It is probably Sunday, because my mother is still in her bathrobe. And who reads the Saturday paper so avidly? I think the bathrobe was light pink, but I’m not sure. The couch was an old one that my mother brought from Sally and Ivy’s mother when we lived on Calvert. They moved out to Southfield, near the zoo, and bought new furniture. I remember going to visit once and hearing the lions roar.
The couch was old. My mother had a slip cover made. It was blue with a blue design. I patched it once, in a fit of fix-it-up. It has been a long time since I have read a newspaper offline. I wonder what we were reading about.
The couch and more of that corner of the living room. My uncle Henry took the photos.
There was an end table with a lamp and a brass ash tray. Both my mother and Henry smoked. The table had a fake leather top and a big drawer. One of my daughters has that table now. The lamp was white with red flowers and green leaves painted on it. There were gold lines at the top and base. The old television, in a wood cabinet ,was still working. Later it died and for awhile there was a smaller TV, that worked, sitting on top of it.
The walls were beige. When we moved in, they were covered with wall paper. As soon as she could afford it, my mother had Mrs. Bruce’s brother come and paint it a clean, beige color. There is no art work above the couch in this photograph. When I graduated from high school and began studying art at Wayne State University, my mother would tack one of my drawings up on the wall. Later on she had me frame them for her, badly. I never could cut the mats right. You can’t see the rug here but it was a faded wine colored pattern. It was wall to wall and never replaced while we lived there.
2600 Cascade Rd. SW in 2010. We lived on the right hand side. I loved that screened in porch.
This is the 20th post in the February Photo Collage Festival and the Family History Writing Challenge. This week I cover places where I have lived that weren’t covered in the Alphabet Challenge last year. Today I remember 2600 Cascade Road SW in Atlanta.
We moved to Atlanta in September of 1972. I was about 2 months pregnant. That would be a recurring description of me off and on over the next 10 years. Jim had been talking about moving south and my sister lived in Atlanta so that is where we went. Pearl found us a duplex on Cascade Road not too far from her house on Willis Mill Road.
Jim alternated between Detroit and Atlanta until just before Ife was born at the end of March, 1973. My sister helped me get a job at the Institute of the Black World (IBW). Part of the statement of purpose of IBW read: “The Institute of the Black World is a gathering of black intellectuals who are convinced that the gifts of their minds are meant to be fully used in the service of the black community. It is therefore an experiment with scholarship in the context of struggle.”
I, however, was hired to do clerical work and was not a member of the intellectual staff. I typed, organized a small library, ran off the IBW newsletter on their off-set printing press, helped with mailings and sometimes transcribed tapes. As I remember, the in-house staff was small, less than ten people. When the Watergate Hearings started, we worked around the conference table as often as possible to enable us to watch the hearings on TV. Sometimes educational meetings were called when interesting people came to town. They talked to us about the struggle where they were.
While I worked, my daughter Jilo attended the Martin Luther King Jr. Preschool. It was several blocks from IBW and had an afro-centric curriculum. Ruth, a fellow employee at IBW, drove by our house on her way to work. She stopped and picked us up each morning. From work I walked Jilo to school. After several days of crying when I dropped her off, my two year old daughter settled in and seemed to enjoy the program. Below is a song the children learned.
I remember the surprise baby shower the IBW staff gave me at some friends house. I thought I was going to dinner until everybody yelled “Surprise!” Three days before the birth, it felt like it was time to stop working. I mostly slept those three days and then delivered my second daughter, Ife at Holy Family Hospital, with Dr. Borders in attendance. It was a natural birth and Jim was there. All went well. Ife was a big baby and fussier than Jilo had been. She went to sleep best when Stevie Wonder was singing “You Are the Sunshine of My Life”.
Jim got a job printing at the Atlanta Voice Newspaper. I stopped working outside the homes. We got our first full sized washing machine! I sold a poster I made using a woodcut to a group recruiting black students for historically black colleges and designed a sign for the Emergency Land Fund and I got paid.
The Atlanta Voice was a weekly newspaper so Jim was often working at night putting out the paper. Ife had decided that the middle of the night was the time to get some one on one time with me. That spring there seemed to be a constant stream of severe thunderstorms moving through the area in the middle of the night. Always while Jim was at work.
I sewed most of the children’s clothes. Those I didn’t sew, I bought second hand. I started my first garden. The yard was a bit shady, but I did get some tomatoes and green beans. We got a dog who ran out into the street and got hit by a car. The across the street neighbor’s dog had puppies under the other side of the duplex neighbor’s car. Jilo played outside all the time. It was the first place we lived that had a yard. There were plenty of kids near us and they often played at our house. I formed a baby co-op with two friends and we got a little bit of free time without kids. I can remember walking down the street after dropping off Jilo and Ife but I can’t remember where I went or what I did.
We didn’t have a car. Jim drove the Atlanta Voice truck to and from work. I took the bus or walked or my sister sometimes gave me a ride. I remember walking up to the Salvation Army on the corner of Cascade and Donnelly; walking to Adams Park to take the children swimming; walking to my sister’s house on Willis Mill. Jilo would be walking and I’d push Ife in the Umbroller. The only bad part of walking was that there were no sidewalks in the neighborhood, so all walking was done on the side of the street. There was much less traffic back then and I didn’t feel like I was taking my life in my hands. There was a pasture across the street from my house in 1973, now there are condos.
My father decided to open a branch of his church in Atlanta so we saw him as he came down to prepare the way. Other family and friends passed through Atlanta on a regular basis. Looking back it’s hard to remember why we felt the need to move on but we wanted to get out of the city. In 1974 Jim got a job with the Emergency Land Fund and we moved to Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina.
When Jim received his FBI file several years ago, we found the memos below included.
ATTN INTELLIGENCE DIVN REF JAMES EDWARD WILLIAMS AKA AKBAR LEE, NM (note: stands for Negro Male), THIS OFC DESIRE ALL AVBLE INFO AND PHOTOS IF POSSIBLE ON THE ABOVE INDIVIDUAL, WE HAVE INFO THAT THE ABOVE SUBJ IS ENRTE TO OUR CITY TO ESTABLISH A CONSULATE FOR THE REPUBLIC OF NEW AFRICA. PLS FWD ALL INFO TO LT WW HOLLEY ATLANTA PD(Note: stands for Police Department) INTELLIGENCE DIVN 165 DECATUR ST ATLANTA GA 30303. AUTH PD ATLANTA GA
November 2, 1972 Chief of Police Atlanta Police Department 165 Decatur Street Atlanta, Georgia 30303
Dear Sir: Re LTX 35729 dated 10-31-72: Subject JAMES EDWARD WILLIAMS first came to the attention of this Department in December of 1965 while picketing the Michigan Liquor Control Commission with members of C.O.R.E (Congress of Racial Equality). Subject then became active in an organization known as D.R.U.M. (Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, a militant group of black workers in the Chrysler plants in the Detroit area. WILLIAMS next formed a group known as the BLACK CONSCIENCE LIBRARY located at 6505 Grand River, Detroit, a loose-knit group of black extremists; blacks from various advocating self-determination by the black man. Members of the BLACK PANTHER PARTY (B.P.P.) and REPUBLIC OF NEW AFRICA (R.N.A.) were seen entering and leaving this location at various times. It has been rumored at various times that the BLACK CONSCIENCE LIBRARY has been used to store arms, ammunition and dynamite to be used by militants. It is reported that Williams attended PEOPLE’S CENTRAL COUNCIL (P.C.C) conventions in Milwaukee, July, 1972; and New Orleans, Louisiana, September, 1972. (There is to be another P.C.C. meeting in New Orleans, after which subject plans to go to Atlanta, Georgia with his wife.) Page 2 – Chief of Police, Atlanta, Georgia 11-2-72 WILLIAMS was observed attending a PAN AFRICAN CONGRESS (P.A.C.) meeting held in Detroit on September 30, 1972. WILLIAMS reportedly has set up a R.N.A. Chapter in Atlanta, and is to move his family there. (Please inform this Department of any pertinent information relative to this Chapter in your city; also, if WILLIAMS has established residence there.) Enclosed are pictures, records, and personal information on WILLIAMS. Be assured of our continued cooperation in all matters of mutual concern. Very truly yours,
This is the 19th post in the February Photo Collage Festival and the Family History Writing Challenge. This week I am doing four posts describing some of the places I have lived that I didn’t cover in the Alphabet Challenge last year. Today I am remembering 3203 Glendale Avenue, Detroit.
Me, tired revolutionary librarian.
In the spring of 1970 the Black Conscience Library was evicted from 12019 Linwood so that the League of Revolutionary Black Workers could have the space. We temporarily moved into the basement of friends, Stu and Gloria House. They had been members of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and worked for voter registration in Lowndes County, Alabama.
Two views from Google Maps of the house on Glendale. Back in 1970 none of those little trees and shrubs were there. Neither was the chain link fence.
That summer, we had high school students working with us. One of their tasks was to sell the Malcolm X posters you can see on the wall behind me in the photo above. Sometimes on Saturdays there was an organized trip to the rifle range so people could learn to shoot. I never went due to being in the last months of pregnancy. I remember all those steps from the basement to the attic and how many times I climbed them. We had received a grant from somebody and that summer two of us got paid.
Our living quarters were in the attic. I was about seven and a half months pregnant with my first child. My bedroom was in the cedar closet up on the third floor. It was large enough for a bed and the baby’s little crib later. I remember the light from the streetlight on the trees below my window those warm summer nights. There was another bedroom towards the front of the house. Phil had that room. Phil was a former Black Panther who worked with the library. He kept playing “Bitches Brew” by Miles Davis all summer long.
Not the actual fridge, but this is what it looked like. Except it was painted in maroon with patches of other colors. I don’t know who painted it.
There was a claw foot bathtub and a window that looked into the neighbors attic. We had globe top refrigerator and a hotplate in the hall that the two bedrooms and bathroom opened out to. I babysat the 2.5 year old when his parents were at work or school. There wasn’t a lot of library work to do aside from running off flyers and newsletters because we weren’t really open to the public. I remember lots of meetings. Meetings between the people that shared the house. Meetings between members of the library staff. Meetings about meetings.
Usually the house was full of people but the night that I went into labor, nobody was home. Jim was teaching a “Survival and Defense” class somewhere else. I don’t know where the other 5 adults and the 2 year old that lived in the house were. I waited and walked around and waited. Finally I called my doctor to say the contractions were 5 minutes apart and he said to come to the hospital. It was 10 PM. I called my mother and she came and drove me down and waited with me until Jim arrived. Baby Jilo wasn’t born until noon the next day so I could have waited a bit longer.
One night soon after I came home with Jilo and everybody had gone to bed, neither Jim or Phil were there, but the downstairs people were. A woman started to scream for help from the alley behind the house. Stu came upstairs looking for one of the rifles from the trips to the range. As I remember they had been broken down and cleaned but not put back together. He went back down and hollered out of the back door that he was going to come out there with a “30 aught 6” and shoot somebody if the woman wasn’t released. She was and she came into the house and the police were called. I learned this later because I was upstairs in the bed with my new baby girl thinking about the dangerous world and glad that Stu had been there to shout out the door.
Part of the cast of characters. Jim was taking the photos so he was not in the pictures, unfortunately.
“I was happy to hear that Jim and Chris (sic) were well. In the times when I question my own dedication to the struggle i remember them up in that loft, with the child, cooking dinner on a hot plate. It is something i can never forget and it brings me back home when i begin to trip too hard. It is a constant source of inspiration.
We were there about six or seven months before a new location was found for the library. By that time everybody was happy to get their own space again.
This is the 18th post in the February Photo Collage Festival and the Family History Writing Challenge. I am doing four posts about some of the places that I didn’t cover in the Alphabet Challenge last year. Today I am going to remember 4315 Third Avenue, Detroit, where my husband, Jim, lived for several years while I was a student.
Jim’s apartment was right before the sign that says “BAR” on the right.
When I met Jim in 1966, he was sharing a flat near Wayne State University’s campus with Eizo. Eizo was slightly older than we were, taught math at WSU and was an artist. He was a Japanese American who had spent part of his childhood in a concentration camp during WW2. Jim and Eizo met when they were both members of the Congress Of Racial Equality. They organized tenant strikes and demonstrations against absentee, ghetto landlords. The store front downstairs was empty. One of Jim’s friends, Cebie, an art student and friend from Missouri, lived in the basement for awhile before he moved out and into the Artist’s Workshop.
The flat on Third in 2004. A religious group has a mission for addicts there now. It looked a lot less spiffy in 1966.
One Friday, Jim asked me to go to a party with him but first he had to go do a radio play he was working on. We went to his flat and he left me there while he went for an hour to practice. This was the first time I had been there. When the phone rang I was afraid to answer it, not only because it wasn’t my place, but because I was half sure my mother knew I was there and was calling to fuss. It actually was Jim trying to call and tell me it was going to take longer than he thought.
As I was waiting night came and his roommate, Eizo, came home and asked if I was waiting for Jim or Bernard. Bernard? I didn’t know who Bernard was. While we waited for Jim to return he showed me his drawings. I said they reminded me of Cuba. He asked if I’d been to Cuba and I had to admit I hadn’t. I had just spent my high school years reading about and dreaming about it. His drawings were of California.
That summer, I worked at the Center for Applied Science and Technology. It was several blocks from Jim’s flat. Every morning before work I went by his house and everyday after work we would meet either at the student center in Mackienzie Hall and play chess or sit around the snack bar or at the Montieth Center, an old house that served as classrooms for Montieth College and also had a mimeograph machine and a lounge area. A friend of ours and fellow member of the African American’s Action Committee was the person in charge for the summer. We published A Happenin’ using their equipment.
The back porch. There used to be piles of newspapers out there.
I remember standing at the back door watching the kids come home from the swimming pool at the rec center down the street and the winos looking through the bottles in the alley for one that still had a sip in it. And the man in the apartment across the alley practicing the trumpet, badly.
I remember the colorfully painted wall over the kitchen table and the squash left in the oven way too long. I can see the room full of television sets in the little room with the skylight, that Jim was going to repair.
On August 30 I turned twenty. That evening I was at Jim’s, he had once again invited me out to a party. There were other people there too, five or six. After awhile he told me that he had planned to give me a surprise birthday party but not enough people had come. We sat around and talked for a bit and then all went to another party.
At the beginning of September there was a trip to New York planned. Several people were driving over for something. I wanted to go but my parents said absolutely not. Jim went and the people he was riding with had car trouble and he ended up stranded there. I don’t remember how he got back but I do remember I was waiting and waiting for him to get home. I was at his flat and his friend, Cebie was there. While we were waiting, Cebie made some mashed potatoes and we ate them with olive oil instead of butter. Finally Jim called and he had gone straight to the AAAC meeting without coming home first.
In the fall of 1966 Eizo moved out and got another place where he didn’t have to be surrounded by Jim’s bizarre friends. Not including me, of course. At that point Jim moved in some of Cebie’s cousins who, he says, were Robitussin addicts. They worked in downtown hotels. After they moved in, I stopped going by. Eventually Jim resorted to drastic measures to get them to move out – he stopped paying the heating bill. By that time it was November in Detroit and cold. One night he decided to build a fire in a trash can to heat the place up. Amazingly, it didn’t burn to the ground but there was so much smoke that he coughed his way outside. He made it across the freeway to the student housing at the edge of the Jefferies projects and found refuge with a couple of student sisters. That takes us to a whole different chapter of the story that we won’t be covering here.
Pearl standing, me seated, my father. The photographer told us to look in that direction.
This is the 17th post in the February Photo Collage Festival and the Family History Writing Challenge. The next four posts will be about some of the places that I lived that I didn’t cover in the Alphabet Challenge last year. Today I am going to remember 1300 Layfette, Detroit. My father, who was still using his name, Rev. A.B. Cleage lived here for a year during 1968-1969. I was a senior at Wayne State University.
In the aftermath of the 1967 riots my father had received many crazy letters, including death threats. Several people involved in the movement had been beaten or shot during this time period. There were also the more well known assassinations that took place. I remember one sermon when my father announced that he had heard there was a price on his head and plans to kidnap him and hold him for ransom. He told the congregation that if he was kidnapped, give them nothing for his return. Strangely, I don’t remember worrying about this.
The flat on the left was the one my father lived in. The 12th floor is about half way up.
It was during this time that it was decided that he would move out of his first floor flat on Calvert, that had no security measures, and into the an apartment on the 12th floor of the very secure 1300 Lafayette apartments.
Here is a description written by Hiley H. Ward in his 1969 biography of my father, Prophet of the Black Nation, about the apartment and the atmosphere of the times.
“…He has continued to live alone, until recently in a twelfth-floor panoramic apartment ($360 a month, two bed-room) in the exclusive downtown eastside Lafayette Park overlooking the river, Detroit and Windsor, Canada. His church described his moving there as a security measure… in his immaculate apartment two of three paintings remain unhung after a number of months – not a sign of particular interest in the place.”
Several things I remember:
All that remained of the tea kettle.
My father leaving my sister and me standing out in the hall while he went through the apartment with a drawn gun to make sure nobody was there.
The picture above being taken by a Detroit Free Press photographer for an article they were doing about my sister Pearl’s poetry for the Sunday magazine, Parade.
The time I spent a week with him while my mother and Henry went out of town. He went over to his mother’s house on Atkinson for dinner every night. I decided to just fix myself dinner. I did, but I left the tea kettle on and forgot about it. It melted on the burner. I still have a lump of the remains. During this visit I was instructed to give no one the phone number or the address.
I was trying to reconstruct the layout of the apartment from memory when I decided to look online. Currently the same apartments are in use as co-op apartments and I was able to find the layout and placement at the website for the current cooperative apartments.
At the same time that my father was living here, The Black Star Co-op being developed.
This is the 16th post in the February Photo Collage Festival and the Family History Writing Challenge. Today’s prompt includes a turtle tortoise. None the less, I am going to write about my experience with turtles. My sister and I owned several turtles when we were growing up. We always named them PJ and Pete and they always got soft shells and died. They lived in a little plastic turtle scape much like this one. We added small, colorful rocks to the bottom.
Their bowl sat on top of our bookcase in the bedroom. The room was bright but there wasn’t any direct sunshine there. The turtles were fed a diet of dried food that came in an orange little container. Sometimes we supplemented it with a fly we caught, or some lettuce. As the shells began to go soft, we would try to get them to drink some cod liver oil and moved their island home into the sunlight. All to no avail. They all died. I don’t remember any turtle funerals but there might have been at least one. Perhaps my sister will remember. Pearl says, yes we did bury some of them. I don’t remember being upset, or even minding, when they died.
Our mother didn’t want any real large pets, like cats or dogs, because nobody was home during the day. Maybe because both of her childhood dogs died rather sad deaths too. She was happy to buy us fish and turtles. I think the turtles replaced the fish because it was easier to keep their habitat clean. Once my sister and I took them out on the porch for a walk with strings tied around their shells. Not a big success.
I have since learned that turtles are salmonella carriers. Luckily we never had that problem. My children never had turtles for pets but my husband used to find turtles trying to cross the road and bring them home for them to see before releasing them into the nearby woods or lake. After writing this, I have to wonder if they were disoriented from being moved like this. In fact, this whole thing sounds like the torture of turtles.
My sister Pearl and I pretending to race on the upper front porch of the flat on Calvert. This was the house and the ages we were when we had turtles.
No photos of me in the blizzard but this one of my sister and me was taken before I left. I’m the tall one with the blue scarf. Nanny is peeking out the window behind us.
This weeks prompt is fittingly snow. Forty four years ago today I was in the middle of the New York snowstorm of February 9, 1969. I was nearing the end of my cross country after college trip during which I was looking for somewhere to be besides “home”. I had just about figured out that I could be in Detroit without moving back home. As soon as the planes were flying again, I caught one back to Detroit. As I was riding the bus in from the airport I thought Detroit was the dirtiest city I had seen during the whole trip. Within a month I was out and on my own. Here is a letter I wrote home while the snow fell.
February 11, 1969 Sunday 3:30PM During a Blizzard
Dear Mommy and Henry,
I’m staying at the YWCA. It’s O.K. The room here is smaller then the one in San Francisco. The address is
YMCA Morgan Hall 132 E. 45th Street NYC, New York
Right now there’s a blizzard going on outside. I was out earlier to wash and I got soaked.
You can’t hardly see a block and it’s already at least 5 inches (maybe 3) and giving no sign of stopping. I talked to Pearl and she’s sending me a letter from you. She’s o.k. in case she hasn’t written. My job is o.k. dull though. I’m thinking of returning to Detroit in about a month but I’m not sure, I’ll let you know more about that as it happens. I discovered I’m spending all my time figuring how to meet people like those I already know at home and that didn’t make sense.
I think housing here is worse than anywhere else and so expensive for a condemned bldg. Even if I do come back to Detroit I’m glad I left and went all those places because now I know what they’re like and can quit wishing I was there and spend my time where I am. It’s like getting my ears pierced. For about 7 years I spent half my time wishing I could get them done then when I did, I didn’t have to think about it any more. How’s school? Write soon. Don’t worry about me. I’m not crazy or depressed.
Love, Kris
For other photos and stories of blizzards, snow storms and other interesting topics…
Nightgown & Undershirts – Pee Wee and Winslow. Sleeper – Grandmother Cleage. Pop beads, music box, rings, boat, rattle – Ma and Henry. Poppy $10 Louis $10 Barbara – back carrier. Silver spoon – Gladys. 2 sleepers & clutch ball – Martha. Jim out of town (St. Louis) . Xmas eve at Miriams. Living at Bro. Johns. Xmas, went by Grandmother’s. first time she saw Jilo. Dinner and spent the night at Ma’s. Jim back on 30th. Party at BCL (ugh). Man across the street from Miriam’s hollering for help (“I’m not kidding Help!”) Pearl and Micheal didn’t come home for Xmas.
Front row: Jan and Dale Evans Middle: Pearl Cleage, Warren Evans, Ernest Martin Back: Me (Kristin Cleage) If only Ernie had stepped a bit to the right you would be able to see both of our faces. Why is Dale making that face? Must be because he’s 8.
My cousin Warren always had a party on his December 30th birthday. All of the Cleage cousins gathered at his house where his mother, my aunt Gladys, made a punch of Vernor’s ginger ale with orange sherbert floating on top. There was ice cream, chips, party favors and of course, cake. His cake, shown below, looks like a product of Detroit Awrey’s Bakery. My cousin Jan corrected me and said it was probably a Sanders cake. Sanders also made cakes and the best chocolate miniatures ever. But I digress.
Because I count 11 candles on the cake, I’m going to say it was his 10th birthday which would make it 1958. The 11th candle would be 1 to grow on. There is no sign of his youngest brother who wasn’t born until July of 1959.
Unlike the Sepia Saturday prompt, there is no bus and no Santa in my photo but the people are sitting facing each other and it was taken during the 1950s.
To see more Christmas Sepia Saturday offerings, CLICK!
I thought of this card when I saw the prompt for this weeks Sepia Saturday. There is no kiss but there is water and a boat. Reading the card made me remember that I had written up my trip to Norway years ago, I didn’t have to write it from scratch. Hence this post.
This article first appeared in Catalyst Magazine in the Summer of 1990.
In June of 1981 I was 34 years old, three months pregnant and on my way to spend seven weeks in Norway with my then ten-year-old daughter Jilo. I left behind my husband Jim and three younger daughters, Ife 8, Ayanna 5 and Tulani 2. There were also several milk goats and a flock of laying hens on our 5 acres in rural Simpson County, Mississippi. It was my first time outside of North America.
I had been corresponding with Sister Peg Dunn, a nun, about our mutual interest in Sigrid Undset, Nobel Prize winning Norwegian author of “Kristin Lavrensdatter.” I had become intrigued after reading that she wrote her novels while raising six children. Sister Peg arranged for me to attend the International Summer School at the University of Oslo. Jilo and I traveled to Norway with her.
It is now 1990, nine years later. I’m 43, the yet-to-be-born-baby is 8 and Jilo will be 20 in June. We now live in Michigan. The goats and chickens are gone, but we’ve got rabbits and the garden grows larger every year. When I think about that trip these are my memories, excerpts from my journal and from letters I wrote home.
I remember wondering if those men wearing fatigues waiting to board my plane were hijackers. The pain in my ears as the plane descended. Hearing Danish spoken over the airport loud speaker.
June 16, 1981, Airport in Denmark Dear folks, We are drinking orange juice in Denmark and waiting for the plane to Oslo. Ten hours is a long ride! Only two more hours of dark and I am sleepy. More soon. Love, Kris
I remember the marigolds and petunias in the window boxes of the apartments and houses everywhere we went. Walking up0 five flights, seventy steps to the apartment we stayed in. Looking out of the kitchen window at the grass, women hanging out wash and children playing in the yard below. Walking, walking and more walking.
June 17, 1981 Wednesday, Oslo, Norway Dear Jim, We are staying with the lady poet that I met in Chicago. She gave me 2,000 koner ($400) in the bank here. Jilo and I walked all over and never got lost. Everyone does speak English so far. Women wear backpacks instead of carrying purses. Tomorrow the three of us will take a train to Trondjem – a seven hour ride, where we’ll stay in a youth hostel until Monday. I miss you. Love, Kris.
I remember taking the train to Trondjem. How at one point, everybody (except us) got up and turned their seats around to face the opposite direction. How tired we got of the bread and salami and bread and salami and bread and salami, we had packed to eat. Mistakenly jumping off of the train before it pulled all the way into the station and then having to jump over the wires and cables to get to the station.
June 19, 1981, Dombas Norway Dear Jim, We are staying in a valley surrounded by snow capped mountains tonight. We walked a mile or more from the train station to the hostel with our backpacks. Was I glad not to have a suitcase! Love Kris.
I remember not being afraid to walk around at any time of the day or night. The long days. At midnight it was dusk. Riding the train through glacial mountains. How low the clouds were. Seeing a waterfall in the mountains. Gudbrunsdal Valley. How hard it is to strain to catch a work you understand in a new language. How it is even harder to come up with one and say it. My discomfort at entering the World War II Museum of Resistance and being greeted in, surprise, Norwegian by the welcomers. How they saw my expression and tried French then, to my relief, English.
June 21, 1981, Monday, Dombas, Norway – journal entry.
Jilo and I walked around Dombas in the morning. There was a field full of the biggest, bright yellow dandelions I have ever seen. Someone was growing tomatoes under plastic covers…there were bus loads of middle-aged German tourists. Can’t help wonder what they were doing during WWII.
June 23, 1981. Wednesday. Oslo, Norway – journal entry.
A warm sunny day. Today we went out to Blinern University on the trikk (subway). Took a tour of the campus. Met a friend of Sister Peg’s for lunch in the cafeteria, Liv. She has a research fellowship here. Is married and has an almost two year old son, Mangus. She had taught a few years in Chicago. Had read and seen “The Women’s Room” on TV recently. Especially remembered the part where the woman is trying to quiet the two children and put them to sleep and the husband staggers out going to his mother’s where he can “get some sleep.” She said the wife should have thrown one of the babies at him.
We walked home, a half-hour, pleasant walk through a camomile covered field. At dinner preparation time (Jilo cooked) we blew the stove fuse and couldn’t figure out how to change it so had to eat cold leftovers.
Then we caught the trikk to another friend of Sister Peg’s. She lived in an apartment made from the second floor of her parents’ house. She taught English to adults and Norwegian emigrant children. She also had seen “Women’s Room” and liked it, although she said, it didn’t deal with the problems of her generation. She told us about the social discrimination against emigrants, poor people on the east side of Oslo (where the tour buses never go) and different dialects in Oslo and having her passport stolen from a basket she carried in the store. Those things didn’t used to happen, she said. She had been going to Poland. There was a candle on her table and along with wine, coffee, chocolates, nuts, coffee cake, Christmas cake, butter and goat cheese. Jilo drank solo (grape pop) She gave Jilo a snowflake pin and showed her a bunch of English books. One poetry book included the poem “Give you son forty licks, beat him when he sneezes.” She told us how she used to drag her younger sisters around by their feet when she was left in charge and they would act up.
I remember watching Ethiopians playing soccer in the field of camomile. Celebrating Jilo’s birthday in the mountains with whipped cream topped apple cake. The Folk Museums with old, old houses, stave churches and guides dressed in national costume. The festival day at school with the fiddler father, singing mother and dancing daughter. How they seemed to really be enjoying themselves. Eating lefse, roumergroten, flat brod and brown goat cheese, Jilo walking and riding the trikk all over Oslo, by herself, not speaking Norwegian and never getting lost or having any trouble.
June 29, 1981, Monday, Oslo – journal entry.
Today began cloudy and rainy but ended up nice and sunny. Met a Californian in the laundry room. A student from last year passing through, doing her clothes and reading Don Juan. Trying to lose her past. She asked if I’d found rules to live by. I told her my sister had. She also mentioned the fox in “The Little prince” and being responsible for what you love.
I remember the children’s party. Organized by a Mexican married to a Norwegian and a Bulgarian. The kids tossing balloons around. The Bulgarian complaining about her young chuildren catching colds so often at day care and balancing the children, her ex-husband and job. The Mexican singing “Las Mañanitas” for the son of a Norwegian woman who worked in the kitchen. Hearing the Royal British Wedding on television in another room while I washed clothes.
July 3, 1981, Friday. Oslo – journal entry.
Started out a very sunny, warm day until after lunch, ended up being cold and rainy. Jilo and I went with some students to the theatre. Before the play started a tall man came up and said that he should have written a synopsis and did I know the story? Then he started telling it to me. A fairy tale about a princess, a would be prince who had to get three feathers of a dragon to win her. Very good…I even understood a few words. The theater was old and big. We had to to to a small room up in the top or the play. Afterwards we went in the cold rain to a kiosk and got sausages, french fries and ice cream. We had agreed to talk only in Norwegian. Whew! I was cold with a dress, bare legs and sandals. But a good evening and it’s nice to be back in the room and warm!
July 2, 1981, Oslo Dear Ayanna, This morning the Norwegian woman who cleans my room, washed the floor and was speaking Norwegian to me about my flower, but I couldn’t understand what she meant. I guess I have to study harder. Love, Mom.
I remember realizing that the woman had put a saucer under the plant for me. Walking to the park past a mental hospital. The man people told me had been brilliant who stepped from one square to another square for hours at a time all day long when they let him out of the hospital. Seeing topless sun bathers. Vigelandsparken Sculpture Park with nude statues of all stages of life but, strangely I thought, no pregnant woman. The garden section, blocks and blocks of tiny houses for drinking coffee and eating cakes, surrounded by flower and vegetable gardens of those who lived in apartments. The strange feeling of living where Nazi soldiers had lived when they occupied Norway. Hearing my mother’s laugh coming from a group of students gathered on the steps below my window. Watching day by day as a young man worked on repairing the stairs…the girl that came and watched him, talked to him. just wanted to be with him.
July 19, 1981 Lillehammer, Norway Dear Jim, We did get out alive from Sigrid Undset’s bed and house. It was very strange. Reminded me of one of those Public TV mysteries where suspecting travelers are taken in and treated kindly by weird folk who later murder them in their beds. I discovered how Sigrid Undset wrote a Nobel Prizewinning novel “while raising six children.” She left the two step-daughters in Oslo and moved to Lillehammer with her two young sons and a nursemaid. There she wrote the first book of “Kristin Lavernsdatter.” She was tired after this because she had to keep interrupting her work to cook, clean, etc., so she brought tow more old houses. One small one for her husband (an artist) to paint in when he came out from Oslo and one for herself to work in. It is this one that we slept in and it is connected to the original house by an added on corridor. She also hired several maids and a cook., in addition to the nursemaid. She then left the kids and the servants in the original house and proceeded to write her masterpieces. She later had a third child and for many years later served as a foster mother to two Finnish war orphans…Her daughter-in-law, Christianna, was odd but very talkative and nice to us. She gave me two children’s books by Sigrid Undset (in Norwegian) and she got her young neighbor to drive us out to Undset’s grave about 15 miles away. There was a weird little man, about her age who she referred to as “the young man.” He tried to be pleasant, spoke no English and was always leaping around smiling. One time he was supposed to open a bottle of wine and he couldn’t find the corkscrew. He kept popping into the room and finally she sailed out after him. I expected to hear a loud smack as she boxed his ears, but she found the corkscrew and opened it. I could understand a lot of the Norwegian they spoke and that was encouraging. I had given up hope. Love, Kris
I remember how awful it felt to be back in school studying Norwegian and how much I felt I was missing by sitting in the classroom when real Norwegians were all about talking real Norwegian and wonder still why I kept going to class.
July 22, 1981 – journal entry.
Homework very hard. Feel overwhelmed by busy work. Decided to skip class tomorrow and go on field trip with another class. Miss Jim. Interviewed by the newspaper, Aftenposten. Very poor English by reporter, better by photographer, nonexistent Norwegian by moi. Rather embarrassing. Jilo got us some Norwegian deodorant. It doesn’t work a bit.
I remember the lady from Denmark who sat next to us on the plane ride home and talked about how bad things were getting, she had to lock her doors now when she left her house, not like the old days. How dirty everything looked when we got back to Chicago and how good it was to see my family and eat home-cooked food again.
It is probably Sunday, because my mother is still in her bathrobe. And who reads the Saturday paper so avidly? I think the bathrobe was light pink, but I’m not sure. The couch was an old one that my mother brought from Sally and Ivy’s mother when we lived on Calvert. They moved out to Southfield, near the zoo, and bought new furniture. I remember going to visit once and hearing the lions roar.
