This month seems to be flying by and I have written a whopping ...one... blog post. The thoughts have been somewhat muddled and my brain feels bloated from the backlog. I think we will just do a quick update to clear the pipes some. So, February...let's see... I tried to learn to ski. It was an adventure in remembering that it is okay to laugh at myself. Not sure how I feel about downhill, but I have enjoyed the cross country. For my first trip ever, we traveled to a course at Lygna Ski Center. I only fell three times and laughed so hard one time a family wasn't sure I was in my right mind. I consider it a victory since I have never had skis on my feet before. By the end of the weekend, I could right myself when I fell, and learned that -15 degrees (celsius) isn't so bad when you're busy enjoying yourself. February also brought a little sadness as I made a decision I had been dreading for some time. I found a new home for Janus. I work so many hours, and I also travel most weekends so it was becoming increasingly hard for me to watch his face when I would walk out the door. I am still adjusting to not having his warmth at night and the couch snuggles, but I am certain he is enjoying his best life. He was adopted by an older couple who are retired. Bonus points because they also used to foster cats for the local shelters here. My feeling around this are really conflicted because I know I promised him a forever home, but I also know he has it better now than with me....even if he was a spoiled rotten brat. He's already got them suckered anyway. His new family reports he sleeps in their bed and takes most of the room and tries to drink their morning coffee. Work has of course taken a big chunk of time. We are gearing up for our science fair and our final IB authorization visit on top of the background noise of teaching during COVID. We have endured quarantined classes, new teachers, red level measures, and student absences. While I know I don't have the same pressures as countries where the virus is hitting harder, that doesn't make the feeling of stress teaching any less. Norway has actually priortized children and made a big push to have their lives as typical/normal as possible, so that helps but leaves a heavy feeling for teachers still. Honestly, I could write a whole other post about teaching right now because every time I hear someone say "children are losing ___" I feel as if I have heard a fork scrape on a plate. For now, I will just say, education like anything in life is a sum of all experiences. The kids will be fine, perhaps skilled in different ways, but just fine. Speaking of kids being just fine. A little trip to the grocery store the other day brought me face to face with one of the horrible memories of teaching fifth grade, lung dissections. This activity was a part of the health curriculum in Andover for a couple of years while I was there, and it was...shall we say an adventure. One year, the lungs were green and rotted. One year, we had kids passing out and vomiting. But every year the kids wanted to know the same thing, "Why are these lungs packaged like 'real' meat? They are even USDA certified." To which I would answer, "In some parts of the world, people DO eat the lungs." Cue more gagging. So of course...Norway... February is also when I decided to hop on the 1000 kilometers by summer bandwagon. I am not making bad progress since I walk four everyday going back and forth to work. I'm quite sure I will be able to get my 1000, but I would be lying to say I can't wait for a little warmer of weather. For Christmas, I bought one of the bonus kids a Harry Potter cookbook, so we have been busy trying new recipes. I even tried my hand at baking Fastelavnsboller, a Norwegian treat for Fastelavn. I've had some relaxing evenings, beautiful walks, and I even played Norwegian Monopoly. Tonight I will finish my first Norwegian course. I am progressing along okay, and the hardest part is getting my mouth used to the transitions between unfamiliar letter sounds. While I struggle missing my kids, mostly due to the amount of time away, I am still loving my experiences here. I really feel like I made the right decision for so many reasons when I accepted this job. Several people have told me I should be writing a book, but the blog and conversations with NBF will have to do for now.
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When I was two, my dad chose me. He chose the craziness of our family to marry a whirlwind of a woman with a toddler in tow. Later he would say he took one look at me and knew he wanted better for me than the situation I was in. Even going so far as to say he had married my mom because she had me. He had done time in the army but didn't have any formal education, so often he worked dirty, labor intense jobs to keep our family going. He was amazingly handy with tools and completed all sorts of outdoor projects for gardening and raising animals. His love for my mother was something I swore I would find in my lifetime, and his love for me was, in my mind, more than I deserved. His hugs were amazing, and one back slap while he was laughing would send you flying across the room. His hands were strong. I remember the squeezes on my shoulder still. Kitchen towels became a weapon to be feared in his hands. More than once I had welts on my legs from his attempts at playfulness gone too serious. When my mom was away for surgery, he fed me my first Big Mac and we even stopped at the local ice cream place and got LARGE ice cream cones. He loved my boys like mad. I think having boys was something he always dreamed of, and here were two to spoil. Things weren't perfect when I was growing up, but I knew I could count on my dad to be solidly Richard.
While he was able to find countless ways to tell my mom he loved her because his love language was gifts and acts of service, when two more girls came into the picture, he had to rein in that behavior...at least toward me. I was an only child for five years and admittedly a spoiled princess. My dad brought me yellow roses and candy. He was all mine. However, he was never really good about saying, "I love you." He was able to tell others he was proud of me. Many times he assumed I knew I think. We struggled with our relationship when I became a teenager and adult, and our last conversation was about how he felt he needed to take my mom's side but we ended the call saying "I love you" to each other. When my dad died, I was devastated. He had a work accident and was in a coma for a week before he finally passed. I kept vigil at first hoping and eventually accepting that he was gone. His death broke open what was left of our family and revealed all the raw, festering emotional turmoil. Where were we to go from here? His death and the week leading to it was beyond devastating for me. Initially, I was not to be told of his accident, but my youngest sister secretly called to tell me which earned her the ire of my mom and other sister. While my husband agreed to go with me, he spent the week on the phone with his girlfriend fighting about why he was there. The oldest of my sisters left me off the family list since I was "adopted". My mother played the martyr and devastated wife. She dictated everything eventually going against his wishes and not allowing him to be an organ donor. I can honestly say, I will never forgive her from stealing that from him. When he did pass, it was AB that called me to his room. I don't remember the call except that I woke to see dad's cell on my caller ID and knowing but having it cemented by AB's voice on the line. For a few years, I fell into the all too human condition of venerating the dead. I remembered all the good times, spun every situation into a positive light, and even tried to maintain a relationship with my mom. The funny thing about the narratives we create for ourselves is that they unravel. How I kept it mended and presentable for so many years is beyond me. The narrative in this case is that my mom was directly responsible for my shitty childhood, and my dad was an unwilling victim. That served me well for many years when I needed reassurance that I had parental love or when I needed an ally. I justified any negative actions on his part by believing that he was bullied by my mother and as powerless as me to change things. No one wanted to anger her. But that simply isn't true and doesn't show the whole picture. My dad sided with my mom when she was obviously being abusive. He let her berate and tear me down. He participated in abusing me both physically and mentally. Punishment in our household often far exceeded the "crime." I can remember my dad giving me one belt lashing for every item of "mine" that was on the floor of the bedroom I shared with my sisters. It was well over 100. I can remember him forcing me to wash every dish in the house multiple times for using wash water that was too cold or for not washing well enough. I still cannot see a leather belt with holes without cringing and remembering the sting of how it feels across bare skin, and I will never forget the pang of being called a whore by my own dad. Ironically, that day my mom actually had to pull him away from me and stop him from hitting and kicking me. My dad didn't initiate phone calls or visits and would be angry that I didn't do it often enough. He would complain that I kept my children from him without taking action. Even through all of this I painted him as the good parent, and it would take years of therapy to finish unraveling that version of my dad for myself. When I began to mourn the loss of my dad in earnest, the mourning was made all the deeper by the fact that I would never be able to reconcile these things with him. My grief became a mixture of missing the dad I had known, losing the ideal version of dad I had created, and mourning the what could have been. That process continues to a degree, and possibly I will never finish the journey. This amazingly complex man has been gone for thirteen years today. I've reached the point where I can remember the good times for what they were and keep the rest in perspective. Everyone does the best they can with their limited knowledge and experience. We fuck shit up, and we do better when we know better. My dad was no different. He was an amazing man with great capacity to love who found himself continuing in the cycles of his own childhood. While he was not strong enough to pull further away from his cycles, he did help raise a woman who is. And in the end, I will always come back to the point it began. He didn't have to be there. He could have left or been even worse, but he kept trying. He is my dad because he chose me. |
Nellie HillJust a woman leaping outside her comfort zone and telling the tale. Archives
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