This morning I listened to an interview with Swedish-Finnish author Märtha Tikkanen. She was promoting her new book, which she has been thinking of and planning for many years. Tikkanen told us about an episode, which she has discussed in previous interviews as well, a dream she dreamt at the time when her own children were small and family life was busy. In her dream she saw a woman dressed in black by a window. As she approached her and the woman turned around, she realized that she was looking at an older version of herself and commented that she could hardly believe that there was such peace and quiet around her.

Years later, when her husband had died after a long illness and their children had moved out, Tikkanen went looking for a new place to live and had decided to return to the neighbourhood in which she grew up. The real estate agent had lent her the keys to an apartment that actually was too big and too expensive for her, but she went there nonetheless. When she entered it, she recognized the place by the window she had seen in her dream so many years ago. The address was vaguely familiar as well and she called her aunt to confirm her suspicions. The apartment had indeed, in the 1920's before Tikkanen herself was born, belonged to her beloved grandmother. She brought her aunt to the apartment and she could tell Tikkanen where her grandmother had slept and what it had looked like when she had lived there. Tikkanen later brought her own father there as well, and as they entered the apartment he told her that this was the place where he and her mother had been married.

Realizing that this apartment had played such an important part in her family's history, Tikkanen didn't hesitate to buy it. She stayed there herself for 24 years. Another outcome was that she decided to write her grandmother's story, a book which now has been released. I think the story behind it is interesting and the story of the turbulent relationship between her grandmother Emma and her husband Uno seems equally so. I'll put it on my reading list.