A Walk in the Rain

I love Mondays because it’s my day to skip school. I used the quiet time to do some Bible study and prayer. It’s never a bad day if it starts off like that. The sun was shining this morning and I had a strong desire to go for a bike ride or a walk, but I really didn’t want to be gone from a quiet house, as it’s empty so rarely. I told myself I’d get some exercise when Kaleb got home from school, but by then, it was raining. As luck would have it, cousin Kari called up this afternoon and asked if I wanted to go for a hike in the mountains – rain and all. This is where the saying, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes” comes into play. I put on my rain pants and coat and off we went. Surprisingly there were several other people up in the mountains doing the same. It felt pretty good to hike in the rain as the air was so clear and the temperature a bit cooler. We hiked up past the farm called Østrem (see photo of the old barn there), which happens to be the farm where Kory’s grandfather’s family is from. Kory never knew his grandfather, nor did Kory’s mother, Jenny, know her own father. Jenny was illegitimate, the product of two teenagers away from home, working on the same farm for a summer. Their parents thought it best they didn’t get married since they didn’t really love each other so Jenny was raised by a single mom until her mother married another man when Jenny was eight years old. Jenny’s mom and step-dad had three girls together, and they are all the Tantes we love so dearly here in Aalesund. But as we found out in later years, Kory also has a few half uncles and an aunt from the Østrem side of the family.

After Kaleb was born I got very interested in family history and started doing research to find the names of all those who had come before me. I thought it might be nice for Kaleb to learn “from whence he came,” so I began the endless search for dead relatives. I wanted to go back eight generations on all branches, just to see if I could. It took a few years, but I’ve been pretty successful at meeting that goal. On my mom’s side of the family, all her great grandparents came from Norway and I found the location of all the farms they came from, and then I visited them all. It was one of the highlights of my life, as I then went to North Dakota and visited the homestead sites where they landed, so I was able to connect the dots. I had the same desire for Kory’s side of the family but I couldn’t get very far due to this whole illegitimate thing. Families here are good at keeping secrets, so it wasn’t easy to find out information about Jenny’s father. I spent a day down at the local library, reading microfilm and I found Jenny’s birth record, and once I did, I found her father’s name. I then found an old local history book with his name in it and it said where he had lived and the names of his children. I looked in the telephone book to see if any of his children still lived around here, and sure enough, we found one son not far away. So on a trip to Norway ten years ago, Kory called up his Uncle Per and introduced himself and said he would like to meet him. Per was sure Kory had the wrong number because he had never heard his father had an illegitimate daughter, but Kory assured him he did. When Per hung up the phone he told his wife he’d just gotten the strangest phone call. He said a guy from America called to say he was his nephew and that his mom was his half-sister. Per’s wife said, “Yes, that’s right.” Per was shocked. He then asked his wife how she knew this to be true, and she told him she had heard it about fifty years earlier. He asked her why she didn’t say anything to him about it in all these years and she said, “Because it never came up.” And that is an excellent example of the quintessential Norwegian communication style. They just don’t talk about unpleasant personal things. We have since met Per and his wife, and his sister Berit and her husband, but their other brother died before we had a chance to meet him. We were hoping to have dinner with this group of “uekte” relatives last night but they had to postpone. (“Uekte” is the word they used to use for “illegitimate” - it means “not real.”) They are a wonderful group of relatives we are delighted to now know. Jenny had no desire to meet them however as she was terribly embarrassed and injured by the whole scenario and didn’t want to be part of that family. Kory intentionally waited until after she died before asking about her father. (Protocol and pleasantries.) But Jenny’s sister, Tante Berit, is a little bit sad they never met.

Kory came home from work in a sour mood as he hurt his back even more while lifting something today. I didn’t think he should have gone to work, but he did. He was moaning all afternoon, even after taking some ibuprophen and a hot soak in the tub. Poor thing. Kaleb came home from school whining and crying too, but it was just his way of trying to get out of doing homework. He is so tired of doing it and I am so tired of making him. Ugh. I spent all my free time today working on plans for our summer road trip. It’s like shooting at a moving target, but fortunately I’m not tired of it yet.