Miss Sweden

I got sick last week. I’m on the mend now, but while I was ill, I was forced to spend several days doing as little as possible because the medication blurred my vision and gave me the shakes. I couldn’t watch television, or write, or read. The only source of amusement left to me was the inside of my head.

I got to wondering, as we do when we are ill and feeling more mortal than usual, whether or not I am satisfied with the life I have now. Certainly, this is not the life I dreamed about back in my twenties. For one thing, I never imagined I'd get to this age. I expected to die young and leave a not unattractive corpse, which is one of the reasons I was reluctant to own a cat until I got older and uglier. Being found sprawled out on the living room carpet with my face eaten half off would have spoiled the effect entirely. Now, of course, I could safely leave behind any number of starving moggies to improve my esthetic legacy.

Sprawled in my easy chair, dozing and pondering, I suddenly remembered Miss Sweden.

For a brief period in my twenties, I lived in a high rise apartment building on the Danforth in Toronto. Back then, my section of the Danforth was a street of small family-owned shops and restaurants. Every Saturday morning, I took my string shopping bags and toddled along the sidewalk, visiting the vegetable vendor, the butcher, the fabric store, the bakery, and the store of stuff from Finland. I never bought anything in that store, but it fascinated me.

On my travels, I frequently ran across Miss Sweden. I don’t know how old she was—in my twenties anyone over forty seemed old—but she was probably younger than I am now. Her hair was a shade of solid yellow I’d only ever seen on boxes of Nice-N-Easy and she wore it piled on top of her head in an elaborate beehive of sausage curls. She drew her eyebrows high on her forehead in black pencil and over-painted her imploded lips in a crimson cupid bow, creating the effect of perpetual surprise. Huge gold earrings swayed at the ends of her stretched earlobes. She frequently showed up in the grocery store wearing a pink chenille bathrobe over pink flannel pajamas and fuzzy pink slippers, the entire ensemble topped off by a frayed  and grubby satin band slung from shoulder to hip that read MISS SWEDEN in lovely gothic lettering.

When I encountered Miss Sweden, I went out of my way to avoid her. She frightened me, the way she lived in a self-defined universe, divorced from the petty conformities of conventional behavior. She seemed feral, as though refusing to recognize public opinion existed. Perhaps she was crazy, but she was happy and harmless and somehow magnificent as well.

With a few exceptions, I’ve decided my life right now is better than I expected it would be. Because like Miss Sweden, I am also living in a self-defined universe, actively pursuing what pleases me, vigorously avoiding what does not. Although far from feral, I’ve finally learned not to be overly concerned by what other people think, and this has had a liberating effect on my choices.

I wish I’d understood about Miss Sweden sooner. I wish I’d talked to her, learned the story behind her beauty queen sash, found out why she lived in her pajamas, and if she really was crazy, or, as I now suspect, just incredibly wise.