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.
No comments:
Post a Comment