The Infamous Diary

Now we come to it – The Infamous Diary.  For years my family has been silenced when I say “it’s no use arguing, it’s in my diary”.  I began my diary when I was 16 and it was some time before my family was aware that I was scrawling away at this diary on a nightly basis.  It didn’t become a “blackmail” item (well, more of a silencer than a blackmail tool) until quite a few years later when siblings and even parents would recalls something that I had written down differently.

It is a looseleaf binder, originally just in a duotang, and began June 18, 1969 with these less than memorable words:

“This is to be my story. . . So far my life has not been particularly exciting.”

And ends with “This is about all that happened today, except continual accusations against me of one sort or another.”

Classic teenage self-centeredness and also a lot in between about a mother who doesn’t understand her.  I laugh as I read it because I can remember exactly how I felt and indeed I can remember writing it all down.  It was the same day that my Morfar (maternal grandfather) returned to Denmark after his long visit with us but I only mention that he went home, nothing at all about the visit.  As I go over the first few entries I find myself giggling more and more (and blush to say my grammar was not always so great in the diary).  Those were the days when “groovy” was an in-word and it appears often enough to make me smile because I may have used it in writing but I don’t think I used it much in speech (too self-conscious).

I also see how much of a chicken I was myself and how daring Peter and Jeanette were . . . and how they led me astray.  I think it is going to be fun to read and ponder whether September will be a whole month of the diary, or if I should put on the brakes!

Vacations were not for us

My father never took vacations, he took the money.  Our Sunday drives were the closest we got to a vacation my whole childhood.  Some weekends we went all the way to Niagara Falls and had picnics at the beach below the falls.  We also went to Lake Erie and we would visit the forts there (I can’t remember the names, I think one was Fort George and the other was Fort William).  We enjoyed these historical trips and of course anything to do with water sent us to heaven.

When we moved to Calgary and I was working one day Dad took Peter and I on a drive.  I was on a week’s vacation and naturally enough not going anywhere so Dad said “this is your vacation”.  We took a drive out of town through places that are now well known to me, Okotoks Big Rock and through the valley to what was once the Prince of Wales Ranch (that would be Edward VIII in his young days) which years later is the neighbour to my sister’s land!  We ate our lunch there and then drove on talking about the Lost Lemon Mine among other things.  It was a really cool day for us, spending it with our Dad.  I was maybe 25 and Peter would have been 16 or 17.  But we were still “kids” when it came to our Dad and getting that attention. 

It’s one of those days that I just never will forget.  P.S.  This picture was from that day, near Big Rock.

Cultural Pride

It’s hard not to know that you are an immigrant when you can hear your parents’ accent but I can say in all honesty that I was never embarrassed by my parents’ accents.  My father developed a very fine, extensive vocabulary (correctly used) and Mom did also, though more slowly since she was a housewife and not one to go out to mingle with the other ladies of the neighbourhood very often.  But I was embarrassed by Mom’s “sick note” writing (which I may have written about before).  She would write on a scrap of paper “Susanne was ill.”  I would watch as the teacher read other kids’ notes, written on fancy notepaper or even on card paper. And they were long.  I often wonder now “what the heck did they write?”  But then, Mom hated writing letters and a sick note was definitely not going to get much play with her!

Since many of Dad’s stories were about his childhood and Denmark we naturally took great pride in our heritage.  Not for us any sense of shame that we weren’t WASP.  Who wanted to be WASP when you could be Viking?  Who wanted to be WASP when Danes saved their Jews while the rest of the world gave them up, rejected them and otherwise did not stand up for what was right?  Who wanted to be WASP when they had the best Farmor in the world?  Who wanted to be anything but what we were a Danish family who knew how to love and laugh and have Christmas on Christmas Eve when the rest of the town had to wait until morning for their presents?

Indoors we were Danish to the core. We spoke Danish, we had plain Danish food (meat, potatoes, gravy and a dessert), and we had nice furniture, plants on the tables, pictures on the walls and ornaments here and there.  From the beginning my parents were very puzzled by the way Canadians furnished their homes.  They had a sofa and one chair, sometimes a coffee table but no pictures, plants or ornaments other than an ashtray or two.  We always had sofa, 2 chairs, coffee table, 2 side tables, lamps, and as I say all the “fixings” that made the living room cosy.  Part of this could have been the earlier areas where we lived because once we got into the suburbs the homes looked a little more like ours, but not much.  As my grandparents began sending parcels we had our Royal Danish porcelain and the newer teak things that became so modern in Denmark. 

We were, like, branding before we knew what branding was!  I know that when my friends in junior high came to my house they were terribly impressed by our home.  My parents really had great style.

I know, I am bragging a little . . . but only about my parents who make me so proud.  [bragging was something Dad was very strict about NOT doing, ditto tattle-tailing.  Two HUGE no-nos for us as kids]

Danish is my First Language

A couple of years ago I had a bit of a conversation on Facebook about a certain word’s pronunciation, I was corrected and I felt defensive but Peter wrote “Sanne, remember English is your second language”.  It made me laugh and my irritation fell away.  While I pride myself on speaking and writing proper English there are moments in these latter years where I lose my words (menopause has something to do with that, they tell us) but frequently I also find myself at a loss because while I can find it in one language it doesn’t come to me in the alternate language.

I don’t remember NOT speaking English.  It seems to me that Jeanette and I went out into the street and began playing with kids, no problem.  We were first in Little Italy in Toronto so for all I know I could have been speaking Italian to begin with!  But Dad very quickly after we got our own apartment bought a television set for Mom and all of us naturally learned English through the TV.  Certainly a year later when I went to kindergarten I was fluent in English and never had a problem in school.

However since we spoke only Danish at home sometimes wires could get crossed for us if we suddenly heard an English word that sounded like a Danish word but we had no co-relation to it.  Case in point,

When we were living in Grimsby John would have been 4 years old, before kindergarten.  One day a kid down the road came by and they started playing together.  At some point the kid asked John “wanna wrestle?” and John said “okay” and then proceeded to rattle around, shaking and spazzing about because in Danish “rustle” was . . . not wrestling.  John laughed as we recalled it the other day because he did recall it exactly as I did.  I think that is the only time I really remember any of us getting it SO WRONG.

As I have said before my Dad had read that immigrants should never attempt to speak the new language to their children because it could cause serious errors in grammar as well as accents.  I know we had friends who made the mistake of speaking English to their kids and their English was very poor in comparison to ours (and I DON’T blush to say it).  I feel proud that my parents took our upbringing very seriously and that we turned out such good citizens!  We might not be stars, but we aren’t jailbirds either.

Thanks Mom and Dad.

Siblings' Memories

I have been kidding my siblings with what I have been writing about them and I can get John going every single time when I say that he was the one that said he could remember being an egg.  I love to tease him . . . usually he takes it in his sardonic way but I think maybe I am embarrassing him so --- no, he never said that!

My brother Peter was making his own recollections the other day when suddenly John said “remember the Popeye punching bag?”  Both of us sat up and said “Yeah, now that you mention it!”  Both John and Peter loved that bag which they had for years.

I had been telling the story of my passive upbringing the first 3 years of my life.  Mom and Dad were going to raise their children on “modern lines” which included “no fighting” (gasp).  I was asking Mom if the picture of me standing on the bed was the day Dad found me being slapped by another girl.  “No, she said, that happened in Thisted”.  What happened was my parents were entertaining a couple who had also brought along their little girl.  Dad happened to walk into the bedroom where we were playing and found me standing in the middle of the room while the other girl slapped my face.  I made no move to defend myself and Dad had an absolute shock.  He had trained me so well in not hitting that I had no idea that I could defend myself.  (It explains a lot, actually).  I then looked at John and asked if he remembered having to be untrained and he said “not in a million years, I never had any idea of not defending myself” and we all laughed because we knew it was true.

It’s a little ironic because as I have written, we did fight with each other but it only began after Dad “corrected” his error about hitting.  It is one thing not to hit but it’s a totally different thing not to defend yourself.  I don’t remember any of it, to be honest (i.e. about either “induction”) but the anecdote was told to me fairly young and that story sticks with me as a bit of a symbol of how I get things in a very literal way.

Tomorrow I will talk about language.

Sunday Drives

There are people who see their childhoods either as one long agony, who don’t remember anything at all and those who have rose-coloured glasses.  I am often accused of being the latter, especially by my siblings but the truth is, that is how I remember it.  I had a happy childhood, I had the normal “angst-y” teenage years and when I turned 18 I simply went into adulthood equipped for whatever came my way.  I call that a great childhood and a great beginning for life.

Mom stayed home and was a good housewife and a great mother; Dad went to work, frequently came home late but spent his weekends with his wife and children.  He did not go out with the boys, he didn’t golf or do other things without his family.  He once said to me “how could I bring my wife to a strange country with no family and friends and leave her alone?”  But the truth was he loved us all and got a kick out of his children. 

We had our weekend mornings congregated around his bed, listening to his stories and enjoying his laugh.  But once we were up it was Saturday groceries, a super special smorgasbord lunch and then it would be either playing on our own or sometimes Dad would roughhouse with us.  We went on Sunday drives often because the “country” was not too far away from our neighbourhood.  We loved nothing better than to go out for a drive and look at horses and cows.  Sometimes we would beg Dad to let us “rent a horse” when we saw a sign that riding was available but that never happened.  We were all horse-mad (how could we not be when we were raised on Westerns?) but we never got a chance to go on a horse.  I suppose this is one of those times where I negate my own oft told tale of not asking for anything because when we saw a horse, we asked, and asked, and asked.  The answer was the inevitable no.

But one day Dad spun a great tale that John bought hook, line and sinker.  He told John that he had got a good deal on a horse and had bought one for him, however there was a catch.  The owner had made some deal with the Toronto Mounted Police so the horse still had to live in Toronto and work for the police.  When Dad took John to work with him on the occasional Saturday John would look around for his horse and Dad had to be quick to make sure he always picked the horse that looked the same as the last time “it was John’s horse”.

Some of the fun places we went on Sunday was Lowville Park in Burlington.  There was a small creek winding through the park and we were allowed to wade in it.  It could get scary because there were crayfish in the creek and we would shriek if we saw one, but I never got bitten.  Another place we went, slightly further away, was Sunset Villa (which we called Sunsetsavilla for years and years).  This was a Danish park and my parents enjoyed meeting other Danes there.  And Dad was frequently the magnet not just for the kids who knew him but for all kids because he was such a kid at heart.  I clearly remember this huge tubular slide that Dad would climb with us and then he would literally shove kids down, yelling at the top of his voice so that Mom could hear him at the other end of the park (as could everyone else, all knowing who it was, SO EMBARRASSING FOR HER).  We loved it.

Dad could also make driving up to Rattlesnake Point super exciting, using his big voice to make scary noises as he let the car drive itself down the “mountain” (as we believed).  Dad actually did not like driving since he was very near-sighted but without glasses (can you imagine him surviving all those years without having proper glasses?  I cannot imagine how he got away with it) but daylight wasn’t so terrible.  John and I both remember some horrible nights when, for whatever reason, we were on the road at night.  I am surprised that we live to tell the tale.  Dad could absolutely not see a thing, he would be off the road, on sidewalks, and muttering under his breath and driving slow as molasses in January.  Somehow we got home, frazzled.  But lived another for another drive!

Teenagers and Babies

Charlotte looks askance at me when I tell stories of climbing trees, playing with snakes and frogs and otherwise portraying myself as a wild tomboy.  There is almost 14 years difference in our ages and she only remembers me as a grown woman.  But between the ages of 14 and 18 we did play together and she will be the first to say that I taught her how to really play with dolls.  It’s true, I played with dolls even into my 20’s, using Charlotte as my excuse.  I loved to create olden day outfits and we would make cute little houses for the Barbies (I didn’t play with baby dolls, just Barbie).  Jeanette had discovered a cute hobby shop once she got married and when I went on visits I would bring home little coal stoves and other olden day things to be used for the Barbie house.  Charlotte learned to make a play/drama in her games which she then taught to her friends (or tried to).

As I noted in my coming of years blog Charlotte was also a burden on occasion when babysitting duty interfered with MY LIFE.  But while it can sometimes rise up in my memory as being overwhelming the reality was we were a family, we were sisters and we all of us fit in together however it had to be.  As a teenager I had my fair share of teenage angst and self-drama but it all went into “the infamous diary”.  I was not a verbal complainer but once I began my diary . . . well, that will be a tale for another time!

Charlotte was a loving child who loved animals and other kids.  In kindergarten her teacher had to stop her from being the little mother to the other children because Charlotte was so eager to help them tie their shoes and button up their coats.   There’s 5 years between Charlotte and Erik so she was also home alone with Mom while the rest of us were at school or work.  I remember the awful day when I got home from school and Mom was shakily trying to find Dad’s work number because Charlotte had fallen and broken her arm.  I took the book away from Mom and made the call while Mom, crazily enough, decided it was imperative that Charlotte had on a clean undershirt before going to the hospital.  I thought she was nuts but I was 17 and making the call so left that alone.  If I remember right Dad had Mom take a cab to the hospital where he met her and we learned afterwards that Charlotte had a serious meltdown panic attack when they went to leave.  She was beside herself (she was barely 4) but it had to be done.  She was in awful pain as the bone had broken in three different places but once she was  home she was pampered to death.

The rest of us kids never had anything happen to us despite climbing hundreds of trees, jumping off bridges or doing a thousand wheelies the worst that happened to us was scabbed knees.  Erik and Charlotte had one disaster after another.  I recall one time coming up the stairs and seeing reflected in the glass Charlotte putting her hand on the stove; she had a Koolaide bag on her hand and it went up in flames.  The blisters she got.  It was another night of wailing and my heart was hardened.  How could she be so silly?  (Hmm, at 4 years old I had put my hand in the wringer-washer and have the scars on my hand even now – but did I remember that then?  Nope.)  Now I am thinking “the worst that happened to us was scabbed knees”?  No, Jeanette had scalding coffee fall on her neck; I had a boiling pot of potatoes fall on my thigh, John had the ship’s swinging door crack his head open . . . how one can forget those bumps and bruises!  Resilience.

Little Sister No. 3

Charlotte is our Centennial Baby and Mom’s precious one.  Shortly after Charlotte came home from the hospital she got pneumonia and Mom had déjà vu not only with her being so ill but the doctor ignoring her anxious concern.  She had Dr. Scott up to the house a three times and he said it was just flu.  Mom could hear her wheezing breath and when she called for Dr. Scott on the Sunday his wife said it was his day off and she should take the baby to the hospital.  Charlotte was at death’s door, literally.  Mom says that Emergency may not have admitted Charlotte if Mom hadn’t told them that she had had the doctor in three times already.  Perhaps this was one of those times that my parents experienced prejudice but when they actually saw how sick Charlotte was they went into action.  First they put tubes into Charlotte’s side of her forehead but later they put it into her ankle.  She had scars for years.  She was in the hospital for more than two weeks.

Meanwhile the rest of us kids lived in virtual hell because Dad got some home care nurse from the Salvation Army who was NASTY.  She wouldn’t give us butter on our bread even though we had it in the house and had butter every day of our life.  She wouldn’t give us proper milk.  She made ghastly food.  She bullied us.  We complained to Dad and finally he got rid of her and I took over.   Thank the Lord.  And my siblings were actually good, cooperating with me.  (Probably because they didn’t want another one of those nurses coming to the house).  Unlike when Erik was born we didn’t have to take the kitchen table out to hose down all the cereal glued to it.  Jeanette and I cleaned the kitchen and did the dishes.  We didn’t cook but we could make sandwiches.  I think our neighbour Mrs. Jorgensen came in and helped with dinners but I don’t remember that.  I just remember we were allowed to take care of ourselves.

When Charlotte came home we were all relieved because we knew she had been in such danger.  We had been allowed to go to the hospital with Dad when he was visiting Mom and Charlotte.  I vividly remember the tubes in the side of her head, it really made an impression on me.  For Jeanette and I having a baby sister held special significance although we never said it to each other.  Jeanette was devoted to the baby but at that time she was not dedicated babysitter material.  That fell to me … and that saga will continue!

Erik's Quirks and Heroes

Erik was the baby for 5 years and Mom spoiled him.  There, it’s out there now.  Mom spoiled Erik.  He got drawing pads and she made special things for him.  I think it was because Erik really had the sweetest nature of all of us.  He was not a problem child.  He was busy and active but he was very quiet and could occupy himself without getting into trouble. 

Erik had his favorite shows and for whatever reason both Mom and Dad would buy things for him that we wouldn’t ever dream to ask for.  When Erik ran round the room playing Batman he ended up getting a Batman cape.  When he emulated Daniel Boone (he to this day he really admires Boone as a hero) Mom made him not only a coonskin cap but he also got a buckskin jacket she managed to create.  I think he had that jacket well into adulthood (although not worn obviously).  Erik also loved James West from “The Wild, Wild West” but I don’t think he got anything special from that show.  I remember having a chat with him recently and he said how horrible the Will Smith movie was (which I really agreed with, it was terrible).  Erik loved Aristead and all his weird inventions and I think he actually can remember most of them. 

Another area of excellent memory for Erik is his ability to remember every fight, every measurement (weight, height, arm band, waist, you name it) for a boxer.  Dad was a fight fan and all three of my brothers are fans but Erik goes to the nth degree.  Ditto with all the track runners.  He knows ALL the statistics.  He might not remember the capital city of Poland but he can tell you the blow by blow fight for Ali vs Frazier (or anyone else in the Heavy Weights).

As we started getting older our family sort of broke into couple mentors.  Jeanette and Peter, Erik and I and John softened with Charlotte.  Erik and I talked about that in our early adult years.  Family dynamics change and adapt as we mature and our paths takes us in different ways.  But one thing is strong in this family, we stick together in a crisis situation.  The Kennedys don’t have anything over us!  J

And Erik Makes Three - Bros

And then little brother Erik came along with his dark curly hair and finally I felt like there was someone like me.  The other four all had blonde hair and here was I with my mousy brown.  Erik’s was darker than mine but he also had lots and lots of curls.  With Erik I definitely fell into the role of babysitter / mentor since I was nearly 10 years older than him.  One of my early memories of Erik was the way he went from scooting around on his butt, using leg action to move around, to walking.  Erik really never crawled. 
From a very young age Erik was in love with drawing and while the rest of us got nadda from grocery shopping Erik frequently would get a writing pad so that he could draw.  When I was in high school I posted one of his drawings of Popeye in my locker and afterwards several other girls had pictures from their own younger siblings in their lockers but none compared with the talent of Erik.  He could draw Popeye spot on when he was only 5.  Erik has a true talent for caricature drawing and some of his art is truly hilarious. 

Another big obsession with Erik when he was a toddler was keys.  The amount of times Mom and Dad had to search the house for Dad’s car keys I cannot tell but one of the oddest places they found the keys was behind the toilet.  Erik had discovered the round thingumajig and used it as the steering wheel I suppose.  Anyway, the keys were found dangling there.  After that Mom bought Erik a set of toy keys which ended up behind the toilet all the time but at least Erik could find them and kept himself occupied while Mom cleaned house and we were in school.

I remember one dreadful day when I came home for lunch while in Junior High.  Mom wasn’t home.  The house was locked up.  Mrs. Alexander, our neighbour, was on the watch and brought me over to her house and as each of my siblings came home for lunch she would bring us into the house.  It turned out that Erik had fallen all the way down the basement stairs and then landed on a table he had dragged to the end of the steps which cut open his forehead.  Mom had to rush him to Dr. Scott’s house for stitches (I think she must have driven down there herself although I can hardly picture her doing so as she is NOT good in a crisis situation).  It was very upsetting to all of us, not so much because Erik was hurt but because OUR MOTHER WASN’T HOME.  Unheard of!

Selfish thinking?  We sometimes talk about helicopter parenting today but the truth is that when I was a kid all the mothers were home so when one wasn’t the kids were almost always upset because it just wasn’t NORMAL.  I guess we were helicopter kids! 
 

More Peter

All us Abildgaards are high energy people.  As kids we were the most dynamic kids in our neighbourhood.  The other kids would wait for us to come out and then they would all be roving over to us waiting for us to come up with the plan of the day.  Our Danish babysitter would ask Mom “what do you feed those kids, dynamite?”

When we weren’t playing outside we were our own little group playing in the basement (Mom rarely allowed us to have friends in the house, that was way too big of a commitment for her).  Mom remembers one time when John and Peter came up from the basement and even though John had cautioned Peter not to say anything, which he in his young mind thought he was obeying, he said “we didn’t have a fire in the basement”.  Well Mom ran down those 13 steps like she was going to the Olympics and discovered that John had lit matches and then dosed them by putting carpet on top of them.  Mercifully there was no fire but Mom had her eye on those two boys for months!

When Peter was about 9 or 10 I discovered that he liked to read and as I was starting to have save my allowance for birthday and Christmas presents I got him started on The Hardy Boy books.  I started him on a collection of other books as well, books from TV shows like “F Troop”.  Kmart was our shopping place and they had a nice little section of books and toys that we all gravitated to when we went shopping.  Sometimes Nette and I would take the boys (Peter and Erik) to the lunch counter and we would have jello or a pop or sometimes a donut.  Not often, but sometimes.  It was fun.  We pretended like we were in an Archie comic.  Which reminds me, I also bought the boys a lot of comics, Peter liked Spiderman, Fantastic Four and Thor.

I also remember Peter liking “Simba, the White Lion” cartoon.  We watched that together, it was the only cartoon I watched at that age (I pretty much gave up cartoons when I was about 9, except for “Beanie and Cecil” because the Barbie commercials came on at that time!)

Oh, and now to embarrass the living daylights out of Peter – one funny memory I have is when Farmor was on her visit.  She wore corsets and Peter was absolutely fascinated by all the hooks.  He would hook up her corset for her (he would have been 4 years old).  She never had the corset on tight (she was pretty rolly polly) and really only wore it for a garter belt.  But I do remember how cute Peter was sitting on the bed and seriously hooking the corset up nice and even.  He was such a good boy!

Made in Canada - Peter

One of Dad’s favorite books and stolen anecdotes comes from “Cheaper By the Dozen”.  I can remember Dad using the line that he left the other half of the family in the car when store folks commented on the tribe of 6 lined up behind my parents during certain shopping expeditions.  I thought it was embarrassing and funny at the same time (and original). 

Peter was born a year after Jill’s passing and I was the one holding him on my lap on the way home.  He was quite yellow with jaundice and I kept asking my parents “are you sure he is ours?  He looks Chinese”.  I remember us driving down the escarpment near Hamilton, looking at the rocks and then looking and Peter and really feeling like “was he ours?”  Well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and it was really never a doubt once Peter got home and made himself known.  He was loud, he was a little Paul from the beginning.  As he got older he had an amazing, quick wit and the gift of the gab.  Mom had 5 quiet kids but Peter was the talker.  She would tell the teachers “I have 3 other children that I have been told are too quiet and now I  finally have one who talks I am not going to tell him to be quiet”.  She was very funny about it.  Mom was generally an accommodating parent but this was one time she stood her ground.

Peter was the first of the “second” trio of kids but in the beginning he was of course just blended in with the three of us.  I was 6 when he was born and not yet the uber baby sitter, I was still a playmate though our play was limited in my recollection.  Peter mostly played with John but he was also very devoted to Nette.  They were amigos for years, he would nap and even sleep with her, she would tell him stories and they played well together.

When Peter and I talk he tells me he doesn’t remember Daddy the way I do.  He doesn’t remember a lot of the fun things we did in Burlington.  His recollections seems to start in Winnipeg and of course that was the time when Dad, always a hard worker with long hours, had an even longer work day than in Burlington (if that was even possible).  Plus Winnipeg was not the easiest place to live, our neighbour was new and very boring.  The only fun thing we had was the artificial lake but that got lame fairly fast since no one was allowed to swim or boat in it.  It was just “decoration”.

In Burlington we would go on drives, not in Winnipeg.  We had places where we could go for family picnics, we could go to Niagara Falls, Fort George and Fort William.  There was little to see in Winnipeg; we went once to Fort Gary but it was boring.  Winters were long, and boring.  There was no Rattlesnake Point and crazy drives down the “mountain”. 

Peter missed a lot of cool play.  Or thinks he did.

Lille Soster Jill

My mother was 3 months pregnant when we emigrated to Canada and our little sister Jill was born on Christmas Eve 1957.  She lived for 11 months at which time she died from a doctor’s incompetence in misdiagnosing her pneumonia.  It was the most traumatic experience of my parents’ lives, altering their parenting forever.  My father become so over protective it cannot be described and my mother, common in those days, never spoke about Jill’s death.

I don’t believe they told us Jill was dead but I distinctly remember Mom tucking me into my bed that night and seeing tears rolling down her cheeks.  I knew without knowing.  We children did not speak of her death even to each other until we were adults but oddly enough Nette and I have very similar memories of what happened (in our minds).  All three of us older kids had snotty noses and therefore, a cold.  I clearly remember eating a pear and Mom saying not to let Jill have a bite.  But she was in her playpen and being sweet so I gave her a bite.  For decades I believed that I was responsible for her getting sick.  I would lie awake at night when I was about 8 (I was 5 when she died) and think about it over and over again.  Years later when I told the story to Nette she did not at first have that recollection but later on she said she did.  Whether my recollection prodded hers or she actually remembers the same thing is up for debate.  However, she was also at the playpen at the same time as I, I do remember that.

Jill’s death had an effect on us but it was unspoken and for a long time rather ignored.  But Dad did ask us not to speak about Jill to Mom (protecting her, we thought, but it was probably also very painful for him).  And later yet he said that Mom did not like Christmas because of Jill.  But we still did not know that she was born on that day, we thought maybe that was when she died.  So there was a lot of unspoken confusion about our little sister.

My parents had some large photos developed of her and those we were allowed to look at although there were never any pictures put up in the house only in the album.  I do remember that Jill was a darling baby, never yelling or screaming like the one down the line (wink, wink, Lotte).  She looked very much like my next little brother coming down the pike.

Because the doctor told Dad to get Mom pregnant right away so she could ‘get over it’.  And I suppose that was common medical advice back in the day.  Another thing that Dad told me later, when I was an adult, was that the hospital callously told Dad that if he didn’t bury Jill she would be thrown in the incinerator.  Can you imagine?  Dad was shocked to the core but this set up Dad’s lifelong position on death and defined our own belief that cremation is the only way to go.  Daddy said “how could I possible have a funeral, a coffin and a grave when my little girl was burned?”

Impact.  One sentence like that and it has impacted me to the nth degree.  Today I think a lot about my “lille soster” and I can’t wait to meet her in heaven, in the universe, with the divine.  I know it will happen.

More John

Yesterday was personal analysis, today is rivalry.  As the oldest I had to stand on my rights.  Yes, oldest trumps all when it comes to the pecking order, not to mention that parental responsibility passed down to me as The Babysitter.  I took it seriously but John, feeling that he was the oldest boy must have had some misogynist tendencies.  In any event of all the siblings he was the one I had the most trouble with in “making him toe the line”.  I think the most horrific episode was when I was around 12 and John defied me when I was calling him home since Mom and Dad were out on a drive and it was time to get the kids into bed.  John was playing far in the field behind the house and when I yelled for him to come in he refused.  Well, I was going to fix his banana. 

Almost all of that day John and his friend Greg had built a beautiful town for their dinky toys.  Greg’s dad worked at the telephone company (I think) and he brought home little bits of rejected wire which Greg brought out for John to make street lamps (pretend of course) for the roads.   It really was a beautiful and large city they had made.  Well, when John wouldn’t come in the devil got in me.  I yelled, “if you don’t come in right now I am going to rip this city apart”.  John looked at me but didn’t believe I meant it.  Wrong, I took hold of those wires and tore up his city.  John was like a speeding bullet and there was fire in his eye (even with my poor eyesight I knew what was coming).  I ran inside, locked the door but John was beside himself (the stoic was gone that time).  He smashed his fist through the glass and then panic set in for both of us.  He had slit his wrist and blood was pouring down onto the driveway.  I opened the door and thank the Lord, Mom and Dad drove up just then and within seconds Dad had John in the car and was speeding down Appleby Line to Dr. Scott’s house where he got stitched up right quick.

The other rivalry is our “memory”.  John swears he remembers things from when he was one year old and the other day I turned to Mom and said “Ole now thinks he remembers in the womb” at which point he said “no, that is Erik”.  As mentioned earlier it’s hard sometimes to discern memory from anecdotal stories but my eyebrow goes up at some of the things he seriously says he remembers.  So we have contests (friendly) on what we remember.  It is a good way to get out some of the stories I am trying to set down both on the blog and my “Permission to be Sanne” biography (well, I hope one day it will be finished).

I was used to say that I am the competitive person on the planet but as my readers are bound to notice I think maybe I am totally wrong on that score!  When it comes to sports I must say I don’t give a rap but when it comes to brain power, well, I guess I am a little competitive.  J  Dad would challenge md but John is a good second I that regard; in fact he is probably not even second since Dad’s challenges were for personal growth but with John – it really is competition.

And that’s enough about Bro #1.

Next Up - John aka Ole

So I gave you a little taste of Nette – now for Ole (aka John).  When I said that I was the most laid back of us kids I really meant it.  However I would say John from a very young age was our Stoic.  I happened to say to my nephew that John was a Man from young and he didn’t quite get what I meant by that.  John was always quiet, observant and unemotional.  At least, he was unemotional in front of us.  Even from very young I rarely remember ever seeing John cry.

But Dad could trigger him and would sometimes tease him with the “Jens Hvejman” song and story.  Dad barely had to say “Jens Hvejman” and John would quietly slip under the kitchen table and tears would run down his cheeks.  (I am not sure I am spelling the name correctly, but in any event Jens dies.  My brother’s full name is Jens Ole so I guess he always felt some kind of connection with this Jens.  But that would ALWAYS get him down.  Naturally Nette and I would love to tease him with that too but I guess that got old fairly quickly with him so our taunts did not resonate much with him.  But Dad’s tease could always do it!

I think John is a natural born stoic but certainly being 3 years younger than me and 2 years younger than Jeanette and having us side against him very often did not help him much in being more open.  As he got older the Scandinavian phlegm also developed to a stronger degree in him than in the rest of us (although we all have it to a fairly strong degree).  Things would rumble around him, others would fight or have dramas and John would just calmly look on, seldom interfering.

That’s one side of him.   The other side is his inquisitive mind.  From a very young age John loved taking things apart and putting them back together again.  Erik calls him a mechanical genius and it’s true that John, without having any real education in mechanics, has a natural instinct in understanding mechanics, chemistry and physics.  But it was also a bit of a downfall for the rest of us as he would frequently take apart our bikes, take parts for his own bike and then ours would malfunction (to say the least).  That could really get us cheesed off and unfortunately Dad worked so late that we couldn’t really get him to fight our battle for us.  I remember John taking the brakes off my bike and I nearly broke my neck riding it.  I do think eventually Dad got him to repair it but it was very annoying for me to be without my bike for a couple of weeks.

John could also get the younger brothers going, teasing them and getting them to do things because of course they looked up to him (for a while).  They experimented with matches, got electrocuted with old phones John had rewired and generally got tortured on occasion.  But John also taught them quite a bit of mechanics and other things (which as a girl I hardly know what they were!  No interest in that side of life).  When Jeanette and I went off with our girlfriends John played with Peter and Erik.  They made rafts, went frogging, turtling and even fishing.  They also rode around the neighbourhood together and found some amazing trails that we girls didn’t know about (that would be when we lived in Winnipeg, the Monkey Trails they called them).

John could be tough and stoic but he also has a very tender heart for young children.  He gets a kick out of them when he sees their inquiring minds and as an uncle he has devoted many hours to walking with the kids along his creek, looking at nature, seeking out ant hills, snake pits and other wilderness things.  He has built go-carts, scooters and rafts for them.  He has mentored their reading, movie watching and storytelling abilities.A

We are all different, we have our strengths and weaknesses and our stories have parallels and divergence.  I have such a diverse set of siblings but one thing we have in common, we love our parents, our childhood and each other, in our own special way.  We were and are really blessed.

Jeanette Gets Her Way

I ended yesterday with Nette not going with the flow.  Here’s an interesting conundrum because as my readers, family and friends know I am NOT a pushover.  I am strong, decisive, assertive and well, determined.  Jeanette, generally speaking is quite the opposite.  She does not like to rock the boat, she is a peacekeeper and very easy going.  However, as kids I was much easier, indeed I was probably the easiest of the lot when it came to accepting whatever was said.  If Mom said “don’t plague me with stuff at the grocery story” I did not.  I honestly don’t think I ever asked for anything when we went to the store.  Nette, well, that command went in one ear and out the other.  She could be quite stinky about it and John and I have both seen her have a complete and utter meltdown when she got it into her head to want something.  We are talking about a particular brand of cereal, or a cookie, or something equally trivial.  She could really take a fit (memories of my other baby sister Char, but that only happened once and I put an immediate stop to that . . . shortly to be related).

I have vivid, really VIVID, memories of Jeanette jumping up and down, rocking back and forth and having such convulsive fits you would absolutely not believe it was her today!  (These were done at home, not in the store).  John was only 2 but he remembers Jeanette’s first day of school, she had one of her meltdowns even before they got to the school but then she became a basket case when her teacher turned out to be a Negro.  I don’t know why that would set her off but apparently it did (I was already in my class so I only heard about this afterwards), maybe just too much strangeness in one day since we really hadn’t seen a Negro before, up close.

Yep, Jeanette was something else when she was a kid but one of the things she seemed to have a genius for was being able to get money and things out of Mom and Dad.  She wasn’t sneaky about it, she simply ASKED.  And she got.  Maybe it was charm, maybe it was her bright, sweet look.  But my parents would give her a nickel, lunch money, something special . . . because she asked.

I hope Nette doesn’t get upset with this post – she knows I love her to the moon and back, but recalling childhood memories . . . some of them are so fickle, funny, precious and SO ON THE MONEY.  J

 

Yesterday's Picture and Clothes

Yesterday I posted a picture of the 3 oldest of us “just because”.  But here’s what I remember about John’s outfit.  Jeanette and I also had sailor suit (dresses, but no hat) and one of our family traditions when we were really young was a Sunday walk.  Mom was always pushing the baby carriage with the current baby and we three would usually be either tagging behind Dad or leading the way on the sidewalk.  I remember wearing those sailor outfits and people naturally would watch us walking by (and I think admiring us because – hey, someone has to say it – we were a BEAUTIFUL family).  On one occasion some teenage boys saw us and began singing “It’s a long way to Tipperari” and I have always considered it a bit of a theme song for our family just because of that moment.  Dad got the biggest kick out of it so that may be way it sticks so strongly in my mind.

As you can see from the picture Nette and I are wearing identical outfits which was something we “did” for a large part of our childhood.  Mom was and is a fabulous seamstress and she made almost all of our clothes until well into adulthood.  I supposed because material was inexpensive when bought in larger quantities we would end up with identical skirts and dresses.  I don’t think it was all that unusual for mothers to sew clothes for their kids but Mom had real taste and style and often our clothes were quite sophisticated; at other times when we were tweens and teens our clothes were maybe a little too girly (I recall overhearing one girl call my dress, though lovely, “babyish”.  I was deeply hurt and self-conscious and rarely wore that pretty pink dress after that comment).  In grade 5 though I was one hot little number in a tight black little skirt when all the other girls were in poofs and pleats.  Strangely I did not get in trouble for wearing something kind of “sexy”.  But the following year I was the victim of a tug and war between Mom and my male teacher.  Mom sent me to school one freezing day in SLACKS.  Mr. Axon sent me home to change.  The battle was on, Mom sent me back with a not saying it was too cold for a skirt and so I was not changing.  All the rest of the day Mr. Axon called me George.  It was horrible for me.  But Mom had the bit between her teeth and was not going to be out-bullied by the teacher.

Clothes generally speaking was not big with me throughout school.  In some ways I was too much of a tomboy and care-for-nobody but once in a while, well, it could be a trial.  Farmor’s parcels as we got older had boots, hats and other items of clothing for us and sometimes we were in top style and other times we were … well FOREIGN.  But they were free, we were 5 kids and so we wore what Mom said we had to wear.  I went with the flow.  Jeanette . . . not so much!