Furðufó
Like I began telling you in my previous two posts; In 2009 I was very sick so I spent a lot of time on the sofa. While in that state I desided to illustrate some of the golden moments and sayings I had written dow from my then 4 years old daughter. I am going to show you samples from that book in few posts here on Steemit. I know that many of the funny things are because of how the language rimes or is put together but it can be hard to deliver that in an English translation as this is written originally in Icelandic. But I am going to try my best.
I hope you enjoy this third and last part!
M.
Where in the heavens name was Una before she was born?
Some day´s the golden comments just come like a running tap water.
While we the parents sat in living room one evening watching the election tv Una sat on the floor sucking her pacifier on top of her new crocodile water-ring. She is thinking and staring out in the blue. Then she becomes very grave even sorrowful and says with her babyish pacifier voice. "When I will be grown up you will die.
We reply comforting "No, no dear Una, we won´t die until you will be grown up for a long time and maybe even a mother and a grandmother. Then we point at various samples in the family for example her own grate grandparents.
Then she becomes happy again.
-I´m going to have ten baby´s she sais and puts all her fingers up in the air. Not just have a single child like I am. (O,o! This could be a pressure on us the parents to give her a younger sibling. Well she has two siblings that are 14 and 21 years older then she so she feels like an only child.)
Later when we are lying in bed reading "Basil the private investigator" and I point at the big clock tower and tell her that this building is called Big Ben, she turns to me and ask´s me "But mommy what´s the tower in Paris in the book about the royal cats called?
-It´s called the Effel tower.
-Oh yes of course the Effel tower.
I then tell her that I have actually been to the Effel tower.
She answers happy and secure with her self. "yes I know, I was with you".
-No, I reply, you weren't even born when I went there.
-Oh! But then where was I ?
(This is a repeated discussion. Where was Una Guðbjörg before she was born?)
-I don´t know, "you just wern´t born yet at that time".
-Well, she said giggleing, "I was just in your tummy then".
-Yes maybe you were just a small egg in my tummy at that time or maybe you were just a free soul that didn´t have a body yet. I had not met your father even at that time, but then I met him and some years later (many years later) we made you.
Now Una becomes very happy and she said "Yes and then you two just drew a picture of me on a piece of paper and I just came out of your belly".
Well at this point I found my self compelled to try to describe in a simplified matter how the children are made. That long speech made her fall a sleep as she thought it was total bullshit. Because deep inside this little girl knows that she has always been around somewhere, with her mom in this world or in some other world.
The new tenant
The new tenant on the first floor is a 31 year old mail that has no children. Soon after he moved in Una wanted to go down stairs to play with his children. I told her that he didn´t have any children.
-Oh, but then he must have them in his tummy.
(Una got to draw this picture with her mom)
Kittens and puppys
Una was jumping around the house one day mumbling something. Her mother asked her what she was mumbling around. -Oh I´m just wishing.
-I see, and what are you wishing for darling?
-I´m just wishing for small kittens and puppies and one of the kittens will be very, very cute and is supposed to be named Cuddly.
-Well I said, I wouldn´t wish for a kitten because if we would have a kitten our old cat would probably move away from home. Just like when the former tenant on the first floor got a cat that was always bugging our cat. I always had to go out and search for her and then carry her home.
Una started to mumble again but her mother having super hearing could hear the mumbling.
"I wish for our old cat to move away from home".
Tea party in the middle of the night.
One winter evening during dinner Una asked her father; "Daddy do you remember when I woke up in the middle of the night and mommy took me to the kitchen and gave me tea, then you also woke up and came in the kitchen to join us?"
Her father had to think for a while and then he recalled the incident "Oh yes, I think this happened once". Una blinked her father with this irresistible glimpse in her eye and said "Shouldn´t we do this again tonight?"
What is easter?
Una was painting on the window with colord sour milk in her kindergarden one day when her mother came to pick her up so she was not eager to come home. (They do a lot of funny things at this kindergarden). I told her that she could paint at home as well. "But mom we don´t have any sour milk at home".
-No probably not but we have yogurt, I said.
Another little girl then said a bit snotty "I have easter yogurt at my home" (Easter yogurt is a sugared yogurt marketed during easter).
Una looked contemplative at her litle friend and asked "Does it have easter in it"?
Well few days later I baughed some easter yogurt for the little lady and now again with the can in front of her she asked me "Does it have easter in it?"
I almost didn´t know what to answer but who know´s maybe it had easter in it after all :)
Rebirths and death
One evening when we had our quality time talking and cuddling in bed before sleep Una started to talk about the old days. And like so many times before she told me that in the old times even though not born yet she still was in my tummy.
I then asked her "Una do you think we get reborn? (Reborn in icelandic is endur-fædd where "endur" stands for "re" and "fædd" means born. "Endur" is also the word for "ducks")
So Una laughs very hard and answers "No mommy, hahahahaha, we aren´t born out of an egg, hahahahha, ducks are borne out of an egg, haha" Then we just laughed together of this stupid question of mine :)
After a while I told her that I was actually wondering if we were born again in a different body after we die. Then she laughed again hard and said "No mommy, we newer die. My grandmother is very old and she´s isn´t even dead". So agin we both lauhed of these stupid questions of mine.
Karíus
Unas mother has a tattoo on her shoulder. The tattoo is a bit faded as it is twenty years old. The tatto depicts a humanized lion inside a triangle and it has a certain spiritual meaning for her mother. Once as so often Una is fiddling with the tattoo and painting around it with a dry brush. Her mother then ask´s her "Do you know what it is on the picture?"
-Yes of course, she says determent "it´s Karius".
-Karius? her mother reply´s a bit resentful. "Do you mean Karius the brother of Baktus? (An old children book by Thorbjörn Egner where the bakeries that make holes in the teeths are two troll like brothers named Karius and Baktus).
-Oh yes, Una says. It is him, I can see it very clearly. He has hair just like this.
The Christmas-cat
Just before Christmas when Una recently became three years old she told me that wolfs did not exist for real.
-Yes they do exist I told her.
-Oh, she said. Then where do they live.
-They live for example in America and probably in Canada and in more places.
-Oh I see! But what about the Christmas cat then? (The Christmas cat is an old Icelandic tail where the cat is some kind of a monster cat).
-The Christmas-cat is just a folk tail, I said without thinking. "It doesn´t exist".
Una was silent for a while but then she started laughing "Mommy you were just kidding, of coarse the Christmas cat exists, he lives with Grýla and Leppalúði (The parents of the Icelandic santaclauses) Hahahha, you were just kidding".
I have to admit that I was a bit embarrassed and said "Oh of course I was just kidding, I just forgot this" (Telling her that the Christmas cat didn´t exist I would have been admitting that the santas didn´t exist either) Then we both laughed of me being forgetful.
Someon has eaten a man
Once we were watching a program on National Geographic about findings of the supposedly grave of Jesus Krist. When the geologist opened a small stone coffin with a scull in it Una grasped "Someone has eaten a man!"
And they laughed a lot Una and her father when her mother told her that the baby Jesus has been sleeping in a animal food bowl of wood. (Well how are city kids supposed to understand the word "jata" or manger).
Good night my sweet Una and may God be with you
When we go to sleep it´s like Una´s mind is wide open. Then she often starts to think about the spiritual and out of it comes interesting conversations and big questions.
-Good night my darling Una, sleep tight, dream well and may God be with you.
The girl says good night as well and turns away. After a bit of silence in the dark you could here a small voice in the dark ask "Who is God?"
…
Good night my sweet Una sleep tight, dream well and may God be with you.
-Yes and Jesus, she adds.
-Yes and Jesus I say.
-Jesus is not up in the sky
-He isn´t?
-No, he was put on a kross.
-Oh you mean that, I say and out of it begins a long conversation about the Biblical story of Jesus and how he supposedly went up to the heaven and we wonder about spirit, body and soul.
-I am not a material, Una says.
-Your not? What are you then?
-I´m just skin and bones and stuff.
-Well isn´t that material? I ask her.
Then she added giggling "My soul is just somewhere under the bed hiding".
I never got an explanation of why her soul were hiding under the bed but after a bit of silence under the bed sheets she suddenly said "Víðir was so nice with his curls" (Víðir her big brother had just gotten a haircut and cut of his long afro curly hair).
We were laying in bed about to read Tinkerbell when her father came in to give a good nights kiss. Just before he closed the door he said "Good night my Una and may God be with you"
-God isn´t with me she shouted out after him.
-You don´t think so, I asked her?
-No he is up in the sky but I am down here.
-Are you sure about that, I said. I think God is everything that is good and beautiful and that´s why I think God can be surrounding us and within us. I think God is a spirit ruroounding us.
-No mother, she replied, God lives up in the clouds and he is just always sitting up there watching over us.
-Oh do you think so?
-Yes.
-And then how to you think he looks like?
-Oh he has this white jacket.
-A jacked?
-Well more like a whole sute.
-So does he have hands and fetes?
-Well at least hands.
-Is he a man or a woman?
-A man, she answers determent.
-How is his hair?
-I don´t know she sais after trying to visualize him. "But he newer comes down, he is just up there in the clouds watching owe the people. But he did not exist when the dinosaurs were on earth.
-Really?
-Nope, she sais, He just became after the humans became.
So there we have that. The man created God in his own image. Probably a long haired old grandpa in a white dress.
But when we finally were going to open the book about Tinkerbell Una cry´s out. "I miss the dinosaurs so much" I take a deep breath and try to visualize how our life on earth would be in praxis if we were surrounded by the dinosaurs. "Do you miss them as well mommy?" she asks me. I tell her bluntly that I have difficulty missing something I newer got to know and that I would be afraid that the Dinosourus Rex would just eat the humans. She thought that was funny.
-But mom the Sword-toothed lions..did they also have babys? The sword-toothed lion is a fabricated name of a sabre-toothed cat that was living in Europe in the beginning of the cro-magnon era.
-Yes my dear, they must have had baby´s.
-And the hyenas would then babysitting them, she added.
Now I started to think we had landed in some kind of a cross zone of the disappeared worlds. The pre historic times, mythology and Disney´s Lion king, but originally we were just going to read Tinkerbell. So I just opened the book and started reading. At the first page Una stopped the reading and said "The fairy´s dons´t exist mommy except in a different world. They exist only in the fairy´s world…"
And talking about fairies world, once Una was crying in the car but suddenly she asked me sobbing "Does the tooth fairy take the tears as well?"
After reading Tinkerbell:
-Shouldn't we put out the light my dear?
-No she said lingering her eyes back. "I will just put them out with my eyes".
Good night!
A page dedicated to tangle-mals.
Una Guðbjörg was once watching the news for the deaf and said "This person talk´s with her fingers because everybody is sleeping, so she wont wake the people up. I just talk like this with my fingers when I´m describing tangle-mals. (Then she tangled her fingers together).
In the beginning Una drew a simple scrabble on each page of a drawing book and gave everybody who wanted their own private tangle-mal. Later the tangle-mals started to evolve a bit. The first one here above is for example a tangle-mal related to a Mr. Messy but it has some kind of balls on it that Una say´s is important regarding to the tangles. The later tangle-mal has some kind of stripes as well but she say´s that certain people tend to get tangled in the tangles of this one. Perhaps it is emotionally tangled people :)
If Una has an elastic band or something long in her hands she tend to make a tangle out of it with her fingers and then she shows it off and says "Look how beautiful tangle-mal I made!"
When asked what a tangle-mal really is she answers "It´s jus an animal that is all tangled up".
A lullaby about a spider.
My darling little spider
stay with me
don´t leave me
I hope the cat won´t get you
because then I will get sad
I hope the dog won´t get you
I hope you have escaped.
A lullaby about a cat
My darling little cat
stay with me
don´t leave me
I hope the spider won´t get you
because then I will get sad
I hope the dog won´t get you
I hope you have escaped.
Una Guðbjörg Bragadóttir 3 years old
25.05 2009
If you want to check out the first two samples of Furðufó here are the links:
https://steemit.com/art/@mariap/furdufo-an-illustrated-book-i-made-part-2
https://steemit.com/art/@mariap/furdufo-an-illustrated-book-i-made-part-1