Today my daughters had their big first roll call in school. Tomorrow they start school.

Over here kids start school the year they turn 6 in a preschool class that is not obligatory and then the year they turn 7 they start first class. My oldest starts first class and the six year old starts the preschool class. There is little difference besides the legality. I haven’t heard of any kid not starting at age of 6.

Right now I am taking a small break from the mountain of papers and forms we got today. One of the forms is a contract the kids sign that says that they will obey the school rules. Just as last year we will not sign them. The rules are as follows:

*I do my best and tries to be positive

*I do not violate others in word or action

*I respect everyone

*I behave politely and nicely in every situation in school

*I arrive in time and have the right equipment

*I behave in a way that no one is disturbed in their work

*I am careful with our school and keep our things in order

I have such a problem with letting a six and a seven year old signing a contract promising to follow all that. It is not because I want my kids to trash the school or disturb everyone else. But seriously, could you who read this follow all of these rules for a year in your workplace? To always respect everyone? To always do my best? I can try but to sign a contract that I would? I know I won’t do my best every hour of every day at work and will never expect that of a kid. So I am going to keep being the uncomfortable parent and not sign it this year too.

12-15 years ago I read a The Far Side comic strip about some one visiting Sweden and I don’t at all remember the joke but some part of it was that Sweden had a pickled herring for every season. I remember how I thought that was unfair. We didn’t have a special herring for every season. Several of the bigger holidays can be celebrated with the common pickled herring and we only have two pickled herrings that are bound to a certain season and one of them is fermented and not pickled. And we do have at least one big holiday when pickled herring isn’t an obligatory piece of food at the table.

It took me until this year to finally understand that our pickled herring habits made Gary Larson’s joke in The Far Side very reasonable. Most cultures does not have pickled herring to most of the holidays.

As long as I only spent time with other Swedes the omnipresent herring is rather odd. It is just not a prejudice. It really is everywhere. At the roll call today the kids also sang two songs and one of them is a song that every Swedish kids know with the title “Sill i Dill” with sill being pickled herring the title reads pickled herring in dill. When I came home I read the lunch menu(1) for the fall and on it in fine print it says that every time fish is served pickled herring is also served as an option.

Three or so years ago I saw my herrings as a part of the normative sides of myself. Now I have a broader perspective and see how it is something that many people regard as somewhat odd about my cuisine.

*Coming out as trans has forced me to take another perspective on a lot of things. I had to break up with my old faith and church and find new ground to stand on. With the new perspective i learned that the faith that I saw as the normal kind of christianity was in fact a very small fraction of how christianity is practiced.

*I placed myside outside of the standard core family and not until then I saw that most families isn’t just a mom, a dad and their two or three kids.

It is interesting to see how little of the normativity actually is common. But mostly: It just damn fine to grow up and form my own life according to my own likings.

Well, that’s my thoughts for today.

I suddenly feel an urge for pickled herring. Or even better fermented herring. But to be kind to you I fought my urge to put a pic of a delicious herring here and instead you got my son with some chocolate treats I made last week and a photo of a proud mother that lives here with us. I complain with all the work of three kids but she has about 50 young ones right now…

–

(1) In our very fine school system all schools both private and public has free lunches for all kids until they end the 12th year of school. It has a very high standard in most places with high demands of nutrition and taste. At our kids school it follows the usual form with a hot meal, a sallad buffe, several kinds of crisp bread (one organic), organic milk and water. For every child under the age of 12 a free breakfast is served if they arrive an hour before the lessons start. No sodas, sweets or such are allowed in school until the 7th year of school.