We speak "Dad"

Capturing the history and memories

My Dad’s Nordic family.

Luke and I joke
that we “speak Dad”.
My mother
corrected him
constantly
and apologized to others
saying “he’s first generation”.
His father Ake Kristensson
became Okee Christenson
at Ellis Island
when he arrived from Sweden
carrying less than $50.
Told to wait before becoming a citizen
so he wouldn’t be forced to fight
in the impending war.
But Okee wanted to fight for his new home.
He helped his fellow soldiers
write home in English
his second language,
their first.
Dad and his siblings
were called half-breeds
because of a Norwegian blue-eyed mother
and a Swedish blue-eyed father.
How different could they be?
How different are any of us?
The adults spoke
a mixture of Nordic tongues
my Dad and his siblings
never learned.
A multilingual house for one generation,
but not the next.
My Dad’s English
was never “corrected”
or “refined”
as my mother’s was.
Many words
and pronunciations
are his own.
Often my Dad says, 
“I’m going to do thing.”
Luke and I usually just know
what he means
because we speak Dad.

If you gave me a list of 100 sentences to put in order of which ones I could possibly hear my retired Teamster Dad utter, this one would be below the list:

“Did I tell you about my pen pal at Lowell?”

My Dad didn’t even like to leave us a note and only signed the cards after my Mom’s stroke.

One time my postmaster uncle teased my Dad. “You’ve really never written Shelley a love letter?” My mother confirmed that truth.

The next day on the grocery pad in the kitchen she found

Shelley,

Hi.

This is your letter.

Love,

Dave

She showed everyone.

So while visiting the nursing home today I was flabbergasted to learn he has a pen pal at his elementary alma mater.

I write you a letter every week Dad. You don’t answer them.

He just laughed and said, “Well, a lady comes in and does the writing. I just tell her something to say.”

I asked if he told his pen pal that he went to Lowell.

”Yes! I told her I went there in the ‘50s.”

My mostly mute teenager finally spoke. “We’re studying the ‘50s in history Boompa.”

My Dad laughed and continued. “Did you know before Lowell was built in the 1920s it was called Circus Hill? I told my pen pal that too.”

I hope Lowell realizes and archives the history their letter writing lessons are unearthing. My Dad knows what most businesses, buildings and roads on Madison’s east side were two, three, four versions ago. I have to often remind him that I do not remember when that restaurant was a gas station because it was before I was born.

But I do remember the stories you tell me, Dad.