Våryr

It's often the seemingly random confluences and serendipities of life that keep me charmed and, as the blog name says, still amazed. Case in point: Janet-with-the-yellow-braid, who was in my 4th grade class. You met her here in this post about memories, in which I talked about going to a birthday party at her house on McDonald Avenue back in, well, let's just say it's been at least a half century. I remembered standing outside during this party having a conversation with Janet's grandmother, who told me about the fjords and beauty of her native Norway. I had never really thought about Norway before, but now it became a tangible place, all blue and white and breathtakingly lovely, and I resolved that someday I would go there.

Back to the present, where I have somehow landed at a ranch in California, which is itself pretty amazing, but from which I depart with astonishing frequency for trips abroad to see my daughter, whose studies and affections have taken her to England. So it's a First World problem, to be sure, and I am at times almost embarrassed by the luxury and privilege it implies, but if we're going all the way to England, we figure we may as well visit some other places too, and we think about different countries in that general direction that we might like to see. This time, out of the blue, came Norway thoughts.

"Most expensive country in Europe," said one friend ominously, and her warning has been confirmed by everything I've read so far. But still. There's something alluring about the idea of hiking in a place whose landscapes are consistently described as incredible and where the late May twilight lingers most of the night and maybe someday if we dare return in winter, I'll see the Northern Lights. In just the first paragraph alone, a Lonely Planet guide book mentions "vast forests, rugged peaks, haunting fjords, dramatic glaciers, expansive ice fields, and wild Arctic tundra", and a flight from London to Bergen is, relatively speaking, no big deal.

Other places beckoned and still do. But Norway kept its position high on our list, and Monte was moving into specifics and commitments while I dabbled in the realm of daydream, and suddenly we were booking a flight to Bergen. It crossed my mind that the grown-up version of the little girl who once stood on McDonald Avenue picturing Norway was now really going there.

And then - this is the interesting confluence serendipity thing - there came an email from Janet-with-the-yellow-braid, the very Janet whose grandmother planted Norway in my head so long ago. What are the chances, right? Another former classmate, Fran, had been doing a little web-searching in the hopes of locating Janet, and whether prompted by nostalgia, friendship, or pure whim, it had become a kind of quest. Fran sent me a current photo of a woman with Janet's name who is the pastor at a church in Syracuse (of all places), and wondered, "Could this be her?"

It was our Janet, and she wrote to me! Weirdly enough, she had recently seen the Kensington story on this website, sent to her by someone else who does this sort of thing, and she had kinda planned to contact me after the busy-ness of Holy Week, but now, having heard from Fran, she was eager to say hello. She also confirmed my memory: "Yes. Nana Josephine was from Norway. She came to the USA in 1902. She lived to be a healthy 93 and died quietly, quickly, and painlessly in 1970."

So now I know I didn't imagine that.

I only had the braid part wrong. Nana Josephine, Janet wrote, "was not the one with the braid atop her head that you mentioned in your narrative - she had no patience with long hair and was the only female in that three-generation household who went to a beauty parlor to have her hair cut and permed. (She once did that blue-tinged dye thing as well, so popular for who-knows-what reason back in the 1950's.) The one with the braid was my mother. She lived in that house on McDonald until 1998, for 79 of her 81 years at that time, and is now 97 years old..."

And it turns out that when Janet told her 97-year-old mother about this recent communication with P.S. 179 classmates, her mother said she was pretty sure Cynthia was the girl for whom she sewed a skirt to wear to a folk dance assembly in which our class had been assigned the tarantella.

"Does that story ring a bell with you?" Janet asked.

Yes! It all came back to me: the red tarantella skirt! A big twirly circular pattern, probably pretty basic, but alas, my own mother didn't sew at all, and I vaguely remember feeling some special sense of pride and duty and panic because this was after all an Italian dance and I was a half Italian girl, and so Janet's mother's kindness and patience were very crucial to me. And despite all her efforts to do me up right, I remember that I ended up getting the wrong kind of blouse, white with buttons and a ruffle, not a peasant blouse at all. It wasn't easy being a properly attired folk dancer in 4th grade.

And here we are in 2014 discussing these events as though they matter, along with the confession that we were all sitting in class (that's us above) wondering how our portly teacher managed to stay upright on the very high heels she used to wear. I recognize both the marvel and absurdity of this.

But it was time for a braid update:"Still have mine....shorter...thinner...grayer," wrote Janet. "My mother still has a remnant of hers: way shorter, way thinner, all white... when it's not braided she says she looks like one of those troll dolls...which is also a Norwegian thing but not a heritage look she's fond of evoking."

Which brings us back to Norway. I'm going to Norway. I may not dance on a fjord as Nana Josephine did, and I may be more likely to see rain than the blue skies I imagined, but I'm going.

Coincidentally, there was an article in The New Yorker last week about the photographs of Hans Kristian Riise depicting fjord life in springtime on the west coast of Norway. The word Våryr is used, which means “spring dizzy” and it describes what people experience when days begin to lengthen after the long, dark winter. Riise is quoted as saying, “I got this feeling, like I could just go anywhere, drive up to the sea, swim in the river and find a café. People seem to have time for you, they’re like tourists, taking a bus and then walking without any destination in mind.”

Våryr sounds about right for my frame of mind. It may be all this whole thing really means.