Svenskabarnsköterskaföreningen and Tista Nun

A summer meal at Kjettestorp! Left to right: Lennart, Mormor Elin, 
Bengt Bengtson, Mom with PerMagnus Bengtson on her lap, and Brita.

Now that I had this certificate, I was eligible to be a member of Svenskabarnsköterskaföreningen. This was the Association of Swedish Pediatric Nurses. It takes four words in English to say what we put together in one word

in Swedish! Well, this meant that I was allowed to wear their uniform. We had a grey dress with long cuffs on the sleeves. On top of that we had a white apron with a bib and then we had a little nurse hat. The dress had a white collar on it and that's where we pinned our broach. We also had a coat for outdoors that was part of the uniform. It was a deep dark blue and the outdoor hat was a sort of a bonnet hat with a ribbon under the chin. My brother Lennart, of course, said, "Now if you only had a guitar, we would know that you were a member of the Salvation Army!" He thought my coat and bonnet looked just like what the Salvation Army wore.

So now I was ready to go out and work as a child nurse. I was certified to work in a children's hospital or in a home as a governess. All nurses in Sweden then were called Sister so I was now Sister Gun. I wanted to be a little close to home so I got a job at a home in Linköping. The man was a dentist and they had several children. I was a substitute there because their regular nurse had time off for some reason. Before I went there, I was home for a couple of weeks, and Thorbjörn was sick, so I went over to Sara's. He insisted that he wouldn't let anyone help him but me. I had to check his temperature and feed him and everything. He was pretty much well by the time I had to leave. Even so, he cried and said, "Why does she have to go somewhere else to take care of a little boy when she has me right here?"

Later I had a job in Linköping. It was agreed upon when I started there

Mom and PerMagnus

that I would stay for one year. This was a family named Bengtson. The man's name was Folke; he owned a women's clothing store in town. His wife was a fancy lady. They had three kids. Ulla was 12, Bengt was 10 and then they had a little boy who was not quite two years old when I came. His name was PerMagnus. He used to call me "Tista Nun" because he couldn't quite say Sister Gun. They all called me that, even after he could talk.

Supposedly I was hired to potty train him and get him through the terrible twos. But I was also sort of like a status symbol. It was the really wealthy who had a member of the Svenskabarnsköterskaföreningen to take care of their kids, instead of a regular baby sitter. This lady would take me

and the baby with her whenever she went into town to shop or to do anything. She wanted me to walk just behind her and carry him or push him in the stroller. It was like she wanted to show off that she could afford to pay a nurse to take care of her children. Well, these people didn't have a summer home, so when summer came, it was agreed that the kids could come home with me to Kjettestorp for two weeks. Ulla was a little bit uppity like her mother; she was a fat little girl. Bengt had an awfully hard time in school but the mother

Ulla, PerMagnus and Bengt on the lawn at Kjettestorp.

would not allow him to get any special help or go to any special classes whatsoever. That was degrading to her. So there was always this tension between the two kids that Bengt was the stupid one and Ulla was the smart one. Well, when we were going home that summer, we took a train to Kisa and then a taxicab from Kisa. As we came by Gräsvederna, Dad had tethered a bull outside the barn there eating grass. Ulla said, "Just look at that funny cow! She only has one tit!" This was Bengt's chance to be smart so he said, "Are you so stupid that you can't see that it is a bull?" 

Later, this family bought themselves a summer house in Bestorp. They invited me out there one day, even though I no longer worked for them.