I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide [her], it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. Once the emotions have been aroused – a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and the unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love – then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning. It is more important to pave the way for a child to want to know than to put [her] on a diet of facts [she] is not ready to assimilate. ~ Rachel Carson (The Sense of Wonder)
3.21.16 ~ second day of spring in Groton, Connecticut. The small dumpster is for construction debris from our bathroom renovation.
It’s been snowing! I’ve come back from my twelve days in North Carolina, where spring has already sprung, big time!
3.13.16 ~ daffodils blooming in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Poor Katherine… it’s no fun when it’s so nice outside but you are miserable with a fever and a very runny nose. And you don’t want to get out of your pajamas or comb your hair or let go of your bunny or blanket… And your visiting Grammy still insists on getting some pictures of you!
“Katherine and Hopkins the bunny.”
“Maybe I will try taking a little walk.”
“Getting warm, time to take off this jacket. Yes, I do know that one pajama leg is scrunched up and I don’t care!”
“Maybe Daddy can get the blanket draped over my shoulders just the way I want it.”
“Then again, maybe not. Oh well. Feeling warm enough so I’ll just sit here with Hopkins and Daddy again.”
Several hours later – it must have been at least 80°F in the afternoon!
“Mommy persuaded me to get dressed and follow her out to the garden, but I still don’t feel well…”
“Mommy & I fixed the position of a slate stepping stone that had shifted over the winter”
I had a lovely time visiting the little one and her parents. Their new house is beautiful. Larisa and I planted some seeds in her vegetable garden, re-potted a couple of plants, discussed colors for painting the walls, took walks, ate out several times, and went shopping for all sorts of things for the house and for clothes for Katherine. I also got to spend time with my friend from high school, Susan, who lives only two miles away. We got caught in a scary thunder and hail storm one night on our way home from having dinner out. Yikes! And I had plenty of time to work on my ancestor table (see sidebar) while the family was at work and daycare.
Now that I am home work on the bathroom has stalled as we wait for the floor tile to come in. But a lot got done while I was gone. The new closet is framed out, the electrical and plumbing are all done, and the walls are up. And I’m looking out my window at about 5 inches of snow – quite a contrast to the daffodils down south!
Hæreid Iron Age Burial Site, also in Eidfjord, is the largest collection of ancient burial sites in western Norway, with 350 Iron Age and Viking graves dating from 400 – 1000 AD., located on the Hæreid plateau in Eidfjord. This is where we spent the morning of our last day in Norway, after our enchanting overnight at the top of Vøringfossen falls.
5.26.15 ~ Eidfjord, Hordaland, Norway
It’s been about six months since I posted the last set of pictures from our trip to Norway. Too much going on! Right now I am in North Carolina visiting Katherine and her parents while our bathroom is being renovated back home. Katie seems to be going by Katherine these days. Poor little thing came home from daycare Friday with a fat lip and Saturday morning she woke up with a runny nose and a fever. But we’re managing to have a little fun between bouts of understandable fussiness.
5.26.15 ~ Eidfjord, Hordaland, Norway
Friday Larisa and I went into Raleigh to attend a Bernie Sanders rally. Sadly, we were among the 1,000 people who did not get into the 2,300 seat venue, after waiting in line for 2 hours. But it was exciting seeing all the support there is for Sanders here. And Larisa definitely “felt the Bern” (one of Bernie’s campaign slogans) by getting a sunburn.
5.26.15 ~ Eidfjord, Hordaland, Norway
The energy at the Hæreid burial site felt ancient, peaceful and earthy. The graves were large mounds of rocks with meadow, moss and trees growing all around them. Grazing sheep kept the grass trimmed, and the majestic mountains surrounded the plateau where the burial ground is situated.
5.26.15 ~ Eidfjord, Hordaland, Norway
5.26.15 ~ Eidfjord, Hordaland, Norway
5.26.15 ~ Eidfjord, Hordaland, Norway
5.26.15 ~ Eidfjord, Hordaland, Norway
5.26.15 ~ Eidfjord, Hordaland, Norway
5.26.15 ~ Eidfjord, Hordaland, Norway
5.26.15 ~ Eidfjord, Hordaland, Norway
5.26.15 ~ Eidfjord, Hordaland, Norway
5.26.15 ~ Eidfjord, Hordaland, Norway
5.26.15 ~ Eidfjord, Hordaland, Norway
5.26.15 ~ Eidfjord, Hordaland, Norway
5.26.15 ~ Eidfjord, Hordaland, Norway
It’s entirely possible one of my unknown and very distant ancestors lies buried here. I left with that same feeling of connection and continuity I get when I visit the graves of my known ancestors in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
Thanks to Ancestry, I have traced my Norwegian ancestors back a few generations, the earliest known so far is my 6th-great-grandmother, Kristin Hendriksdatter, who was born in 1710 in Hovland in Vestfold. So far I’ve found ancestors who were born or who died in four counties, Telemark, Vest-Agder, Aust-Agder and Vestfold, of southern Norway. All located by the sea.
5.26.15 ~ Eidfjord, Hordaland, Norway
5.26.15 ~ Eidfjord, Hordaland, Norway
At Hæreid we can follow traces of human activity all the way back to the Iron Age, i.e. to between 1,000 and 2,500 years ago. The oldest traces are mainly in the form of graves situated on a terrace and divided into two burial grounds: Sjohaug at the northern end and Hæreidsmoen in the south. The whole terrace contains almost 400 preserved graves. Hæreidsmoen, with around 350 graves, is the largest Iron Age burial ground in West Norway. We know from old descriptions of the area that the burial ground extended further north than it does today. The entire terrace was probably covered in graves at some point. Some of the finds are from the Early Iron Age (500 BC – 575 AD), but most can be dated to the Late Iron Age (575-1050 AD). Some of the objects are from the Viking Age (800-1050 AD): weapons, implements and jewellery. Nowhere else in Hardanger can boast so many finds from the Iron Age as this particular site.
Although visiting Norway was the highlight of our trip to Europe for me, we did also go to Venice and several places in Germany. I will try to share those pictures as well, as time allows. 🙂
Larisa & Dima are so thoughtful, sending the four of us grandparents pictures of the little one almost every day. While I treasure them all, this one is especially sweet to me because Katie is sleeping in the same position her Grandpa Tim often does. She looks just like him in this one, how he used to look before he grew a beard. With this picture came a message from Larisa:
This morning she brought me over to the framed picture of you four and pointed excitedly. So come visit soon. 🙂
This morning I took my last shower in the ugly old harvest gold tub in our bathroom. It will take three to four weeks for our contractor to rip out all the old walls and fixtures and put in new ones.
The only thing I will miss from the old bathroom is the little fish my son Jon painted on the wall right by the mirror. It’s been there for 20 years or so… As I was getting dressed each morning it was nice to see a friendly face as I started my day.
In a few days I will escape the dust and chaos and fly down to North Carolina to visit Katie and her parents for a couple of weeks. Looking forward to some good mother-daughter-granddaughter times. Tim will have to hold down the fort here.
Perhaps soon I will begin posting about all the family history research I’ve been doing for the past couple of months. Change is in the air!
Was it light? Was it light within? Was it light within light? Stillness becoming alive, Yet still? ~ Theodore Roethke (The Quiet Room)
Katie got a little bit of snow…
So… We finally got a snowstorm on Saturday, seven inches of snow here. Washington, DC and New York City got much more snow than we did. Record breaking amounts, in fact.
After eleven days of misery it was determined that I had a particularly nasty virus and that it wasn’t necessarily food-borne. I could have caught it the same way one catches a cold or the flu. Sobering thought.
I did not recover in time to go to North Carolina. Very disappointed, but we were given credit from our cancelled flight to apply to a new flight. Thank you so much, Jet Blue.
Yesterday I was dazzled by a photo my Norwegian friend Ane Lisbet posted on Facebook. It was from a walk she took in the afternoon, and I’m grateful she gave me permission to use it here. 🙂 The light is returning to Norway and my longing to go back there in a different season is getting stronger.
1.24.16 ~ Dima and Katie
I hope we can schedule a new trip to see Katie and her parents very soon!
It started as a toothache. Several days later canker sores started popping up in his mouth. Then a strange sensation in the skin on his left cheek. And finally a lesion. But even then the doctors weren’t sure. Saturday (November 7) they put him on an antibiotic for cellulitis. But more lesions broke out over the weekend, spreading to the upper lip, all across his cheeks, up to his eye, over to his ear, along part of his nose. The pain was excruciating. On Monday the doctors diagnosed shingles and put him on an antiviral and a narcotic pain reliever.
It kept getting worse. We were worried about his eye so the doctor sent us to an eye doctor on Tuesday. The eye was okay. Pretty sure Wednesday was the worst day, at least to look at him. Then Wednesday afternoon the virus attack seemed to turn a corner – it stopped getting worse. The antiviral and antibiotic seemed to be gaining the upper hand. He suggested I put his picture on my blog. Seriously? Yes. But I cannot bring myself to do it.
11.10.15 ~ Katie likes to peek behind the shower curtain every morning. Her pediatrician says it’s all right for her to come visit Grandpa for Thanksgiving, as long as she doesn’t touch the lesions.
How about a picture of Katie instead?
(I had no problem grossing out our kids, though, sending them daily mug shots of their long-suffering father…)
Since Wednesday the swelling has been going down very slowly. Yesterday he stopped taking the narcotic and seems to be managing the lingering pain with ibuprofen and aspirin. But he still has horrible crusted lesions all over one side of his face, and pronounced fatigue. We’re wondering what kind of scarring he might be left with.
I hope this will be it for Tim this year. He’s had more than his share of trouble. Four bouts of diverticulitis, physical therapy for muscle pain in his legs, cataract surgery in both eyes. I don’t know how we ever managed to squeeze in a trip to Europe and a trip to Cape Cod between all that!
Thinking of my sweet little one-year-old granddaughter today. Even though she lives so far away in North Carolina I have had the joy of seeing her many times this year, the last time only eight days ago when I took these pictures. She’s a very curious and busy little girl!
Katie’s all-too-brief mid-August visit was a bright spot in our mostly crummy summer. We hadn’t seen her in two months and were happy for the chance to see what’s she’s been up to lately. At eleven months old she is crawling and exploring her world. Because the caregivers at her daycare label her belongings “Katherine V” (her surname begins with a V) her father has taken to calling her Queen Katherine the 5th.
8.14.15 ~ Sound Breeze
The Russian name for teddy bear is misha and Katie brought one of hers with her. (You may remember her other grandparents are from Russia…) Her face lit up and she sighed with pleasure when she saw the four mishas I had waiting for her here. Then she tightly hugged each and every one of them in turn.
8.14.15 ~ Sound Breeze
Katie’s parents told us that she loves music and is fond of Jason Mraz. She dances on her knees and enjoyed shaking toy maracas to the music we were playing in the background. The next day she bonded with her teenage cousin Kia over music. They sat on the floor facing each other and bobbed their heads to the music Kia played from her cell phone. It was so sweet!
8.14.15 ~ Sound Breeze
Green beans and scrambled eggs for breakfast – yes!
8.14.15 ~ Sound Breeze
Katie and I got to read several books together and it warmed my heart to see that she loves to read on her own, too. Maybe some day we’ll find a way to tame all those wildly adorable cowlicks.
Grammy & Katie
Morning nap in Grammy’s arms – an hour and a half of bliss for me. Little did we know that hours later our visit would be cut short when Grandpa Tim got seriously ill with another bout of diverticulitis and wound up in the hospital for three days. But Katie’s aunt Bonnie and cousin Kia came down to look after her and the three of them had a wonderful time together. What a blessing a loving family is.
In a couple of weeks Katie will be coming again for another visit. I cannot wait!!!
