Ah, the tunnels. We always seem to associate trolls and gnomes with Scandinavia, but I swear there must be dwarves somewhere in its history, too. Dwarves, after all, are the ones who tunnel, and never before have I seen a land with such an abundance of tunnels.

But let me start with the light, to make a feeble attempt to describe it. The sunlight yesterday morning was spectacular. The sky was clear and blue, and sunshine poured over the horizon from a low angle, lighting up one side of the houses spilling down the hill.

As we drove into downtown Oslo, we could see a solid wall of cloud had built up over the fjord, with sunlight leaking out overtop. Utterly dramatic.

Then in the evening, too, we watched golden sunlight dissolve first into coral hues, tingeing the snow-capped mountains and few wispy clouds a rosy pink, then into violet, and finally into bluish grays.

It’s just after midnight now, and it still isn’t completely dark.

By the way, there are lights in the tunnels, too. It seems that you never know what you’re going to experience when you go into a tunnel in Norway. It might be wide, or it might be narrow. It may be well-lit, or you may find yourself wide-eyed and staring into dusty darkness, especially if your eyes were dazzled by sunlit snow moments before.  Some tunnels are smooth-walled, and others seem to have been newly chewed through, with wet patches where spring melt is seeping through the rock. The rare tunnel is tiled in glazed panels that reflect the lights of oncoming vehicles. Sometimes the tunnel lights are white, and sometimes they’re orange. Once, while driving under a fjord, the lights at the shaft’s nadir were blue.

In this land of tunnels, you might be anywhere when you emerge. The country is built on bedrock, so many of the tunnels must be built by dynamite, eating through solid granite.

You never know where you’re going to be when you get out. You may go into one teetering along the edge of a precipice, and then emerge to find yourself in a green valley.

We remarked today that we should have kept track of how many tunnels we’ve traversed, and the distance we travelled through each one.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find we’ve driven through 20 or 30 kilometres of tunnels on our trip so far.

It can be harrowing, and it can be exciting, but it’s certainly never boring.

The trip from Vancouver to Oslo was fairly uneventful and, if not entirely comfortable, not entirely unbearable, either. There were 20 minutes of near-panic when I was hemmed in by my carry-on bag at my feet, the guy reclining in front of me, and the GIANT Croatian guy sitting next to me, whose  legs spread into typical man-sitting position when he fell into a thunderous, snoring sleep. Fortunately, I was able to move my bag to another nearby seat and the fellow in front of me obliged me by raising his seat back a couple of inches, so I had a little room to breathe for the 9-hour-and-20 minute flight.

My parents and my Oma greeted me at the airport and we set off right away to see a few sights and find some supper. My dad had spotted a sign earlier in the day advertising a Norwegian whalemeat dinner, so we sought the place out. I tried muktuk (whale blubber) once in my high school days in Iqaluit, but had never actually tried whale meat. I can now say that I’ve tried it, but I don’t think I would jump to do it again. It’s really kind of a red meat and has quite a strong flavour that I wasn’t overly fond of.

The my dad took me for a quick jaunt over to the new Norwegian Opera House, opened just 4 years ago. It is designed to look like an iceberg and you can walk from street level right up to the roof! The inside is beautiful, too, although I can only attest to the lobby and the bathrooms.

(Photo from Wikipedia)

After that, we drove to the B&B where I was able to shower off the travel grime and attempt to recover from jet-lag.

This morning, I looked out the window of my room and was greeted with a hazy mist, spring green, and colourful houses.

A room with a view

Driving into Oslo later in the morning, I was continually struck by the architecture: an interesting house here, a round building there, a slanted one over there. But driving along at high speed on narrow and windy roads is not conducive to great photos, especially when combined with a slow, jet-lagged, and head-cold-affected brain that registers a second too late that the camera must be switched on.

After breakfast, I made a quick stop at Oslo’s City Hall.

My mom outside City Hall

Imagine the party you could have in here!

The other end of the giant foyer, including pipes from the pipe organ

Next we jumped onto the “Jomfruen” for a little sailing tour of the Oslo Fjord, including a close-up of the Opera House and the floating sculpture that lies next to it. We jumped off on the opposite side of the Fjord so that we could visit a couple of amazing museums.

Not sure this sailboat ever gets to be under sail, but it was a lovely ride around the Fjord.

“She Lies”: a floating sculpture

First there was the Fram Museum, which appears to have been built around the huge boat inside it, the Fram, used by Fridtjof Nansen for both polar expeditions at both ends of the earth.

The Fram inside the Fram Museum

The museum also covered information about Roald Amundsen’s expedition to the North Pole, and also a boat (called the Gjøa) that was taken to Gjoa Haven, Nunavut about a hundred years ago. Fascinating stuff! After that, we walked a kilometre or so to check out some Viking ships that had been excavated out of burial mounds.

It’s after midnight now, so I’ll gloss over the Nobel Peace Centre (amazing, too!) and the fantastic dinner we had. Tomorrow we’ll drop my Oma off at the airport so she can fly home to Germany. It’s been wonderful seeing her. Our friend Marina will also join us as we head for the first stop on our driving tour. We’ll be driving between 8 and 11 hours each day, so not sure how much blogging I’ll fit in.

I have quite a nasty head cold and am grateful for the sinus-clearing drugs that allowed me to stave it off long enough on Saturday that I had a fantastic show, and that allowed me to land in Vancouver this morning with trepidation but no pain.

I am off to meet my parents in Oslo. It will take all day today and a good chunk of tomorrow to get there. I’ll be gone for 10 days. I’m excited, but melancholy all at once. Yesterday as I was packing Jade’s lunch, I was getting teary thinking about leaving my girls for so long. And I very nearly cried when my plane took off this morning. I am a suck.

I know Michael is perfectly capable, and yet I feel bad to leave him to parent both girls and try to get his work done. (Although I do the same thing. But my work doesn’t pay the bills. It just barely pays for itself. Yet.)

I just had a Skype talk with Michael and Halia, so I feel a bit better.

My Oma will be in Oslo, too. I haven’t seen her in a couple of years and I’m really looking forward to giving her a great big hug. I wish I’d thought to ask the girls to make a card for her before I left home.

This is my life today. Chaotic, disorganized, and exciting.

And my kids will be fine.

It also just so happens that this is post number 1,000. I didn’t plan it this way, but that’s how things lined up. Inadvertently beautiful.

It was a full day, with kids visiting our house, and sunshine, and a walk to the store up the hill (with five kids in tow!), and dishwashing, and vacuuming, and dinner guests, and way too much food, and a post-supper card game that lasted two-and-a-half hours, and then bananas wrapped in rice paper and deep fried and sprinkled with cinnamon and icing sugar and drizzled with maple syrup. That kind of day. The belly-overfull and cup-overflowing kind of day.

And with a full belly and a sleepy head, I am not particularly up to being witty or eloquent. It’s just enough to acknowledge this inconsequential milestone. And to thank you for being part of the journey. I know lots of people who say they blog for themselves, and I do that, to a point. But I wouldn’t continue, because the experience wouldn’t be nearly as rich, if you weren’t here to be part of the conversation with me.

I hear my pillow calling me. I bid you all good night.

“We’re taking that big pine tree down this summer,” he tells me. It’s impressively tall, towering at least 20 or 30 feet above the height of his bungalow. The roots are starting to threaten the basement, and the ground beneath the tree moves when the wind blows. It stands barely two feet from the wall of the house, and I can understand why it’s time for the tree to go.

“It’s full of horseshoe nails,” he adds.

“The tree is?” I ask in astonishment.

“Yes,” he says matter-of-factly, an amused smile twitching his moustache.

Our neighbourhood is 70 years old. In days gone by, before there was a playground behind Tom’s house, there was a corral, with dozens, if not hundreds of horses. The Jocko Brothers (I think he said) used the horses to move freight. In fact, that path we use almost daily in the summer to run down to Paddy’s Pond is a horse trail, one of the trails they used to take freight out to Fish Lake and beyond.

With so many horses around, it was inevitable that some horse would lose a shoe. Horseshoe nails were cheap, and they were sharp.  So the men who worked there would just stick a bunch into whatever was around — a nearby tree, for example — so there would always be some nails handy for reshoeing a horse.

Over the years, the unused nails were simply absorbed into the tree as it grew, wrapping its woody flesh around intruding metal.

I stared at the tree some more. Imagine that tree, holding 70-year-old nails. That’s a piece of living history right there.

For a little while longer, anyway.

Except when it came to Chippy.

Not Chippy

When Jade brought Chippy home, Halia claimed “her” for herself. Chippy became her bedtime companion. She played with Chippy in the morning and showed her off to visitors. She took Chippy places, against my better judgement. Some nights, we couldn’t find Chippy, and Halia would cry a little. I’d give her another stuffie and promised we’d look for her in the morning. We’d find Chippy, in the bathroom, or under the dining table, or on the couch. And all was well.

I warned Halia that Chippy belonged to A, and that someday Chippy would have to go home.  Chippy’s stay was granted a couple of extensions, since A truly is quite a generous girl.

But finally the day came when Chippy had to go home. I braced myself for the inevitable heartbreak.

It didn’t come.

Astonished, but happy at my daughter’s resilience, life carried on. For a week or so.

Cute, but also not Chippy

At that point, Chippy came back. Halia and Jade had gone to play at A’s house, and Chippy came home with them. Halia resumed sleeping with Chippy every night. At bedtime, I had to tuck them in just so, with Chippy’s head out of the covers. I had to give them each a hug and a kiss.

When Halia and Jade headed back over to A’s house to play on Tuesday afternoon, Halia had Chippy tucked under her arm.

“Are you sure you want to take Chippy back?” I asked her. She insisted, saying that she’d bring Chippy back home again at suppertime. But, of course, Chippy is still A’s stuffie, so Halia came home with her hands empty.

She was fine that night, and last night, too, but tonight she had a full-on breakdown. She was very clearly heartbroken, with tears pouring down her cheeks, and sobbing between words. I tried to remind her that Chippy was not her toy to keep.

“But I really, really want her,” she cried. “I miss her so much! Please, please, can you go get her?”

She was so sad, she asked me to stay in her room with her while she fell asleep.

I haven’t seen her at quite this level of sad before. Yes, at age three, plenty of things can be overdramatic. But today, she was sincerely heartbroken. It’s a little thing. But really, not at all a little thing for her. And I’m just a bit heartbroken for her, myself.

Pretty close, but definitely not Chippy

Jade: “Yes, we will.”

Halia (to Jade, after the door is closed behind them): “You will hold my hand, so the cars don’t get me and make me dead.”

I can see them walking over, jumping over the cracks together, one dark sweater, one bright pink shirt. And life is beautiful.

I believe she’s looking for a venue to have her first stand-up comedy show.

Yippee-eye-ooooooo-oooh….

No spiders in the sky…”

WHATEVER.

Image from believe-toachieve.tumblr.com

EVERYBODY’s life is hard. We all take on as much as we can, and then we take on a little bit more, don’t ask me why. Even if you live the simple life, there’s not enough time in the day to do everything you want to do, and there are always outside demands. We are all struggling to find balance. We are all battling our own particular demons. We’re all fighting to stay on top of the day-to-day stuff. Even the kids. They are busy learning their own hard lessons.

Occasionally, I’ve encountered the opposite, with someone telling me she feels better about her own life because mine is so hard. Particularly when Jade was suffering countless seizures in a day, it was kind of a silver lining to know that some people might appreciate their own blessings a little more. And there are families I feel the same way about, who make me draw my girls a little closer and send up a little prayer of thanks.

I just recently had an epiphany, though.

Although I was doing a good job of reminding myself not to compare my life to anyone else’s, I was still falling into the trap.

Jade has been on the keto diet for over three years now. It’s done amazing things for her. And I am grateful. So grateful! I remember thinking, when we were in the thick of things, “If only we could make the seizures stop, life would be so much better again. Things would be easier again.”

And it’s true. I am so glad we aren’t holding our breaths all the time, waiting for the next seizure to hit. There is a lot of tension gone.

But guess what? Life isn’t easy right now. I have all sorts of new things to worry about these days. Not complaining: that’s just life.

And until this epiphany hit me, if you could read my thoughts, you’d have heard this one a lot, “Things will be so much easier when we can finally be off the keto diet.” In other words, I was looking at my future self and thinking “Her life is easier than my life.”

It’s true. There are things that the diet is preventing us from doing. Like taking Jade to Germany or to Taiwan to visit my family, for example. Or even going on extended road trips because I can’t bear the thought of all the preparation that has to be done in advance.

When keto becomes history in our daily life, I will not be sad to let it go. And life will be easier. In one sense. But I’ll bet there’ll be new things to balance and new challenges to forge through. Because that’s life.

So maybe I need to stop wishing we could be done with the ketogenic diet and just start appreciating, a little bit more, the blessings I have in my life now.

And thank God I am the capable person that I am.