Constitution Day Trauma
This one is tricky in English, but I'll try
(Reposting an oldie from the blog)
The 17th of May is Norway’s Constitution Day. It’s a big deal. Like the 4th of July on steroids. We dress up in national costumes and our Sunday best. We watch parades. We eat as much ice cream and hot dogs as we can.
I am really beginning to notice though how we are in this kind of ‘in between’ phase of our lives. No grade school children to accompany to the parade, no busy school band breakfasts, nobody that has to be transported downtown for the big afternoon parade so they can march with their football/capoeira/diving club teams. Just a relatively peaceful morning, where the two youngest teens wander off in their suits and ties, and whom we don’t see again for hours. A short walk with the dog down to Madlaveien to watch the childrens’ neighborhood parade, and then a pleasant hour or so over a cup of herbal tea at Jeanette and Jan’s. Then home to prepare some more food for the evening’s planned family gathering, some reading, a little tv to watch highlights from the much bigger parade in Oslo, a nap – and then the slight invasion of grown kids, in-laws and nieces and nephews and such. Eat a little too much, and then just hang out with friends and family.
At Jeanette’s we talked about past 17th of May celebrations, and of course I had to relate my very first and very traumatic 17th of May in Norway.
I can laugh about it now, but just thinking about it still makes me cry.
I was 8 years old, and in 2nd grade (back then Norwegian kids started school at 7 years old, it has since changed to 6) at Slemdal Skole in Oslo and I was an aspiring clarinet player in the school’s marching band. I had been in Norway for just over six months, and had learned a little Norwegian. Everyone was talking about this ‘TOG’ we were supposed to take on the 17th of May and how amazing it would be. Little did I know that the word ‘tog’ not only means train, but also parade… I remember being concerned that I had to wear dark green trousers instead of the dark navy that were actually the uniform colors, because that was all I had – but that was nothing compared to the awful experience the children’s parade turned out to be.
I showed up at school on the morning of the 17th as I had been told, and took the electric tram with the rest of the school and the marching band to downtown Oslo. After a long and for me completely non-sensical period of getting all the schools and bands in the right marching order, we started walking. And we walked, and walked and walked. The children’s parade in Oslo is super long (at least for en eight year old).
It starts at the central train station, up the whole of Karl Johan Boulevard, past the Royal Palace, and then is dissolved behind the palace at the start of Parkveien. I thought the tram ride we took from school was the ‘tog’ and wasn’t all that impressed, but I started to get really worried when I saw the enormous throngs of people all over downtown Oslo – thousands and thousands of them – as we moved further and further away from the starting point. I had no idea where my parents were, I didn’t know how far we were going, or if I would ever find my way back to the tram station. It was very hot, and the further up Karl Johan we marched, the more the tears streamed down my face. I cried and cried, and no one noticed at all. When the parade finally dissolved, I just stood there howling in the middle of lots of strangers, until my parents, who of course knew exactly when and where they were supposed to pick me up, arrived on the scene and saved me from my terrifying ordeal.
This episode probably also explains my irrational fear of reading Paddington Bear books. He was constantly ‘losing’ his people and getting into trouble all alone. Couldn’t he just stay put with his family? Sigh.