4. Dead or alive

It’s time.  I’m hesitating a bit. With the door ajar and my heart in my hand. I’m stepping in to the point of nu return.  I cannot undo this.  There is probably a hundred ways to approach you, the only one I know… is this one. I believe in the core.  I believe in giving something from the heart, a piece of me. This makes me vulnerable , but trough that I can achieve strength.  One cannot just THINK that it is that way. One have to LIVE by the principles you believe in – if not: What’s the point?  To create, one has to act. Passiveness has never laid down a single brick to the foundations of the world. So,...here we go:

I grew up in a small place called Nordby. A small parish a couple of miles outside Oslo.  Today there is about 5000 inhabitants here. Then, a lot fewer.  The last 25 years a lot of changes has come to this small place, but the character and the culture is intact.  We have great fields, deep forests, and a rich history dating back to the stone age. We have hills with no endings, fjords with polished rocks that makes the very soul come to ease, and provides calmness on a hot summer day.  And we got THE Oak.  The beautiful majestic Nordby-oak with a crown diameter of 30 meters!!!  It has settled with deep roots on the roof of this small place, and ut is a landmark.  I don’t know how old it is, but it is most certainly old. Did you know that the oak was known as Thor’s (God of thunder & lightning) three?  Me neither, but that is just things that comes up when browsing and searching the internet.  Not the most important of knowledge, but still a fun fact.  Come to think of it, it isn’t that strange that Thor + Oak = true, since the lightning always has had a special love for oak trees.  Not the place to stay on a scary rainy afternoon.  But other ways: One can never visit the oak to seldom.

The house I was living in was placed, not beautifully, clammy rendering to the European Higway-6. Så close to it, that when the snow shoveled trucks passed by during winter, glass often shattered due to a shower of ice and gravel.  The facade of the house became grey from the exhaust, daily gluing itself layer on layer with the remains of the combusting engine. We tried to paint the house brown after a few years, but it did not help. The exhaust-coat was still hanging there.  But it was a great place to grow up.  Actually we didn’t pay much attention to the traffic pounding outside our walls 24/7.  This was our Eldorado. Mommy, daddy, little brother and mine. The highway was just a trivial thing compared to the other side of our house.  After living my first years in a skyscraper in Oslo (Hold your horses, a skyscraper in Norway is not exactly what you call a skyscraper), this was like coming to Alice’s Wonderland.  Oh, joy!!! Two thousand square meters of garden – enormous, filled with up and abouts, bushes with blackcurrants and trees with rope-swings.  And the best of all a huge creek by the end of the property. Pounding with life from small fish and eels. A field of reed was located by our property – and we made huge rooms by stamping around.  We made ballrooms out in that field.  And not a single soul could see the parties we had behind the yellow swaying walls. My brother and I. During summer, we lied flat on the ground by the creek, flies summing around us, and we caught sticklebacks in numbers.  During winter, we skated on the ice by the garage.

I was quite happy as a child. Curious about life, observant, happy and active.  But I carried a big secret. I was constantly afraid of dying. Might seem like a contradiction, loving life, being happy and at the same time being afraid of death, I know. I don’t know why it was like this – it doesn’t make me a category A, just to have that being said.  It is just one of the truth about me and my life, together with many other truths at that time. I think I am born this way.  Most people looked at me as a secure, strong willed and unafraid girl.  But people often don’t se what’s below the surface – they are too busy noticing.

Life comes in every shade, and I believe that you are a man that understands just that. It is a part of me, but it did not stop me or handicap me, until I reached a certain age.  For the time being, I don’t go up in airplanes or drive boats – but working on that.  Even to eat can be dangerous.  It nearly killed me two times.  First time it happened, I was around 9 years old.  I came over a news article about a man suffocated by a piece of meat at a restaurant – well, that made it. That article was the direct cause to me being frantic when a piece of chocolate got stuck in my throat. I was sure that my time had come, that I was going to die. I bought the chocolate for a fistful of change in a small kiosk at Nesset – A small red building, by the pier at the end of the Bunne-fjord. I worked there some years later, but I didn’t know that when I was nearly killed by a almond chocolate.  It was like a ticking bomb some abstract place below the ears – and my only thoughts was: This is it. This is as far as I go, no further.  At the same time, I ran as quickly as my feet could possibly make along the pathway – heading to our house 500 meters away.  Never has a dying child reached this kind of speed alongside the European Highway #6.   My mom was kind of terrified when I came running in, and water eyed proclaimed I was to draw my last breath.  At the end she said “Ok…” “But you’re still breathing”. And that I did.  I didn’t die that day – and neither did I die 20 years later when I managed to stuck a taco shell in my throat.  I drove, just as hysteric as I was running, to the ER in Oslo. I was waiting 3 hours for someone to take the piece of shell out of my throat, while watching limping, bleeding and drunk people who also needed medical care.  Everyone was put before me in the queue.  “HELLO!!!” I screamed, “Nobody noticing that I am dying?”. But no, please sit down and wait.  They told me to drink water, to soften the shell. Hola Mexico. What has become of this world? I drank water ‘til my eyes got wet, but the shell itself was stuck, and the edges of the dangerous piece of tacoshell was digging into me, like large voracious tentacles.  “It just FEELS like it is still there” said the lady, dressed in white.  I just had to pack up, and leave. Both me and the taco. Beware of your ability to swallow things.  Not everyone knows how lethal it is.  I was spared, but next time, maybe I won’t be as lucky…

Yep, I eat fast.  And I work slow.  Again, it is late night and tomorrow we are throwing the last high school meeting. I better get some sleep, so I can be fit for fight. Cross your fingers Bruce.  And sleep tight.  Tomorrow there isn’t going to be much death – but then again more… of life and happiness.

Rikke.
Posted in Norwegian February 5. 2012