Gimlé

The aurora borealis is strong here tonight.

The sky is covered.

From horizon to horizon.

Like glittering waves in the sky itself.

And the stars are the glittering pebbles just under the surface, on the dark rocky beach covered by shallow water.

I’ve just returned from my grandmother’s annual Christmas gathering in Kópavogur.

Yesterday (the 25th) I was at my Dad and his wife’s do here in Garðabær.

Today’s do was for my Dad’s family. Yesterday’s do was my Dad’s wife’s family.

The contrast between the families is noticable.

Not that one’s nicer than the other. Nothing like that. It’s like when you sit in a bean bag for a while. You leave a groove.

My Dad’s new in-laws is a seat that doesn’t have a groove for me.

Not that they wouldn’t make some space. Lovely people. But becoming a new member of a famly like that is hard work, takes time.

And it requires you to be there.

But neither me nor my sister live in Iceland anymore. And won’t for the next few years.

Which leaves me only with a few precious moments to even connect the faces to the names in her family. And less time to get to know them as a part of their family.

But that is exactly what my Dad has done, and a very remarkable job he’s done as well.

The proof was in the Christmas cards.

My—I suppose I should call her my step-mother or something, like I tend to refer to my mother’s partner as my step-dad—she has a tradition in her family.

On Christmas Eve, the main day here in Iceland, she curls up in the sofa with her kids, and the three of them open up and read all of their Christmas Cards.

Of course, her son, the same age as me, has just bought a small flat with his girlfriend (just about the nicest couple I’ve met, and I’ve met a lot of people) so he’s not partaking in that tradition anymore. Leaving just my Dad, his wife, and her daughter (who is almost the same age as my sister, strangely enough).

This year I was there as well.

It was nice, to hear my dad, his wife and her daughter referred to as a family, as a whole so many times, on so many cards.

But in a strange way it only hammered in that my Dad has formed a new family here. A fully functional whole that everybody acknowledges, knows and loves.

It’s different from what happened on my mother’s side. I got to know her partner and his kids very well before I moved.

His family is much smaller as well.

My Dad has formed a fully functional family unit.

A new whole.

Almost as if I had never been a part of his life.

Of course I realise that that is not true. Not even remotely.

I’ve always been a very family-oriented person. When I lived here in Iceland I used to see my grandmother almost every week. My cousins, aunts and uncles populate a large proportion of my social world.

But this makes me think about what you can lose when you move away from your family.

It also makes me think about how much more of a family oriented culture Iceland is, than the English one, which focusses almost exclusively on the tiny unit of a married couple plus kids.

I’m not a part of my relatives’ regular life anymore. Not like I was.

I guess that’s just something to get used to.

Baldur Bjarnason.
Garðabær, Iceland.