Honor Thy Father

Two weeks ago when I was on the phone with dad making final arrangements for his and my step-mother’s upcoming visit, I said,”Look, I’m hoping against hope for at least one nice, sunny day while you’re here. But it’s been cold and rainy for weeks now. So for heaven’s sake bring a sweater, and try to get excited about drizzle and fog.”

He dismissed my warnings with a casual, “No. No. Don’t worry. I’ll see what I can do.”

As long as I can remember, see—as long as anyone, apparently, can remember—my sweet daddy has had a bit of a God-complex. He’d like us all to believe that it is perfectly within his power to get Jesus on the horn, call in a favor, thus arranging the weather to his liking for any given week.

He went a long way last week towards proving his point.

A week ago Thursday, just about the time they would have been leaving American airspace, I’ll be damned if the clouds overhead began breaking up, the temperature nudged up a bit, and a mother-fucking rainbow appeared on the western horizon heralding their impending arrival. By the time they landed in Bergen on Friday morning, summer had officially—emphatically—returned to Norway. All week long—‘twas sunny, ‘twas hot, ‘twas glorious. And my daddy ‘twas one smug son of a bitch.

Oh sure, there were a few glitches in his order. Two thunderstorms rolled through mid-week making a God awful racket and hammering the hell out of my new roses. But Camelot-like, they didn’t blow in till after sundown, and by 8 their attending fog had entirely disappeared. Then yesterday evening during our farewell, lakeside barbeque, an almighty freak of a windstorm blew in out of nowhere scattering napkins and empty beer cans thither and yon, and sending me into a bit of a panic about not getting to introduce more initiates into my new cult of the Smorsh. While I was running around trying to gather up all our picnic bits for a hasty retreat once the rain started, dad sat cool as you please, wine glass in hand, saying, “Tut tut, Jamie. Not to worry. It’ll die down any minute now. This is just a little preview of what’s to come once I leave. Besides, we need to get those coals stoked up a bit for premium marshmallow roasting, don’t we now.”

Five minutes later—the wind (no gentle summer zephyr, mind you, nor even a bracing Autumn bluster, but a full out batton-down-the-hatches, tape-up-the-windows, and give-it-an-old-fashioned-antiquated-name-for-emphasis windstorm ) had blown itself out, the lake had regained its preferred reflective properties, and the coals of our little campfire were all aglow—whipped into a radiating frenzy by the wind, they practically begged us to stick a marshmallow within reach of their throbbing, toasty goodness.

And so we did.

And we ate the Smorsh. And the Smorsh was good.

Two or three beers into the party, Anita (my not even remotely wicked step-mother) leaned over and said, “It’s really me, you know. I’m the one who brought the good weather. I just let him think he’s doing it to prop up the old man’s flagging ego.”

This may be so. Not the flagging ego bit. Dad would want me to hasten to assure you all that his ego is in perfect working order. But it’s true that Anita can only speak of rumors of rain in Bergen for she’s never actually seen any. Every time she’s been here the weather has been on its very best behavior. So maybe she really is our lucky charm.

Either way I’m grateful for it, because we really did have a wonderful week. Or, at least I did. I suppose it’s presumptuous to speak for everyone else (obviously nothing wrong with my ego either, winkwink). We were limited in what we could do because we only had the one car and no where near enough room in it to fit everyone. So for the most part we contented ourselves with swimming in the lake, and taking short walks on some of the local trails. Nothing terribly exciting, and yet somehow everything a summer vacation should be.

I’ll post a few pictures tomorrow. Dad got some beauties of the kids. I totally covet his camera. The stingy bastard refused to leave it here for me though. Maybe it was because I kept making him eat fish…..