grandmother and had to put her in foster home. It took years before they were reunited, and honestly, her child rearing methods were a little unorthodox. In the '50s, she had a house right on the waterfront so she'd tether my father with a rope so he wouldn't drown when he was visiting, rather than just keeping an eye on him. He's told me he used to beg: "I'm going to be so good, so good, just don't tie me up!" to no avail.

In the '30s and '40s, she worked as a 'kalaskokerska'. It's an expression long gone, but it means a woman who comes in to cook for large dinners or parties. Today, we'd likely say she was a caterer, but that just doesn't convey the same image of a short. stout woman who could whip a bread dough and roll a few hundred meatballs without blinking. Herself, she'd probably have considered 'caterer' silly faff - she was a woman with little time for pretentions.

And she was a gutsy lady. Since her job often meant late nights, people would ask her if she wasn't afraid of being molested when she walked home. "Nah, they'll let me go when daylight breaks', she'd say, with an 'and they can see what I look like' implied but not spoken.

She was also a gold mine of bawdy expressions. In Swedish, we tend to have a lot of suggestive sayings along the lines of '...he/she said when he/she...' and my grandmother knew more of those than anyone I ever met. Some I don't even understand, but as they usually contain references to sex and bodily functions, they're pretty still funny!

One of her expressions that I especially love is about worrying about being indecent or people seeing you undressed. She'd say: 'Kan de se nåt mer än Gud har skapa' låt dem stå där och gapa' - meaning something like 'If they can see something more than God created, let them marvel.' I love that, because to me it conveys beautifully that there's nothing shameful about the human body.

By the time I was born, she was already old beyond her years, worn out from a life of hard work and misfortunes, but would still spout her funny expressions and I remember her fondly. I also have some of her recipes, passed down through my mother, but sadly, most of them are now lost in time.

It's very strange to look in the mirror and realise that I actually look a lot like her, and that her fate could easily have been mine in another time and place. I'm far from sure I'd have handled myself as well, though.