Ingrid Alone

I did not know there was a secret in Uncle Otto's family. Or was it a secret? Did anybody care, or was the fate of a three-year-old girl not that important in the hardscrabble world of rural Sweden in 1906?

Anna Theresia Martina Fredrika Lindquist was born on June 10, 1878 in Urshult, Sweden in Kronoberg province. Her parents were Johan Lindquist and his wife Mathilda Svensdotter.

Anna left for America on July 06, 1906 together with her husband Ernst Fogelström. Anna would observe her 28th birthday on board the ship that took her to the New World.

Three years earlier she had given birth to a daughter, Ingrid Havila Anna Mathilda. She left that little girl in Sweden. I have imagined her story:

Anna and her husband Ernst packed what they needed for their long trip. Each had a small trunk, that was all. A neighbor, Erik Mattson, offered to drive them to the train station. Then there would be the train to Göteborg and the ship to take them to a new life.

Anna's parents stood outside the front door of their small farmhouse. Johan held little Ingrid in his arms.

"Goodbye, little Ingrid. Be good while we are gone. Be a good little girl to your mormor and your morfar."

"Goodbye, Papa. Where are you going?"

"I'm taking a little trip."

Ingrid turned to look at her mother. "Mama?" She reached out her little arms.

Anna gave her daughter a kiss on the cheek. "Goodbye, little one."

"You going too?"

"Ja, I must go with your father. We have to be together."

"Me, too. Me, too."

"Later, little one. Later."

Anna and Ernst jumped into the cart and waved as Erik Mattson led the horse down the lane. Ingrid waved back.

The summer days passed. Ingrid played with stones and sticks and a rag doll her grandmother made for her. Sometimes she remembered her mother and her father. Then she would take the doll, whose name was Greta, and say to her, "Bye. Bye." She never said hello. It was always goodbye.

In those days Sweden was a poor country. Johan and Mathilda Lindquist were not rich. They raised everything they needed to eat: vegetables, pigs, some cattle. Behind their house were berry bushes: gooseberries and raspberries, strawberries and blueberries. An apple tree in front of the house gave them the ingredients for pies and applesauce. Sour milk became filbunke, Swedish yogurt. Chickens cackled in a chicken coop some distance away so that the smell would not permeate the house; they provided eggs and once in a while gave their lives for the little family. Mathilda went into town for flour, and on Sundays all three, Mormor, Morfar, and little Ingrid would go to church.

A few years went by and Ingrid started school. It was then that she learned something about herself. A boy named Rolf began to taunt her.

"You don't have any parents. You're an orphan."

Ingrid wasn't sure what an orphan was. She wasn't even sure she was being made fun of, but the expression on the little boy's face told her something was not right.

That evening she asked her grandmother, "Mormor, what is an orphan?"

"An orphan is a child who doesn't have parents."

"Why"

"Because the child's parents are dead."

"Why did they die?"

"Oh, people die for many reasons. Sometimes they get very sick. Sometimes they fall off a horse or get bitten by a snake."

Ingrid shuddered.

"Why do you ask, little one?" Her grandfather looked up from the book he was reading.

"Because, Morfar, a boy at school called me an orphan. Are my parents dead? Is that why I live with you?"

"No, Ingrid, they are not dead. You know you have always called me Morfar. You know what that means, don't you"

Ingrid shook her head.

"What does mor mean?"

"Mother."

"That's right. What does far mean?"

"Father."

"Yes. Mors far is mother's father. After people said that for years and years it became one word, Morfar. I am your mother's father. Mormor is your mother's mother."

"Where are my parents?"

"Do you remember the day they left, when we all said goodbye?"

"No. Where did they go?"

"They went to America, across the ocean."

"Why?"

"Because Sweden is a poor country. Because they heard about America. Lots of Swedes have been leaving Sweden to go to America. In America there is more opportunity."

"What is that, Morfar?"

"It means that people can find jobs, and they can make money and they can buy the things they need and the things they want, the things that will make them happy, or that they think will make them happy."

"Why didn't they take me?"

"Little Ingrid, they felt they couldn't manage with a little girl on the ship and in a new country. But they gave us a gift."

"What was that, Morfar?"

"They gave us you, our little Ingrid. That was a gift. You make us happy."

Ingrid smiled, but from that day on there was a little hole in her heart, a feeling of emptiness, because she had been abandoned.

By Anita G. Gorman

From: United States

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