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Sunday
Aug 08
The pace of our travels since coming to Denmark has been much slower.
I’ve really noticed that there is much less go-there-see-this; we still
have plans to go and see things, but there is much less urgency.
Probably because we have been here so many times before, and we know
that we will be here many times in the future. One of the big reasons
for this trip is to try and maintain the family connections that we,
Karen really, have in Scandinavia. Those connections in Norway are
rather tenuous. The facts that Nina’s sister and her family live in
Denmark, and that Karen and her family grew up here, all mean that our
ties to Denmark are much stronger than our ties to Norway. The real
trick is going to be the next generation. We’ll be staying with Karen’s
cousin Ida and her husband Lars when we’re not at Gilleleje. They have
two daughters, Silla (8), and Silke (3). The big hope all around is
that the girls will get along wonderfully and we can start to build
life-long relationships. Last night when we got in Emma was too weary
to do much; she curled up on the kitchen bench and went to sleep, so
this morning it was a great relief that everyone was very happy to see
each other. After a late breakfast we headed over to Karen’s aunt’s
house, to let the fun begin.
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 Telse
and Carsten have a wonderful establishment, with a good amount of land
and lots of horses, including a 3-day-old foal. As you can imagine this
is just about heaven to a group of girls. The first item for today was
to see the foal and encourage him to venture out of the stable for the
first time. That mission was successful, and after watching him gambol
around the pasture for a while, with his mother protectively staying
between him and all others, Nina brought out four identical summer
dresses that she had purchased before leaving the States. Silla, Emma,
and Silke immediately put them on and began dancing around. Lizzie had
other ideas, and steadfastly refused to wear hers; she did, however,
fully partake in the dancing. It was around this point that Emma and
Lizzie discovered Telse and Carsten’s vegetable plot. The peas in
particular were very popular. Apparently  all
it takes to get Emma and Lizzie to eat vegetables is a field of peas
that they can pick next to a horse paddock and then carry across to a
shady spot on the lawn, in folds of their skirts. They
pillaged-plundered-and-that-other-thinged the pea-patch until a good
half of it was stripped.
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 We
headed back to Ida’s for lunch and played in their yard while we got
ready to head to the beach. The beach was wonderful---appropriately
sandy, clear-watered, and shallow for a long way out. We all went
swimming, except for Thomas who opted to stretch out on a towel and go
to sleep, and this was the point that my personal curse with Danish
sea-bathing struck. Once again I lost my wedding ring in the water and
once again my half hour of desperate searching was fruitless. I’ve been
swimming in the fjords of Norway, off the coast of Northern California,
and in snowmelt-fed lakes at Tahoe, no problem. There is some special
combination about the waters in Denmark that makes my wedding ring slip
off. I don’t know what to say. Karen however, did: “That’s it. My
mermaid ancestors are against this marriage,” and “Well, we’re ordering
you another ring.”
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 After the beach it was time to head back to
Telse’s for dinner and then probably the highlight of the day, if
you’re a little girl: the tractor ride to water the horses.
With
the livestock settled, Ida & Lars packed up their protesting
daughters and took them home to bed. We stayed and talked a while, and
then drove around the set of fields separating Telse & Carsten’s
house from Ida & Lars’s. The road is paved but narrow, and seems to
follow some old-time boundaries, because it contains a lot of
right-angled turns. Ida & Lars were still up, so we carried in the
sleeping Lizzie, settled Emma with Spirit on the laptop, and joined
them for a nightcap cup of coffee and some good conversation.
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