Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Grandma Ragna Josefine

text and images britt-arnhild

The conversation with my parents yesterday planted a seed. Deep in my mind. It all started when pappa said a few words which reminded me so much of his mother, grandma, bestemor, best mother, Ragna Josefine.

Driving home from my parents I looked into the car mirror, and there I saw the top of my forehead, the soft silver hair. It was like a hug from bestemor. I look so much like her, a recognition which makes me filled with love.

Through the night I searched for memories. When bestemor cherished my hair, saying "it is such a beautiful day", when she taught me to crochet, when we sat down at her kitchen table and she made me thick slices of bread with syrup, when I watched her weed her garden. The memories are there, and last night I wrote them down. But they are so few. I want to remember more. I want to live again moments of my childhood. I want bestemor here now. There are so many questions I would like to ask her.

We will have dinner with my parents on Sunday. Two of my brothers will be there.
I will use the opportunity to ask then for memories.
And to ask my parents more about their lives.

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What do you do with your childhood memories?

Welcome "home" brother Frode

text and images britt-arnhild

My parents were there to listen to my speech. Actually it was my father who asked me to come and share some of my thoughts and reflections about Lent.

Afterwards I went home with my parents.

The peaceful, comforting feeling of being a little girl again. An only child for a few hours, surrounded by the deep, everlasting love of a mother, of a father. My mother made coffee. Afterwards my eyes fell down and I had a long nap on their coach. When I woke up my father had dinner ready.

We shared memories.

me - I remember brother Frode read my diary. I complained, in tears, and mamma, you said - oh BrittArnhild, please let him read, will you. I think you were very tired right then

mamma - I am sure your secret words gave him important lessons for life

pappa - I can´t see how you could have anything against your brother reading your diary, you still write your journal and now you open it for the whole would

me - the whole world except my brother, I don´t think he reads my blog, I guess it is because he is allowed to now. No excitement anymore :-)

Welcome to Trondheim Frode. It will be nice to have you here a week, and most of all to celebrate your birthday.

Depression or rainbow?

text and image britt-arnhild

Heard on the news that 1 out of 5 retirees are depressed. The number shocked me and a list of whys flowed through my mind.

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I started my first job when I was around 26. I had a good education, I had two young boys, it was time to work, at least parttime. I was employed by our church to do deaconal work. For 20 hours a week I was to make life more colourful, less lonely for the elder people.
I had a long list of old people whom I visited regularly, and I spent a lot of time wondering what made them meet life so differently. Many of them were depressed and used me as a wall to complain against. Others let the sun fall on me as soon as I walked into their rooms.

Two very different lives stay stronly in my mind almost 30 years later. Anna was depressed, she had lost the colours in her life, and once a week, when I came to see her, she spent all the time focusing on her lonely life. Often crying. Always complaining that her family never came to see her. To endure my visits I looked around in her tiny appartment trying to find object from her long life of which we could talk, of which she could share memories. I never found any. My feet were heavy when I left Anna. So was my mind.
Edith took a long time to open her door, which was fine as it gave me a chance to regain my breath after climbing the dark stairs up to her tiny appartment on the forth floor. Edith opened the door smiling, sent me into her miniature combined livingroom and bedroom while she and her walker slowly went into the kitchenette to make us coffee. I was never alowed to help. We sat down, sipped our coffee and Edith started to talk. Tiny, like her world famous name sister, she took me to the huge ballet theatres of Europe. After a while she reached out for her scrap book, and very carefully she showed me photos of a young, beautiful dancing Edith. For an hour I was totally mesmerized. When I left Edith I danced down the many stairs, out onto the street.

 I never found out anything about Anna´s life. I have no idea what happened to Edith, why a famous dancer could end up in this dark appartment.
I do know that Anna´s light place with the huge window facing a huge tree changing with the seasons, always felt dark, walls pressing agains my mind. I do know that Edith´s poor place felt like magic opening to  Sound of Music.

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I am deeply thankful to both Anna and Edith as they both taught me the same, important lesson, though in two completely different ways - I never wanted to become like Anna, Edith became a heroine:

Live your life fully. Collect your memories. Share your tales.
Seek for the rainbow, never anything less.

After visiting Anna I knew how important it is to keep a diary. To collect memories, to enrich my palette. After visiting Edith I knew hom important it is to keep a diary. To collect memories, to enrich my palette.

 

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And the moral of this post:

How can I share colours when none can be seen?
Or is there a moral? 

Tales along the road

text and images britt-arnhild

The winter has given us one storm after another. As I sit here typing this, early Saturday morning, all is quiet outside. Yesterday morning was different. The news were filled with car accident stories, several of them fatal. The funeral was outside Trondheim, near the coast, a 100km drive and a ferry ride away. On our way we passed several trucks which had driven into the ditch, hailstorms hit us and the roads were slippery. But Terje is an experienced driver. I felt safe all the way. Safe enough to chat comfortably, safe enough to listen to music, safe enough to take a nap.

With music filling the car I let my thoughts drift around old memories, and when Ola Bremnes sang about an old guitar of his, I was taken back to when I was 15 and got my own guitar. I played day and night, teaching myself, the world´s most charming boy taught me, but most of all I loved to listen to this boy, playing, singing. I was deeply in love. So was he. Both of us were too shy to say anything. Eyes meeting over his guitar spoke it all though. Once we went to a camp together. We played a kind of guessing game where we formed groups of two and two which had to walk around to different posts, answering questions. I was asked to sit guard at the last post, asking a question. The charming boy was asked to sit at the first one. When everybody had been at his post, he came over to sit with me. My heart beat like thunder. I was sure he must hear it when we sat there in the silence, waiting for people to come. Then one came and I had to ask the question which was written on the paper I had been given "who sat at the first post"

The boy and I looked at each other. All of us knew of course that he was the answer. And as long as he sat there with me, everybody would remember. We all laughed, though my heart cried when he rose and left. I so much wanted him to keep on sitting here, at the post under a huge fir tree. Just me and him.

Sitting safe in the car with Terje. On our way to a tear filled funeral. A heart filled with love for my husband through almost 32 years. The little girl I once was, the teenager in love, the young student waiting for life to unfold, the fresh mother filled with dreams, the middle aged woman safe and comfortable in the middle of a hail storm.

 

Thank you very much for sharing your tales on yesterday´s post.

BALISHA, your Christmas story toughed my heart deeply. We all have a lot to learn from it, a lot to pay forward. Thank you.

ANNA BLUEBELL , good luck with your memoires

Thank you IN THE SILENCE

NICCA, I love your stories from Venice. One day I hope we can meet, may be in......Venice :-)

GEMA, how lovely to have your childhood stories to bring with you through life. Thanks for sharing.

UP, thank you!!!!!! (a separate email is sent you), Readers, you should all go to UP´s blog to learn from him how to look at life with a smile though all its hardship.

MARTA B, that´s so funny :-) Poor driver.

ELY, thanks for commenting.

 

And the giveaway............

the handwritten letter........

 

Of course I can not chose just one of you. Send me your snail mail address and I will write you a letter.

Not an ordinary Sunday morning walk, or Booktalk on a Sunday 43

text and images britt-arnhild

WARNING: text and images do not quite go together today..........or may be that´s exactly what they do? Let´s see what happens.....

At lunchtime today we are invited to nephew Benjamin´s 10th birthday. Tonight Torgeir, Øystein and Marius will come home for dinner. Enough on the board for one day for me right now, so I have no early Sunday morning down in the city planned.

 

Instead I am doing quite another walk. A memory walk down the Book Lane.

I am in the prosess of sorting through a lifetime of books.

Somehow there are always too many books around. Somehow there can never be enough books.

You know what I mean?

I have thousands of books, have never actually counted, but I know there are several throusands of them. I have managed to keep my travel litterature together, in two IKEA shelves with glass doors between the hallway and the livingroom. 

The rest of the book collection needs sorting.......and it needs dusting. Badly!

My goal is to get this sorted out before going back to work in a week´s time.

This Sunday morning it is the children´s books. A few from my mother´s childhood. Many from my own, my brothers´, my husband and his brother. Books I started to buy as soon as I knew I was pregnant, 30 years ago. Books collected for two sons, two daughters.

Now I am gathering them from around the house, we have bookshelves everywhere, putting them together in a special bookcase in the extra bedroom we call "the children´s room", which is also our guestroom.

As I gather the books, sort them, I am again and again taken down memory lane. A bedside storybook my grandpa Johannes always read from, a Nancy Drew with the inscription "to Britt Arnhild on your 12th birthday from Torodd" - brother Torodd was exactly three weeks old on my 12th birthday, a very old Johanna Spyri´s Heidi from my mother in law´s childhood, a series of "If you give a mouse a cookie....." which I used to read over and over for Marta.

.............The books are so many. The books are so filled with memories. All of them blessed, sweet memories.

The bookcase is not big enough. Many books will have to be put into boxes and stored away. Waiting for grandchildren, nieces, nephews. Waiting for new generations of readers.

Some of the books have the names of my brothers in them. Benjamin will get three of them today, for his 10th birthday. One of the Bobsey Twins, with his father´s name inscribed. Two about the Hardy Boys, is that also what you called them in USA, in the rest of the English speaking world, The Hardy Boys, the detective  brothers Joe and Frank?

When the children´s books are done, I will go through the rest of my collection. But right now there are more childhood memories to bring out of the mist.

(Yes, I knew the photos would be perfect for my book travel this Sunday morning.......)

 

Tonight, after the boys have gone home, after the dishes are done, I plan to reread a very special book, Secret Garden. I know that holding this special red, hardcovered books will bring memories. Of poor orphaned Mary, of a robin, a key, a garden coming to life, of friendship.........and of hours and days of sweet childhood reading.

 

Happy Sunday.

Happy reading.

A travel is a travel is a travel.......

text and images britt-arnhild

When my husband was a boy his parents loved to take him and his brother out on picnics, hikes, camping. Nothing far away, nothing "exotic", a lot of adventure. My husband has told me many of his memories. Once they had planned an outdoor picnic. The backpack was packed with comfort food and hot chocolate, but then the weather decided to spoil everything. Weather was defeated though. My parents in law took their two small boys up the steep ladder to the attic. There they spread out a carpet, the food and the hot chocolate, and sat down. The picnic was a success, the memories stay with my husband after 50 years.

The same attic was used years later when Ingrid as a little girl wanted to sleep in her new tent, but was too young to sleep outdoors by herself. The tiny little play tent was put up on the attic floor and Ingrid had a real adventure.

I try to make every day a travel day, adventures on the menu. On my way to work I walk through the park instead of the shorter way along the road. I can make the park walk in a minute, or I can make it loooooong. On my way to work I walk along the river. I can make the river walk in a minute, or I can make it loooooooong. Like yesterday when a heavy rain shower had made the river water, which usually reflects the sky, brown. The way the white fence enjoyed his mirrored image in the brown water was a new experience. Something to stop for. Something to shot.

My adventure was there and then.

A travel is a travel is a travel.

Memories from a childhood

Text and images Britt-Arnhild Wigum Lindland

One photo by Mauro Vianello (again.....)

 
When I was 13 my parents bought a motor home, a caravan. The following Christmas my parents' gift to all of us was a trip down Europe, from Trondheim to Lido di Jesolo and back again. Four weeks, one week driving south, two weeks on the Italian beach, one week back home again. My parents, me 14, Frode 12, Børge 9 and Torodd 2.

For four weeks we lived in a motor home.

When I was a child it was all a dream. As a grown up I see clearly how brave my parents were.

 
Mauro and Barbara have rented a bungalow just sout of Lido di Jesolo for the summer, and Sunday we spent the day there.

 
Sun, sand, swimming.......and reading......about Venezia/Venice of course.

(yes, you are right, this is the photo Mauro took)

 
After hours in the sun, hard for our Nordic skin, it was time for dinner in the bungalow.

 
Mauro's homemade beansoup with pasta, grilled vegetables, bread, cheese, and prosecco which was a gift to us from Mauro's father.

 

Mauro has promised to send me the recipe for the soup. Don't forget Mauro. I am waiting.......may be I'll even share the recipe with my blog readers!

 
Barbara had made the world's best tiramisu. We ate it too fast for my camera......

Barbara, I never asked you about the recipe, but now I do? Can I please have it, or is it your special secret?

 

A magical day came to its end. A day filled with fiendship and memories.

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I was 14 when I spent four weeks in the  motor home in 1972. Mauro was a young boy of 9 with La Laguna as his playground. How was your summer of 1972?

Sun. Snow. Ski. Now and Then

text and image Britt-Arnhild Wigum Lindland

 

On our way to the cabin we pass a mountain. A perfect place for cross country skiing. When we go to the cabin during the winter months we always bring our skis, and on driving there we always (well, let us say if weather permits) stop at Hemnekjølen for a few hours out in the snow.

 
Did you know that Norwegians are born with skis on their feet. Hard deliveries for sure, but we are of stubborn heritage. I was no exception, the skis were there already from birth. Here you see me at age 2 1/2, no skis to be seen, but they are there somewhere, my boots are traditional ski boots. Wearing a handknitted sweater made by mamma, holding mamma's hand, brother Frode in the sledge behind us. (though when looking twice at the photo I wonder if this is not me at all but one of my younger cousins.....the colour choice in the girl's sweather looks like my aunt's.....)

Can you see the handknitted sweather my mamma is wearing. The pattern is called Cortina and was designed for the Winter Olympics in Cortina, was itin 1956? I still have it.

 

Just like our parents took us out cross country skiing on Sundays, and other days, we have taken our kids out. Torgeir got his first pair of skis before he was two, a long chain of memories belong to us as a family.

Cross country skiing for us as a lot about fun. We ski for an hour, then find a place to sit down for coffee, hot chocolate, hotdogs grilled on a fire, chocolate, oranges........and playing. Like the track Marta made on Saturday......who can ski the track fastest......

 

This photo is from 1963, brother Børge a baby in the pram, here my father has a handknitted sweather on.....knitted by my mother of course. Mamma still knits, this winter it is long, beautyfully multicoloured patterned sweathers for Marta 15 (in 6 days), Mathilde 14 (almost), Kamilla 13 (almost) and Embla 12 (in a few months). Four cousins.

My father is quite a charmeur, isn't he? Smoking a pipe :-)

 

Sun. Snow. Ski. Then and now. isn't it amazing the way a heart can be so filled with memories, with pleasure, with thankfulness........still it keeps on beating, the same pattern.

 

Winter Sundays was for meeting aunts, uncles and cousins....and my mamma was not the only knitting mamma. I love the white and black sweather I am wearing here, and also Frode's white and grey one. Børge sits in the middle front, hugging a little cousin.

 

Børge is proud of his fit mamma. He still is. Mamma is still skiing, at the age of 80+. At least she did last winter. I don't know about this winter mamma, do you have any plans.......

 

I asked Marta and her friend on Saturday: "How do you like this?"

Marta's friend: "I love it. This is so much better than sitting home, watching television!"

 

A meeting with my 12 year old self

Text an images Britt Arnhild Wigum Lindland

I had a meeting at St.Olav's hospital yesterday,with a deacon and a priest working there. The hospital is under a total renovation. Many old buildings are disappearing, new modern builtings to be seen everywhere. "Meet us in the old 1902-building" was the message I got, "the red brick one".

I came there early was instantly set back 40 years, I was twelve again and spent time in hospital.

 

Nothing serious, today  no one would have dreamt of keeping me in hospital for two weeks. Life was different back in 1970. Somehow they never found a bed for me in the children's department, so for two weeks I lived in a four bed's room with grown up women.

I remember long, boring days, looking out the window down on the park with the huge old trees, walking over to the small kitchenette to find myself something to drink, but most of all reading, reading, reading. I know I have told you before that I discovered Mary O'Hara's books about Flicka during these weeks.

Twice a week a woman came to the rooms with a wheel chart filled with books. No spesific children's books, but still she did her best to find something for me. Yesterday I saw that there is now a library in the building. How I would have loved that 40 years ago. I guess I would have spent all days there. Browsing the shelves, smelling the books, reading, dreaming, flying with wings of words.

I am not sure what I want with this post. Just a short walk down memory lane.

It is Saturday morning in The House in the Woods, and as so often I am awake and up too early, way too early. King Winter has a strong grip on us and I have made a fire both in the huge wood stove down in the basement, and in the open hearth here in the livingroom. I've had my cup of tea and my two pieces of bread with Bosnian honey in front of the fire. Later Marta and I will go downtown for some Christnas craft shopping. Now I open a children's book I've wanted to read for a long time, a book sent me by a blog reader (I do get quite a few books from you, mostly as wonderful surprises, and love every single one of them); The Winter Child by Wendy Froud and Terri Windling.

Down in an outer basement room and outside the playhouse in the garden I know there is enough wood to keep us warm though the winter....

......and tomorrow the first advent candle will be lit.

Breakfast under the lime tree

Text and images Britt Arnhild Wigum Lindland

A couple of nights ago I finished the chapter in my travel book which tells about my week in Syria. While writing it has been almost like living the travel all over again. While reading the chapter I get yet another travel :-)

I am in Oslo today. Came down last night to stay with friends and had a lovely night with them, I could have talked non stop about Syria, but then they came home from Madeira the night before and stopped my flow of words to squeeze in some of their tales.

I am having breakfast in my friends' house. They have already left for work, so I am eating alone. Alone? Oh no, I have my Syria memories with me.

Just now I am dreaming myself back to breakfast under the lime tree. I remember the funny murals in the hotel in Damascus where we spent our two last night and I smile......

 
Memories are precious. Do you have one to share today?