Lesson from my parents : Starting a friendship

Two weeks ago my mother went back to
this house in Sweden.
My father is no longer alive.
The couple who used to live in that house
is no longer alive.
But my mother had good memories from
their lifelong friendship.

In the mid-fifties my father picked up
a young couple who hitchhiked with him
from Oslo to Moss on a Friday afternoon.
They were going to visit some friends on the
other side of the Swedish border.

They had brought along a tent and decided to
sleep that Friday night near Vannsjø Lake,
outside Moss. My father showed them a nice place,
said goodbye and went home to eat dinner.

But it started to rain, and my father was
concerned about the young couple in their tent
getting wet.

He went back to where he had left them.
They were there, and it was still raining.

First he brought them home to us, and they
slept in our home that night.

Next morning he decided that he and his family
would bring the hitchhikers to their destination
in Sweden.

I think my mother must have been very
spontaneous too, bringing along her two
very young children on this spur-of-the-moment
trip.

My mother told me today that on the way,
the young couple talked about how the couple
they were about to visit would react to such
an "invasion" of an additional four persons.
The man calmed his girlfriend that he was
quite sure it would be OK.

After a few hours, the car arrived outside
the little house you see on this blog entry.
Out came the owners who with open arms
received the young couple they knew and
probably expected to see, and in
addition, a young unknown family of four
from Norway.

Not only did we stay there the whole Saturday,
but the owners (who had three children of
their own!) insisted we must sleep over.

And that became the beginning of
a lifelong friendship between the two couples.

Gubbdagis in Sweden

"Dagis" in Swedish is short for daycare centre,
and will in other countries probably correspond
to Kindergarten.
"Gubbe" is Swedish for an old man, mostly
used in an affectionate way.

So here, in a little red fishing shed along
the Swedish west coast, some elderly
gentlemen must have decided to call their
private meeting place "Gubbdagis" -
kindergarten for old men.
That is at least what I think.
It brought a smile to my face.

Norwegian dust

Once my mother visited me abroad,
she exclaimed: "The dust inside the house
in this country is so different from the dust
we have in Norway. It looks quite different."

I did not think too much about it at the time.

Now, after living in Norway for two and
a half years, I know that the house dust here
does indeed look different.

Here it is light grey and form dustballs.
In my other country I think it was more sandy
and had a slightly reddish tint.

There I would wash the tiled floors with lots of
water. Here I use a slightly wet rag on the old
wooden floors, but mostly the vacuum cleaner.

A national version of house dust?
Does it exist?

"Titta!" or "Se!"

My last entry about the five mother tongues
in our family came from this story my
mother told me today:

My mother's mother tongue is Swedish.
After she married my Norwegian father
and settled in Norway, she started to learn
Norwegian, mostly by reading Norwegian
newspapers, by talking to my father,
and by attending a cooking school here
in Moss.

When I was a baby, she was showing me
something, using the Swedish word :
"Titta!" (Look!)

One of my Norwegian aunts quickly
pointed out that she must use the Norwegian
word "Se!" instead.

Mother tongue?

Mother tongue?

Three mothers.
One father.
Five different languages.

For three generations in our family
three mothers and one father have
been teaching a mother tongue to their
own child - a mother tongue that is NOT
their own mother tongue.

Which means that children's rhymes,
children's songs you grew up with, are
in most cases not passed on to your child.
At least not to the extent it would have been
natural if there was only one language and that
was the father's or mother's mother tongue.

On the other hand, you as a parent had to
learn your child's "mother tongue" and learn
the child culture in that language in
a conscious effort, as a grownup.

Mother tongue - for whom?

Norwegian summers

Those who know me, know I am not a big fan
of Norwegian winters.
But of course there is no choice but to
accept what nature throws at you during that
season - if you live here.



On the other hand I LOVE Norwegian
summers.
I do not mind the rainy weather when it comes.
The temperatures are within the range of
pleasant for me.
The long hours of light are a deLIGHT.
The greenery of grass, bushes and trees -
calming for my eyes.
Wild flowers cheer me up.
Breezes. Occasionally stronger winds. OK!

Summer is GREAT.

A very old wooden building in Sweden

Imagine it is the year 1237.
That is 772 years ago!

That year trees were cut down and a wooden
house was built.
Not a house for living , but a house
where among other activities, the owners
made butter.
Eldhus, in Swedish.

The house itself has been dismantled and
rebuilt at least five times - the last time around
one hundred years ago when it was bought by
the Swedish painter Anders Zorn and placed
on his farm Zorngaarden.

The scientists who drilled pieces out of
the old timber to "read" the age of the material,
were amazed, according to this webarticle
where you also can watch a short video
in Swedish.
http://svt.se/2.33557/1.1570357/sveriges_aldsta_trahus_finns_vid_zorngarden?lid=puff_1570813&lpos=bild

If you do not understand the explanations in
Swedish, just enjoy looking at this old wooden
house.

You can check out more about the
Zorn Collections on

http://www.zorn.se/engmain.html

How to help the public library in Geilo just now

I read this ad in the local newspaper
Hallingdølen I bought the other day.

I loved the idea:

The local library in the village Geilo,
midway between Oslo and Bergen,
has to move their book collection into
temporary housing in June.
So now, to help them doing this, they
offer the public the opportunity to
borrow an unlimited number of books
for up to four months!

Kate on May 17th - in Chicago

When will she see the May 17th
celebrations in Norway?

Just to make you smile back

Bear DNA

Source: http://www.jomsborg.dk/diverse.htm

In the local newspaper Hallingdølen,
I read some national news:

For the last three years Norwegian authorities
have collected bear fur, bear pooh and
bear tissue for DNA testing.
Based on this, it is estimated there are around
120 brown bears in Norway.
The article pointed out one couldn't really talk
about a specific group of Norwegian bears.
These 120 bears live on the outskirts of the
between 2000 to 3000 Swedish bears.

I had no idea there were so many bears
in Sweden and in comparison, so few in
Norway.

A local Norwegian newspaper

When you take the train from Oslo to Bergen,
you go through a valley called Hallingdal.
A "hallingdøl" is a person living in or from
that valley.
Hallingdølen is the local newspaper.

When I was a girl we lived in Hallingdal and
this was our local newspaper.
It was published only three times a week,
and it was actually one piece of paper,
folded in two, making four pages.
It was, as one boy innocently once said
"The newspaper with nothing inside".

But back then, from those four pages,
we found out what movies were screened
in the local cinemas, who was born,
who married and who died.
Sometimes local news could also be of interest.
Articles about local history, written in
the local dialect, were one of my favorites.

These days, when I happen to be in Oslo,
I buy a copy of Hallingdølen at the central
railway station Oslo S.
For 12 Norwegian crowns I am transported
back in time and place.
It still is published three times a week -
on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

Yesterday's copy had 32 pages (!) and the logo
showed that it had been chosen as This Year's
Local Newspaper and that it has 22000 readers.

I enjoy these sporadic readings of
local news.
From four pages to 32 pages, Hallingdølen has
come a long way.

Rain on a green lawn

The lawn in my backyard is now
beautifully green.

Today a sudden rainfall poured down.

I then remembered how, as a child,
we would run out in the summer rain,
dressed in our bathing suites,
enjoying the warm summer rain.

In my other country I cannot
remember any combination of warm rain
and children running outside to get wet.
When it rained in the winter,
it was too cold.
In the summer it did not rain.

The climate was simply different.

Lesson from Kierkegaard

Today I was telling somebody how I
feel about two decisions I made in religious
matters when I was fifteen.
The first one was the result of not being true
to myself.
The second one, two months later, was
having the courage to be myself.

"Well" that same somebody remarked,
""life can only be understood backward,
but it must be lived forward."

It was a quote I liked.

Wise words originally written by
Danish philosopher and theologian
Søren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855).

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/

Kate, nearly four months old

Challenging Myself

After coming to Norway two and
a half years ago, I feel I have been
challenging myself.
Sometimes with purpose.
Sometimes by chance.

The furniture, including this latest
addition of the table and chairs,
is one aspect of those challenges.

Some details from my new-old table

The Changing of the Tables

Yesterday my living room had a round table.
When you sit down around a round table,
everybody is equal.
Nobody can sit at the head of the table.
Nobody ends up near a corner.

The table itself I had bought at Varna
Evangeliesenter for less than 30 dollars,
if I remember right.



Today we went to Oslo to pick up this table
and eight chairs.

So what had happened?
Family history won over round equality!

The table and the chairs were made by my
uncle for my grandparents.
This probably happened around seventy or
seventy five years ago.

I remember the table standing in my
grandparents' apartment till my grandmother
died.

Daily meals were eaten on a small table
in the tiny kitchen.
The table made by my uncle was for
special occasions, for festive meals.

When my grandmother died, the table and
the chairs moved to my aunt's house, where
it now has spent another 35 years.
I have eaten meals on this table at my aunt's
place too.

Now, after my aunt passed, my cousin
offered me the table and the chairs.

So here it stands.
A piece of family history.

A new word in my vocabulary : BACN

Some areas interest me and I want to learn more.
The internet gives me endless opportunities for this.
I have signed up for some interesting newsletters.

The problem is that the newsletters come,
and I may not have the time or energy just then.

The newsletters start accumulating in my Inbox.

Lately I have learnt to empty my Inbox every night
in order to "finish" the day, in this symbolic way.

My gmail then gives me at least two solutions
what to do with the emails I want to read later.

First I just starred them, but now I try to star only
the emails I have to answer.
Those emails sent by a person expecting
a fairly quick response.

I found that for the subscribed newsletters I
wanted to read later I could use the labels.

Two days ago I found a word for this
last kind of emails - bacn.
Bacn, pronounced like bacon.

According to the Wikipedia:
Bacn differs from spam in that the emails are not unsolicited: the recipient has somehow signed up to receive it. Bacn is also not necessarily sent in bulk. Bacn derives its name from the idea that it is "better than spam, but not as good as a personal email".

Bacn.

A Newcomer to Another Country

Thinking back on all those years living in
a country in many ways very different from
Norway, I know that the fact that I stayed
on and felt more and more connected to
the land, to the many different people I met,
was not - in my case- the result of any official
integration program.

In my case, it was people
inviting me into their homes,
telling me their life stories,
letting me eat their family food,
letting me celebrate holidays with them,
having patience while I was improving my
new language,
being friendly on a bus, on a chance meeting,
letting me meet their friends and family
members,
trying to explain customs I did not know....

I will have to add to this list, as I remember more.

In short, people were very friendly and open
to me and made me feel welcome.

Some of these good people became my
friends for life.
Others perhaps for some years.
Most of them perhaps for just the few minutes
or hours we spent together.

All of them together gave me the
emotional ties to my other country.
I am grateful to each of them for that gift.

As the years went by, I was able to give back
of this sharing to people I met.
People who, just like me, needed a friend
in their new country.

Sometimes, here in Norway, I find myself
in the same double-sided situation.
I hope this "training" I got as a newcomer in
another country, perhaps is helpful
to those immigrants I meet.

But I know that I also need to be befriended
by people living here.

We all need human interaction.
We can both be givers and takers.

Hans Rosling

Last night I watched a Swedish documentary
about a Swedish medical doctor named
Hans Rosling.
It was a fascinating film.

To give you an impression of this man,
watch one of his lectures
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html

Then, you can go to his website
htt://www.gapfinder.org and explore more.
F.ex.
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/200-years-that-changed-the-world/

Being Inspired by Wish Jar Journal

Through my daughter-in-law's blog
I found a blog called Wish Jar Journal and
quickly found myself reading this list:

ideas
1. Go for a walk. Draw or list things you find on the the sidewalk.
2. Write a letter to yourself in the future.
3. Buy something inexpensive as a symbol for your need to create, (new pen, a tea cup, journal). Use it everyday.
4. Draw your dinner.
5. Find a piece of poetry you respond to. Rewrite it and glue it into your journal.
6. Glue an envelope into your journal. For one week collect items you find on the street.
7. Expose yourself to a new artist, (go to a gallery, or in a book.) Write about what moves you about their work.
8. Find a photo of a person you do not know. Write a brief bio about them. 9. Spend a day drawing only red things.
10. Draw your bike.
11. Make a list of everything you buy in the next week.
12. Make a map of everywhere you went in one day.
13. Draw a map of the creases on your hand, (knuckles, palm)
14. Trace your footsteps with chalk.
15. Record an overheard conversation.
16. Trace the path of the moon in relation to where you live.
17. Go to a paint store. Collect 'chips' of all your favorite colors.

Reading this I felt like peeking into a
very creative mind, but also that of a person
who DARED to dream and wish.
I believe this blog may be a good inspiration
for creative thinking.
http://www.kerismith.com/blog/

Kate

Nearly four months old.

Quote to ponder

"When you recognize that there is a voice

in your head that pretends to be you

and never stops speaking,

you are awakening out of your unconscious

identification with the stream of thinking.

When you notice that voice,

you realize that who you are is not the

voice - the thinker - but the one who is aware of it."

(Eckhart Tolle)

Thanks, Jerry!

An angle

Today, visiting a cemetery,
I photographed this little angle.