Part 7 “…. AND FROM THIS MOMENT, PLEASE, IN MORE DETAIL…”. Thoughts about today. Sunday, 11 April 2021. My Norwegian husband is ready to drive me anywhere. It is good that in Norway there is a lot of fresh air and natural beauty. Of course, I have grown used to it. “There lived an old man and an old woman by the very blue sea.” Almost like us, but we do not feel our age and try to go somewhere, not very far, well… to get some air.
We drove today, about 50 minutes one way. Just turn a little off the main road and that is it, you find yourself in wild places like Alyonushka with little brother Ivanushka: a narrow, winding road, mountains hanging over the road, and on the other side a huge lake, and… no one.
We walked into the forest and along the lake, came upon a summer cottage, like a shed, with a wooden sign with the eloquent name “Hilton.” We walked around the shed and saw a solar panel. So some little comfort is provided in the shed. My husband asked whether I would like such a cabin? Of course not. If you are not a fisherman, what is there to do?
And yet many Norwegians very much strive for that kind of solitary rest. And I need no cabins at all and never dreamed of them, but today I remembered my former husband and when we had a small child, we lived at his parents’ dacha, and how I worried when my husband went fishing, and I had to be alone with a 10-month-old son. In a rubber inflatable boat he would paddle to the middle of the Dnieper and cast a line there. And I was all in worry, as if something might happen. And now I “look back” and think “and what was there to worry about?”