Saturday 6 August 2005

Pic of the day: Since I forgot to bring my camera, I'll just substitute another random picture from the countryside here in Søgne. Look, it's the cloud of doom!

Visiting brother

Once again the vague headline: Did I visit my brother, did my brother visit me, or was it someone else's brother visiting someone? Actually none of the above, or all of the above. You see, I visited my brother but only after he had come to a cabin around 20 kilometers from where I live. (Usually he lives on the west coast of Norway, I on the south coast, and it takes a day to get from here to there.) Likewise his wife has a brother living nearby, who also visited her.

I knew I was forgetting something – I usually do – and in this case it was my camera. The cabin was in the woods but near the sea, which could also be seen from there, so there would have been plenty to photograph. Also the kids are unlikely to ever look the same again. Oh well.

Actually my brother's family had lived there for a week or so, and this was the last day, but I knew nothing about that until he called near noon. This, my friends, is what happens when you don't have an online journal. Repent! At least you could get a LiveJournal, it is free and simple and allows you to friends-lock your posts so they can only be read by those you want, not by all the crazy stalkers. Not that I have crazy stalkers, being neither rich nor famous nor female. People don't get obsessed by smart people. People get offended by smart people, but I don't go out of my way to do that either. (Excepting George W Bush, but then again nearly half his own country and almost all of the rest of the world is mocking him, so I doubt he lies awake at night mulling over my factual criticism of his economic policy.)

Be that as it may, it was an alright day. The mosquitoes were eerily absent, it rained only a few drops, the kids were well-behaved and spent most of their time in the small boat anyway. The boys are behaving noticeably more grown-up now, must be entering puberty soon. How soon depends on how much they have inherited of my family's slow-life genes. (I was 13 by the time my voice changed, my hips began to grow wider and my breasts began to bud... and I was a boy. The male parts did catch up eventually, but I hope they do so a bit quicker for the new generation. Kids these days have a much higher sexual awareness thanks to the pervasive mass media, and would likely get nervous if they started having weird dreams about boys for a couple years. Back in my days, there was not any confusion about such things, we knew (approximately) how things would work out in the end. After all, we had seen the animals on the farm reproduce and they left little doubt as to the overall mechanics of it.)

My brother is in fairly good shape, for being two and a half year older than I. He may not be able to do the running he did when he was young, warranty on knees has expired. (As have mine, evidently, but they are just barely starting to hurt yet.) But he is not obese, despite the insane diet. Lots of hard work, I guess. Also his wife seems to have taught him that leftovers can be put in the fridge rather than the stomach, which are words of pure wisdom. I can only hope that all who don't feel God's presence in their daily life at least get a spouse such as that. (Back when I grew up, we actually really didn't have a fridge. It is true, I really am this old. We had a cupboard inside the north wall of the house, far from both the eastern and western side, which was a bit cooler than the kitchen. But there were limits to how long things could stay there.)

Their little girl is no longer a toddler, but a child. She is fairly skinny, which is a good thing. In girls there is a closer relationship between body fat and the onset of puberty, and you really don't want your girls to reach puberty at 8 or even 6, the way they often do in America, the land of the fat and the free. (The lower value is for black girls, which isn't really relevant here.) It is better they stay skinny until their brain is developed enough to handle the transition. Not to say anything bad about this one's brain, but these are hard times where parents are angry and scared of pedophiles while at the same time allowing TV channels where advertisers and entertainment shows peddle sexy clothes for small girls. (TV is the Devil's tool, mark my words...)

But all those things are none of my concerns. They are not my children. I may have made a mistake to not devote my life to passing on my precious genes, but frankly all my brothers have the same good genes and without the childhood asthma, so it is probably just as well they do that job. Also I am not sure I could have found a suitable wife. It takes a small miracle. I guess I could have played it safe and tried to woo one of my second or third cousins*, which I generally remember as excessively attractive of body and mind, all of them carrying the super brainy genes of our shared ancestor. You couldn't possibly have gone wrong with any of them. Oh well. Not much chance even at the best of times, and those are gone decades ago.

And now my brother and his family have gone too. If I live, I intend to see them again in a few years.

*) Second and third cousins are "3menning" and "4menning" to my Norwegian readers. Cousins are simply cousins or first cousins. English is such a poor language, they have to use these weird expressions to declare relationship outside the close family. So it is not like counting your cousins: "There's my first cousin, and the next is my second cousin and so on..." Heh, just wanted to stop any crazy rumors at the source.