Origins

 

This is Kari Kjørrefjord, the widow of my father's cousin Thor (pronounced Tore).   She is standing in front of the family farm house that has been in the family for over a century.  My grandfather was born in this house.

My birthday was yesterday (I turned 68) and of course that makes me introspective.  I think about my beginnings.  My birth into the world and the family.  And also my DNA  and the origins of where I come from.  At least the part of me that comes from my father.

I know that only half of my DNA is from my father and that he was 100% Norwegian.  But somehow, I have always identified at Norwegian.   Maybe because I had blond hair and blue eyes and looked Scandinavian.

My family- my parents and my siblings, and I, visited this farm in 1957 when I was three years old.  I don't remember it at all, but I have seen pictures.    

Nick and I went to Norway on our honeymoon  We visited relatives and marveled at the beauty of the country.   Some of my second cousins were little kids and we met them too- although they don't remember us at all.

We lived in Tromsø, Norway from 1984-86 and our third child was born there.  Before going there we studied Norwegian through the State Department, which was a great help.  I wanted to love it there but had a hard time.  Three little kids- one a newborn.  Post partum depression.   Not knowing anyone.  And then the sun set in November for two months.  However, I look back on those days fondly now that I am not in the thick of the drama of parenting three little kids and feeling lonely.

Later, when we were living in Perth, Australia, I visited Norway again.  It was 1997.   That is the earliest I remember visiting the family farm.   On that trip, I stood in the room that I imagined that my grandfather had been born in.  I felt the presence of him, and of my great grandmother giving birth and starting a new chapter in the family tree (maybe I should say a new branch)

Nick got a summer assignment to the US Embassy in Oslo in 2015. That offered the perfect chance for my sister and I to visit Norway with her granddaughters.   

It was a wonderful trip.  We were treated very well by second cousins.  we got to see and feel our "roots" and introduce the next generation to some of their heritage.

So now I am 68.  Older than my grandfather was when he died.  I never knew him and my father refused to speak of him and got angry  when I asked about him.  But, I have his DNA.

The Kjørrefjord family grave

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