CHAPTER SEVEN: THE FUTURE

Greg missed his Grandma. She had been the rock in his life. She was there the day his parents had brought him home from the hospital and stayed until he was 23, when she lost her battle with cancer.

She was the one who held him on her lap telling him all the Norwegian fairy tales and read him books, both in English and Norwegian. She was the one who patched his bleeding knee when he had fallen off the neighbour boy's bicycle and not told his mother about it so that he would not get into trouble. She was the one a heart-broken fifteen year old had come to when he didn't know where he belonged. He didn't know whether he liked boys or girls.

It was she that then told him: "Listen to me, gutten min, you are perfect! God made you and he made you in his image. He gave you the feelings you have, whether it is for girls or for boys. It is God who has made you this way and he wanted you this way. Always remember that you are perfect the way he made you and there is nothing wrong with that. You are good the way you are, do you understand?"

He had only nodded.

She had taken him by his chin and lifted his eyes up to meet hers. "Tell me," she said,"that you understand."

"I do."

"Say it… you are good the way you are."

"I am good the way I am."

"That's right, my boy. You are. And I love you!"

Greg would always regret that he wasn't there when she died, but he knew she would have understood. He had come back for the funeral and cried for two days straight before he pulled himself together and moved on. He knew she had wanted him to live and not be held back by grief.

The first year after her death was particularly hard; the first of everything without her; the first Easter, his birthday, her birthday… the first Christmas without her making Christmas dinner. That Christmas his mother had cried in the kitchen when making the food. She hadn't said a word about it, and he hadn't made a fuss over it. He knew why she did it and let her grieve in peace.

They slowly learned to live without her, but they often took out her picture to look at.

Grandpa Hojem sat in his rocking chair looking at a picture of his late wife holding a newborn Lisbet in her arms. Her smile in the picture was warm, yet tired. His eye's shone with love when he waved his daughter over to give her a kiss on the cheek.

"I love you so much, sweetheart," he said in his raspy voice.

"Love you too Pappa," Lisbet said and gave him a kiss back.

Lisbet missed her mother every Christmas. Sure they had their share of fights through the years, but she had also been her rock. She didn't want to think what she would have done without her mother after Greg was born.

She had tried for so long to get pregnant and she had succeeded, many times. She just hadn't succeeded in staying pregnant. Time and time again she miscarried. She was so happy when she finally carried a child to full term. She was was in labor for hours and didn't want to take unnecessary drugs to ease the pain. She would ride it off. She eventually had to cave in and get an epidural, because the baby didn't seem to want to come. Hours turned into days and when the baby finally was born, it was no longer breathing. The placenta had loosened and the baby had been without oxygen for too long.

She had cried for weeks and months. She hadn't been able to walk outside the door and her mother had to force her to shower and eat. She was a mom, but she had no baby.

When she got pregnant again two years later, she was scared and happy at the same time. She knew this was her last chance. She was no spring chicken anymore and if she didn't succeed now, she would give up the idea of having children.

She was closely checked the entire pregnancy. The doctor wanted to keep a close eye on her due to her medical history and when she came close to full term even she started to breathe easier. They reassured her that there was no reason to believe the same thing would happen again.

When labour started early in the morning, they rushed to hospital. They didn't want to wait until it was shorter between the contractions, she wanted to know she was close to medical help should anything happen. Nothing happened for fourteen long hours, then everything suddenly happened at once. Monitors showed the baby's heartbeat was weakening and they were losing him. The dad was rushed out of the room, mom was given anaesthetic and an emergency c-section was done to get the baby out within just a few minutes. There was no time to lose and they started the operation as soon as the anaesthetics worked. Time was essential and a more aesthetic bikini line cut was out of question. They had to cut vertically to get to the baby fast.

She lost blood, so much blood, and the wound got infected.

For a few hours it looked like they would lose both mother and baby, but the baby was strong and did fine. The mother however was severely weakened. For days she fell in and out of consciousness and when she did come out of it, the wound would not heal. She was in no physical shape to take care of the baby she had longed for and for the first three months, it was her mother that took care of Greg while Michael took care of her. There was always a special bond between her mother and Greg and sometimes she felt left out.

Nick and Greg smiled at each other watching the love between father and daughter.

"It was at the end of the winter of forty four that Ninni told me the news," Grandpa said, "that she was pregnant. I wasn't too surprised, because I had been part of it, although we don't mention that."

He laughed at his daughter and continued.

"I'm not saying I didn't expect it but I thought we had played it safe. I knew there was a risk. I knew I shouldn't have taken the risk, but oh, I was so in love!"

He looked at the picture again and handed it to Nick to see.

Nick could see the resemblance of Lisbet in Ninni and he could clearly see where she had gotten her looks. She had the same crooked smile Greg had and he wondered how Greg would look holding a child of his own in his embrace. They hadn't talked about children and he hadn't made up his mind about it on his own either. For now, being with Greg was enough; anything more than that would be a bonus.

"I knew Ninni was meant for me," Grandpa continued while Nick passed the picture to Greg, "I was taken by her from the minute I saw her, and I never grew tired of her. Everyone in the family knows that we didn't always have the calmest marriage." The entire Sanders family laughed at that statement, and Nick thought of all the stories Greg had told him of how his grandparents could fight quite loudly.

"It could be really heated in many ways, but we don't mention that, but through it all we loved each other. Ninni was the best mother there ever was. She was brilliant with Lisbet as a child and when Greg was born and she had a second chance to care for a child, she embraced the role as Nana. The two of you were her pride."

Raising a child during wartime wasn't easy. There were no food or clothes and the war was still raging in the country. Moreover, I was known as a Nazi-sympathizer, so as far as other people knew, my child would be a Nazi-child. It would be an outcast and a subject to spit on. I couldn't let that happen. I was in deep trouble and I had no idea what to do.

For a few long and troublesome weeks, I tried to act strong for Ninni, although she saw through me as always. She was also very smart, so she knew exactly what I was thinking. She didn't confront me, she knew I needed time to think for myself, but she did go to her father.

He was the one that came up with the plan that we should board a ship to America and start a new life there. He would even buy the tickets and give us a little starting capital. He wanted us to have a life where we didn't have to fight rumors of being traitors and where our child could grow up without the stigma. It wasn't an easy decision to make. I had earlier made decisions based on my need to be in Oslo to take care of my sister and now I had to decide whether or not to leave her.

"You have another family now," my father reminded me, "your obligation is to your unborn child."

I couldn't have made the decision if it weren't that Ninni's family took their responsibility as an extended family very seriously. They made a promise to look after Liv and they did.

When my parents were too old to look after Liv, it was Anders and his wife that took her in and cared for her until the day she died at the age of 27.

So we boarded the ship the last weekend of June, 6 weeks after the peace and a couple of hours after our hasty marriage at the city hall. We had witnessed a victorious Norway celebrating our national day for the first time in five years. We had seen Norwegian flags being raised again and people singing our national anthem.

But we had also seen people cutting off the tyskertøser's hair and calling them whores.

Determined to have a fresh start, without the stigma hanging over our head, we decided to say we left because I had gotten her pregnant before we were married.

We were lucky. We could leave and have a fresh start. My parents though would never, as long as they lived, clear their names and some people looked at them the wrong way for what they thought their son had done.

We brought a chest with our most valued belongings and we set off to our new home land.

Little did we know that the ship we passed on the open sea was carrying the King and Queen returning to Norway. They returned to rebuild a land in ruins, while we left to build a new life far away.

Our paths crossed that night at sea and though we settled and did our best to grow roots for our child in our new land, we never forgot the land we left. The land we fought for and lost despite our victory.

gutten min my boy

- THE END -