Morfar

Ian just came in as i pulled up this post to work on it. So we talked about his oldefar John who he is named after.

Ian was trying to understand how exactly they were related. I explained that this is my moms dad. Then Ian wanted me to tell him something about when I was a little girl.

When I was a little girl I was actually a little afraid of my Morfar. In danish lore trolls are common and they have big bushy hair and I think i must to some extend connected that with my morfar because I clearly remember watching in frightful awe as he trimmed his huge bushy eyebrows with the kitchen shearers.

My Mom has 3 brothers. The 2 oldest especially loved to tell stories of their childhood and the mischief they got into and often it included how they had managed to get "The Master Painter" in a temper. I, gifted with a very lively and animated imagination, envisioned my grandfather with a cartoonishly expression of rage on his face as he threw a horribly disgusting cake the brothers had made in the wood burning stove or as he chased down the delinquents that threw a brick through his window in the workshop until he had them cornered in a huge hole in the ground of a construction sight until the cops showed up. Many of these fantastic stories were told with great laughter and animation by my skilled entertainer uncles and even though i cannot recall anything horrible ever happening to my uncles in the end of their stories I'm sure my wild imagination did not need it.

To me Morfar was obviously not to be trifled with.

When he was young he was standing on the bed of a small truck unloading cargo when the driver suddenly hit the gas. He fell of and as a result of how he landed damaged his ear quite severely. Because my Morfar had problems with his hearing, he especially has a hard time in large groups of talking people, he would often sit away from conversation and laughter or leave the room when we really got loud. I was a very loud child, -I have seen the home videos, I know the truth,- and he would often tell me to be quiet, so i found him intimidating and distant when I was little.

How grateful I am to have had the chance to grow older and see the other side. If this was the permanent impression I had of him in my life, oh how wrong I would have been.

Through the years my love and admiration and respect for our family patriarch has grown and become exceedingly large.

I recognised that the stories i heard were told with love and the reason why he seemed distant when everyone were laughing so hard that we had tears in our eyes was because he could not hear what anyone was saying and we sounded like a large flock of loud birds, so he would just sit back and watch unless someone raised their voice above the rest so he could hear what they were saying to him. i realized that I was the one that has shied away when he tried to play with me because i thought he looked scary and that he had always loved me, but that it was not until I was older that I payed attention to him. I had spend all my time with my mormor who spoiled me rotten in attention and love or playing with my cousins.

When I was small my grandparents lived in an old black and white tutor farm house with a straw roof. Most of the land was sold but they still had a large marvelous garden. There were many old trees some of them very tall, some were old apple trees with the sort of apples that you will never find at the grocery store. How I loved that house. It was as good as a castle from a fairytale. My Morfar had a big workshop where he spend much of his time. I was usually not allowed in there because of the sharp tools. I faintly remember him standing at his workbench working away animatedly usually while grunting and mumbling frustrated exclamations that he only understood the translation of, surrounded with a heavenly pile of twirly wood shavings. I have one of his old fashioned wooden lunch boxes standing on my desk right now.

If you have never seen his lunch boxes I will do my best to at least give you some idea of what they are like.

This is not one of the ones he made. I just found the picture with google. Morfar's Lunch boxes are elegant and painted in the traditional old danish furniture style.

Here is a picture my aunt Sonja took of my Farmor's furniture. My Farfar restored this.

I will tell you more about them another time.

The furniture, how ever, gives you a good idea of the typical colors and types of patterns and general look of the painted furniture.

Morfar loved to make things in his work shop. When I was back in January I was very saddened when i realized that he has stopped painting, stopped fishing and stopped making his many projects big or small. He made all their picture frames him self. He made cabinets in the same old fashioned style, and serving trays (you can see one in the top left corner of the picture) and many other things. I managed to salvage some of his picture frames and insisted taking them back to the states with me when he told me they are all going in the trash.

If it was up to me I would fill my home with all these beautiful things. I know that most of my friends and relatives back in Denmark think this is to dark, to detailed, to...old? ugly? colorful? I do not know. I'm a minority in my loving this and finding the current danish extreme simplicity design fashion horribly plain, dull and unimaginative and boring. So more of this for me right? now i just have to find a way to import it! Ha!

Back to Morfar. In short he is an artist. I am fortunate enough to have 2 of his little paintings. He was gifted in general when it came to creating. Besides painting and woodwork, my grandparent would move into an old house and fix it up. Morfar has done construction of just about every kind there is on a house as far as I know. I love the stone archway that connects the living room to the dining room in the house he lives in now.

I love my Morfar. he is a man of few words and from a generation where you keep your emotions to your self. I took me a while but I learned to recognise his ways of showing affection.

If there was ever any doubt that he cared, you would get reminded when you sat down to dinner and it was his turn to bless the food. Again, the loooong detailed prayers expressed with concern and love for each individual in the family that would drag on for what seemed like a decade to a hungry impatient child, was not appreciated fully until I was quite a bit older.

It is hard to watch him wither away. Still i think he looks quite well for someone in his late 80's.

I wish I had a way of bringing some more joy into his life as it is now. He has stopped doing everything he loves. He is a widower alone in a house that is becoming more difficult for him to manage and he gets so easily overwhelmed with company. he can't hear much that is said over the phone if he hears it ringing at all.

I want for him to have a happy ending to his life not just a happy everything else. All I can do for now is to follow his example and pray.

I wanted to pass on his legacy when i named Ian after his oldefar. I wanted to remind him that there are amazing people in his eternal family. I wanted him to know that i have faith that he can become a great man him self one day. I want my son to know, every time he sees his name, that he has the potential and the example to live up to and to continue to give the name honor.

There is so much more I could say but this is getting very long.

So if you see my morfar give him a hug from me.