Friday, August 17, 2018

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.

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