Dette er på engelsk da det først ble skrevet som svar på en NaNo-post. Men alle de gode minnene jeg kom på mens jeg skrev dette gjør at jeg vil lagre den her også :)
When I grew up my grandfather was the dark, grumpy man in the living
room chair. He struggled with health issues that sometimes made him a
bit impatient with us kids. At the same time, he was funny and patient
with us on his good days. He taught me how to blink with both eyes (one
at a time) and move my finger through the flame of a candle without
being burned. But unlike my grandmother, who loved to chat about
anything and everything with me, we never spoke that much, and I didn't
feel I knew him.
When I was fourteen, that changed with such a
simple thing as asking him about his school days. A project from school
to interview someone about their school days, and I chose my
grandfather. He told me about the perfect tiny little school with only
thirty students and a kind, loving teacher. And about the bigger school
he started when he was nine, with three hundred kids. About the teacher
who hit the children, and how that made him unable to learn any more. He
almost failed in math. ("I had to teach myself when I started driving
the bus. There was no excuse not to give back correct change, so I took
night classes, and I made perfect chance, every time.") And how this one
time he fought back, when his sidemate was supposed to go into the
naughty corner. My grandfather grabbed his friend so the teacher had to
haul both kids and their desks to the corner, where they stayed the rest
of the class. The glint in his eyes showed that this was his moment of
glory.
After that, I think he realized that I loved hearing about
the old days. He told me about his career at the train station, where
he worked up from a linesman (the one moving the rail road tracks so the
trains could go either left or right) until the diabetes made that
impossible for him (if he went into shock on the railway, it could kill
both him and the passengers). Of how he worked his way up to being the
station master. (Though grandmother was the one who had to tell me how
important that job was. He never bragged, to the point where he didn't
even tell me he was in the city council.)
He also told me about
the war, in a very different way than Grandmother. She was frightened of
the German soldiers, yet looking back every time she talks about it she
shakes her head and mutter "but they were just boys. Young boys, just a
few years older than me.". Norway was occupied from 1940 to 45, and
several of her friends fled into the woods instead of helping the nazi
war effort. Grandfather could stay, as his job on the railway was too
important for him to get drafted into the wrong side. He did become
friends with a German boy his age, though. They exchanged letters when
he was transferred out, and grandfather got a letter from his parents at
the end of the war, telling him his friend had fallen on the eastern
front. Although he had one friend amongst the soldiers, he never
discussed politics with them (being in the very much "not a nazi" camp,
considering he joined a party after the war known for being liberal and
pro-immigration). But more than anyone else I've talked to about the
war, he managed to see the people inside the uniforms. He once told me
that most of them didn't want to be in Norway any more than the
Norwegian people wanted them here.
That didn't stop him from
stealing sugar from the Nazis when the shipment came to town, though.
But only a few pieces of cane sugar, for him and his girlfriend (my
grandmother). They met during the war.
Grandfather claims that
was the one good thing that came out of the occupation. Grandmother was
set to work in the kitchen of a high-ranking nazi, where he was lent out
from the train station for a while to work as a farm hand. They met,
fell in love and got married after the war.
He had many quirks.
He had a cane he called Otto, and whenever he went out on a walk, he
used to tell my grandmother he was going walking with Otto.
He
collected all the golf balls who were struck into his garden (they were
the neighbours of a golf course) and sold them back to the course for 5
kroner a ball (about $1, cheap for this country). One time a golfer hit a
ball through the window of a living room. He brought the ball up to the
owner of the court and told him this ball would cost him more than five
kroner. They replaced the window free of charge, and put up nets so
that wouldn't happen again.
He could bend the top joint of all
his fingers without moving any other joint, except the one he'd lost in
an industrial accident. He always laughed when he came to that finger,
claiming that was the easiest. (Family quirk: every single member of my
family on that side has lost parts of one finger. My grandmother, my
grandfather, my father and my uncle. I live in constant fear of loosing a
finger!)
