Yesterday, I went to the lake with the children. We drove down the road to town. We passed through town which is mostly just a school, a church at the top of a hill of wheat (where Vikings are buried in mounds by the horse pasture), and a little shop that sells ice cream and bread and we wonder how it survives. Then we pass through more fields under the blue sky---we are listening to 80s American tunes on the radio and I know all the words! Ha ha my kids are amazed--- and through a small the forest where we saw the moose last year, and then there is the lake.
This is thirty miles or so from Oslo, but sometimes, when viewed at a certain angle or caught in a certain light, this place offers the tranquility and stillness of the another era, another time. And then, the light changes or the angle shifts and it's back to iphones and malls and life in the modern world.
It was such a beautiful day yesterday! It was supposed to rain so it was even more preciously gorgeous. It was the first real summer day since we arrived three weeks ago. The sky was endless blue, the girl selling strawberries by the barn was sheltered by an umbrella and a sunhat, and, when we got to the lake, it was hot enough to actually want to swim. We had a picnic and the kids were swimming and time was passing when I heard a child cry.
The beach is so small and quiet. I love Norway because of its quiet. The swimmers do not yell from the water up to the towel people. Children play well and are addressed immediately if they have a problem. There is no music playing. Once I heard a mobile phone ring. It's not silent but it is quiet.
So this child's cry. He was three or four years old, standing on the edge of the water, and having quite a fit as his red blow-up beach ball floated away, out around the grass and cattails, out of his reach. Out of his mother's reach too. She took his hand and led him back to the beach towel, she didn't look at anyone, perhaps embarrassed, and got on with things.
I assume everyone saw the drifting ball. But no one went after it. No one looked at the ball or talked to each other or pointed or anything. Even the swimmers deliberately ignored it. I almost asked my daughter, but thought better of it. They know something perhaps. And that ball was drifting pretty fast.
After about five minutes, a boy walked decisively into the lake and started to swim after it. He was 14, we later decided. O yes! I thought. He's going after it! I wanted so much for the world to come together like this! I watched him swim. I watched the ball sail further. He kept swimming and the ball kept sailing. He was getting pretty far out. I had stopped watching my kids altogether. Is he going to be ok? Is he being watched by anyone else? No one else on the beach seemed at all aware of this deepening saga. His people weren't nervously looking after him.
Until his father stepped in and started swimming. Another wave of relief and joy swept through me. He swam hard and the boy swam too----but less so than before, he was really tiring---and the ball was all the over in the reeds by the other shore. But that boy was not going to stop.
The father, the boy, the ball all came together somehow and eventually swam back. When they got out of the water, the boy sort of tossed the ball to the kid. No one said anything and he expected nothing. No one on the little beach acknowledged this heroic deed, though I----the weird American---did kind of smile at him and nodded a little as he passed.
The boy sat down and breathed heavy for about 20 minutes. The father returned to his newspaper. The mothers continued chatting. I was practically weeping with the joy and beauty and wonder of it all.
Today, we woke to the most torrential rain. I looked at some photos I took yesterday and couldn't believe it was the same planet. We watched movies and I vacuumed and stared out at the pouring rain wondering where the three weeks went (my husband joins us on Sunday!) and then, when we were all so restless it was too much, we drove to my husband's 92 year old grandfather's (who dresses in a tie and jacket each day for lunch at the elderly center, and still does the snow shoveling) house to pick cherries and raspberries.
That was about the time that the bombs went off in Oslo. That was about the time that some of the young people on Utoya Island were fleeing across the water. And suddenly, yesterday in Norway feels like a different era----maybe not more peaceful, but more quiet. Suddenly, yesterday feels like a different world.
I'm glad you wrote this. I had been thinking of you ever since the Norway news broke here, wondering how close you were to the trouble. It all is shocking; I think of Norway as a more civilized place than the US most of the time.
Posted by: nancy, near philadelphia | 22 July 2011 at 06:22 PM