Return to Stavanger

The DM: The morning of May 23rd, the temperature is consistently cool, the sky features high, streaking clouds and a hint of blue. A moderate breeze is blowing from the northwest. The cart you climb aboard into smells, but the green hay that's been heaped upon it mitigates the odour somewhat. A large, rotund 19 year old girl, Greta, is driving; she is friendly but a bit dense, with a conversation not at all tainted with education.

For a mile you travel on a fair cobbled road, before turning right at a fork and heading off on a cart track; this lasts nearly seven miles, taking your through recently planted hay fields and past gleaming lakes. The wind freshens and the sky develops into a dull blue, with a few puffy clouds. Steadily you make 4 mi. an hour. After two and a half hours, you reach a crossroads that you recognize, as once you met officials of Stavanger here before heading off again for Mimmarudla. You turn north onto a cobblestone road, heading to Stavanger. It is about 10:30 in the morning.

[In the middle of writing that last sentence, I received a call from my father's care center. My father has been declining for the last week or so, news I only learned on Tuesday; and the doctor is looking for someone to come see him. My sister is in Edmonton and my brother, whom I haven't spoken to for 20 years, is absent without leave. At the moment there is some question about permission to see my father, because it is that kind of situation, where siblings do not get along and my sister has been somewhat obstructionist. In any case, I'm waiting for "permission" to see my father today, most likely before he passes, as doctors don't call around to the members of the family to find a visitor unless this is a 48-hour thing. I just want to say there isn't much love in my family, not that's left over from too many years of abuse and conflict. But I do want to see my father before he passes, for the sake of closure. I'm going to step away from this for the rest of the day; I will keep you updated, if you care to know. Real life, eh?]