If I knew some clever thing in Norwegian, I'd put it here.

"We have relatives in Norway?" was my first reaction when Mom said she was going to go visit some who were visiting. Stupid, of course; I know very well that her mom is Norwegian; she likes lutefisk and pickled herring and still makes lefse at Christmastime.

"Can I go with?" was my second reaction. She said I could, and so yesterday I did.

I wonder what Inger-Lise and Kjell-Erik thought of us all. Nobody could say their names; they referred to them as "him" and "her." For instance, I'd say "She was clever enough to tell us her name was Lisa"--she pronounced it as if it were Lise, but the Minnesotans were definitely saying Lisa--"but he confused everybody with the way he pronounced his name, until he said, 'You can just call me Erik.' " They dealt with inane questions like my aunt asking Inger-Lise, "How do you pronounce your son's name?" (It's Jan. "Yon," of course, and they all congratulated themselves for not thinking it was "Jan.") And my mom asked Kjell-Erik if they speak English in Norway and seemed almost offended when he said they had no reason to.

They had pictures of their family, with the people's names written on them. Looking at those over my mom's shoulder, I asked her, "How come you didn't give me a cool Norwegian name?" She just said that she always liked "Holly," which much be true; I've heard it from her a lot. "Look, there's one named Mathias," she said, pointing. "Almost like our last name." "Yeah," I said. "Though I don't think our name is Norwegian." That's an understatement.

My annoying aunt and silent uncle--the only one of my mom's sisters who live in the state--were there. She was in one of her more impossible moods; trying to be the center of attention all the time or, worse, make everyone feel sorry for her. Typical for her, but especially extreme this time. I soon gave up talking to her. Even that didn't help much.

A couple of weeks ago my parents got a wedding invitation from people whose names they do not recognize. They've been asking around, to see if they know anyone who knows who this is, but to no avail. Yesterday Mom's cousin told her it's another cousin's daughter. It got us talking about weddings, and my mom said I'm not allowed to elope and deprive her of a wedding. I smiled. My aunt whipped around (having been listening intently though she appeared not to be, of course) and said, "Oh, is there a wedding I don't know about?!"

"No," I said. "We were just talking in general," Mom said calmly.

"Do you even have a boyfriend?" my aunt asked.

"Yeah ... " I said. She turned away again and, Mom said, seemed to complain about how I have a boyfriend and my brother has a girlfriend--and, Mom keeps saying, will be married in a year if she'd let him get away with it--and thus we might get married before her kids. Her kids don't date; they're understandably dysfunctional. Mom even told Dad this story as an example of familial ridiculosity (so to all my friends who didn't think my parents knew I had a boyfriend: ha!--she didn't flinch when she heard, or repeated it).

I heard Norwegian spoken yesterday, and thought it was really cool. I wish I could speak it, now. But I don't know anyone who knows it--even my grandma never learned, though her dad would sing and talk to his kids in Norwegian, because her mom didn't approve of it though she was Norwegian herself. And even the guy who knew it, and talked to those two in Norwegian, said he's losing it because he doesn't have anyone to talk to.