Astrid Fardal

…day from Chicago. In my bag: - Passport (the new one), the Mastercard, the card with its PIN for the ticket machines, 1,500 kroner from the credit union. - Pills for 16 days in their own bottles: levothyroxine, atorvastatin, amlodipine, the alendronate for two Sundays, calcium. - Rain jacket, the gray cardigan, the…

…fee, the same age as each other, about fifty, talking Norwegian quite fast. I stood in the door and understood every word. It was ordinary talk: somebody's cow, the price of something. Mom looked up and said, in Norwegian, that I should sit down, I made the room untidy standing there. I woke and could not bring back…

…randmother and Grandma Ingeborg were sisters, and she has had us to stay for four nights in a house above the fjord with a grass roof on the woodshed. Her husband drove us up to the farm on Thursday and to the old stave church on Friday. I wore the sølje. I pinned it on at breakfast and walked up the hill in it, the…

Sept. 6-7. O'Hare to Amsterdam to Bergen, and then the small plane to Sogndal the same afternoon, 35 minutes. Astrid Fardal and her husband Knut met us with a sign that said HAUGEN. Sept. 7-10, Sogndal, four nights with Astrid and Knut in the house above the fjord. The connection, as Astrid has it from the parish boo…

…that she forwarded to eleven people with no words of her own. Nursing, in the fall. R. has begun, without discussion, to clear the corner of the garage where the bicycles used to be kept. "She'll need somewhere to put one," he said. The other planning this winter is 2027. Fifty years in August. We have settled it b…

…m. DECIDED 1. The week of August 14 to 21, 2027, at the cabin, all fourteen. No hall, no caterer, no speeches. 2. Then the two of us to Norway in September, about two weeks. Sogndal first, to Astrid and Knut. Then wherever Ray's bridge is. 3. No Ephraim that year. 4. Not to buy each other anything. TO DO - RAY'S PA…