I had hoped to go for a hike up the nearby “bird mountain” to see all the Puffins nesting there with Vestina, but she was so distracted by the latest drama in her love life that she just needed to spend the day talking. I thought we could talk and walk at the same time, but apparently she doesn’t do that. She also needed to find a model for a big haircut test she has to do for school on Wednesday, so that preoccupied her as well. Fortunately, we are well connected here, so I could at least solve that problem for her. The other one wasn’t so easy.
Vestina and I hung out in town for a few hours then I took her to lunch (an expensive proposition) and ran a few errands. We spent the rest of the day at our place, talking and walking a bit in the neighborhood. It was like having a daughter home from college, talking about all the boys. I used to know a thing or two on that subject so both Kory and I gave her our opinions. Her latest boyfriend just told her last night that he’s being somewhat of a gigolo to some older, divorced woman from Thailand with a lot of money. He swears Vestina is his true love, but he’s making out pretty well with this other woman that likes to buy him things. He cares so much for Vestina, he says, he couldn’t keep it a secret any longer, but he in no way said he would stop this other relationship. She was in a quandary as to what to do because she really likes this guy. Both Kory and I told her to dump him. She just wants him to dump the other woman. Oh, to be young and stupid. I love spending time with her. She makes me laugh, and I always need more of that.
Kory spent the day with Tante Kari and Aslaug going through the last of the boxes belonging to Tante Ruth. Mostly it was photos and personal papers they sorted through, but it was good to be done with that task. Kaleb spent his time after school with Tobias, who is anxiously counting down the days until he comes home with us to America. At the very same time, we are dreading how quickly the time is passing until we return home. Kaleb also attended a late night grill down at a local beach with other boys from church, so I only saw him a few minutes today. Keeping our distance helps sometimes to keep the stress level low in our house.
I finally found the books I needed to help me understand the missing link in this search I’m working on for my friend Stuart. I was giddy with excitement when I figured out the problem, which had to do with a father dying and the mother remarrying another Ole, so there were two batches of kids I was dealing with, some with the same name. Ugh. But now I know the man I met last week on the Sandes farm is Stuart’s (half) third cousin, once removed. It’s amazing they look so much alike with that kind of distance between them, but that gene pool must be pretty strong.
I also saw in one of the books that Stuart’s grandma, Gertie Frøyset, was one of eight kids and only three of those siblings ever married. The other five lived and worked on the family farm (see photo of their house I visited last week). One of the kids that got married, never had kids, and the other one that got married had two daughters and neither of them ever married. Gertie was the only one with descendants from that branch and they all now live in America, so there was no one left to take over the farm after at least ten generations living there. I found ancestors as far back as 1585 on that farm. The church/government (they were the same thing back then) didn’t start keeping meticulous records until the 1600s, so I have nearly all of Stuart’s branches at least that far back (there are now over a thousand names in his database on my computer.) On one of his farms though, it was so well documented, I could go back 18 generations from him (and he has grandkids, so that’s 20 generations back), to the late 1300s. It really is mind boggling to think about. Kory doesn’t understand my fascination with this stuff, but I think it’s cool to know a little about those who came before us. My little office nook in our condo looks rather messy with dozens of farm history books stacked in piles all over the place, but I love it.
Those two girls/women who never married (nieces to Gertie), lived together, and when they died in the early 1980s, so said the book, they left over half a million kroner behind (over $160,000). That was a hefty sum of money back then, especially in Norway. I also read that Gertie’s father became a widow at age 49, and when he was 53, he fathered a child with a 28 year old hired worker on his farm. Seems like there was a little hanky, and a little panky going on back then, and as I found out today from My Pal Vestina, nothing has changed in that department.
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