Owen’s question to me tonight as I put him to bed:<\/p>\n
“Dada, what is love?”<\/p>\n
He was so sleepy that the question kind of slipped out of his mouth as we lay in the dark, foreheads touching and me drifting off myself. I had just sung him Per Spelman:<\/p>\n
Per Spelman, han hadde ei einaste ku
\nPer Spelman, han hadde ei einaste ku
\nHan byrte bort kua, fekk fela igjen
\nHan byrte bort kua, fekk fela igjen<\/p>\n
“Du gode, du gamle, fiolin, du fiolin, du fela mi”<\/p>\n
Per Spelman, han spele og fela hu let
\nPer Spelman, han spele og fela hu let
\nGutene danse og jentene gret
\nGutene danse og jentene gret<\/p>\n
“Du gode, du gamle, fiolin, du fiolin, du fela mi”<\/p>\n
\u00c5\u2026, om eg vaert gammel som stein under bru
\n\u00c5\u2026, om eg vaert gammel som stein under bru
\nS\u00e5 aldri eg byrter bort fela for ku
\nS\u00e5 aldri eg byrter bort fela for ku<\/p>\n
“Du gode, du gamle, fiolin, du fiolin, du fela mi”<\/p>\n
Its a silly little Norwegian country song about a farmer (Per Spelman) who had one cow, which he sold to buy a violin. And he played his violin so beautifully that the boys danced and the girls cried. “And if ever,” Per Spelman asks, he becomes as “old as the stones under the bridge”, he’ll never trade his violin back for a cow.<\/p>\n
My father sang this to me as a child and I can hear him singing it still in my memory. I remember the pitch and throw of his intonation and rising tones. Either I was hearing his accent coming through on some words (which I cannot discern, even when trying hard), or he was enjoying the words to effect. He once told me he was very interested in pursuing Linguistics as a career (studies I started out on lo’ these many years ago, before falling into photography), and so I know he loves language; the sound and feel and breath of it.<\/p>\n
I talked to Owen about what love feels like; the warmth in your chest when your are physically close to another person, like us as his parents, or his sister, or grandparents. But I added, too, that he could very well feel love for objects and animals and ideas. He certainly loves his Lego catalog (sleeps with it, actually), and I mentioned he might feel love for our three cats, our land and the sky and clouds above it – and even love being a boy, or love being himself. His sister, it was pointed out, would feel love very similarly of course. It was probable, I concluded that he might love colours too.<\/p>\n
He roused slightly as I arose from beside him (so reluctantly, because it was warm and cosy next to him), and mumbled a goodnight as I kissed him on the forehead.<\/p>\n
Life just doesn’t get much better than that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Owen’s question to me tonight as I put him to bed: “Dada, what is love?” He was so sleepy that the question kind of slipped out of his mouth as we lay in the dark, foreheads touching and me drifting off myself. I had just sung him Per Spelman: Per Spelman, han hadde ei einaste […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-joy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}