It's a life

Ivar is my father's older brother--or, to be more precise, one of 7 older brothers. This is the only photo I have of him. He's the one on the bottom; he didn't get the girl.

They all grew up in a tiny little house on a farm in southern Norway. Their mother, Inga, was a terror--or at least that's my impression of her; that's what I take from the fact that my father tells me he has no memories of his childhood. None at all. Nothing. I was named after her.

Something's wrong with Ivar. I don't know what. He lived with us in Connecticut for some years when I was a kid, worked down the road at a wire mill. I recall uncomfortable evenings when he'd come by to watch Lawrence Welk and pull me onto his lap, and he'd be quivering. An ailment, I think now, but then it felt like his little secret--that quiver, with me in his lap. Hard to erase the effects of childhood emotion. I have no feelings for him. None at all. Nothing.

He never married, never had children. Went back to that farm in Norway and lived by himself in a little house on a rock near the lake that another brother drowned in not long ago. Very backwoods stuff--very Old Country people. He died last night. And I realize that you'd never know he ever lived. No sign, no trail. I wonder if he was OK with that.

When I remember what my father came from--when I look at his crazy, crazy siblings and that old house that I swear still carries his mother's musty, heavy scent--I lose my footing. Have to give the guy credit: he came out of the mud--the incestuous, mad, mountain mud. Is it any wonder he can't play out that life in this life's terms?

Maisie's home. Happy, so happy.