Mormor watched the girls at the house while I took Trine to Nyborg for an elective — ie, non-serious, non-Behcet’s, everything’s fine, simmer down — surgery today. The irony of the city’s name (Nyborg very literally means “Newcastle”) only just struck me now as I wrote it down in an English sentence. While Trine was under the knife, I spent an hour strolling about the town, and some of that time was spent admiring — no, not admiring, let’s call it “glancing appreciatively” at — the castle from which the town presumably derives its name. I don’t want outgoing links in this blog, since they can be traced back and could inadvertently make this blog publicly accessible, but you can search “nyborg castle” from Google and have a look for yourself.
You’ll find this particular “new castle” dates from at least 1193.
I wandered by a church that was erected in the 1580s. Think of it… if the “new castle” was already standing in 1193, a church from the late 16th century would have to be beyond postmodern.
(For most of my visit to Nyborg, I was sitting in our car in the hospital parking lot using my laptop on a wireless internet connection taking virtual driver’s ed courses. I liked the juxtaposition of that.)
Anyway.
We got home around four-thirty and Trine limped into the house while I ran in and out unloading the car. I was finishing some stuff deep in the bowels of the house when I heard Trine call inquisitively from the living room, “Uh… Greg…?”
“Be right there!” I shouted.
I was still busy unloading this and arranging that.
“Daddy! Daddy!” Molli Malou called after me excitedly, also from the living room.
“Ten secs!” I called back.
Suddenly Mormor was beside me in the hallway.
“I thought she’d been doing it all along,” she said in Danish. “I didn’t know. But Molli Malou said she taught her.”
“Okay,” I said. I had no idea what she was talking about. I wasn’t being dismissive, just distracted. It had been a long ride and I’d gulped down about a liter of Diet Coke on the road: I just needed some private time in the little room there.
By the time I got to the living room I was too late, but the scene was reprised for me a few moments later: Maddie is now walking with her walk-wagons.
Molli Malou taught her how today.
I don’t know more than that — no idea how she taught her, and kind of don’t want to know: I love the idea that Mormor assumed this was just a game Molli Malou and Maddie had been playing for weeks, when in fact she was witnessing Maddie’s first actual steps.
She’s obviously not very good at it, and can only go in straight lines until the particular wagon she’s using strikes an obstacle, at which point she shrieks in frustration, begins to cry, and lowers herself gingerly back to all fours.
But damned if she didn’t make her first strides today. . . while her mother and father were the farthest they’ve been from her in her entire life.
But while her sister was right by her side.
Couldn’t get decent pictures or video tonight, but I’ll get some this weekend and fold them into the other videos I’ve promised recently. And the Halloween pics.
Just wanted it down for the record, though: Maddie’s goin’ mobile.
And now the fun begins.