SHARON DILWORTH
LIP SERVICE RESUME
Garrin Gustave Sax. Norwegian. Both sides of the family. His paternal grandmother, Farmor, used to complain that there was no
record of her birth. It wasn't not knowing the date that bothered
her -she stayed sixty-two for ten years- as much as not knowing
where she had been born that made her angry. "Place," Farmor
always said, "is essential to a family." She thought she might have
been born in Hammerfest, the same fishing town where she grew
up, but a house fire had destroyed all family records and Farmor
lived her whole life with this uncertainty. Garrin was fascinated
with the stories of the fire and Farmor was happy to recount the
incident whenever he asked about it. For some reason Garrin never
understood, Farmor blamed the fire on the light bulbs in the family
living room.
"Hammerfest was the first town in Norway to get electricity,"
Farmor explained to Garrin. "People had a difficult time with it."
"How can you have a hard time with light?" Garrin asked. He
went over to the wall and flicked the light switch on and off. It was
evening and the sun had stopped making shadows on Farmor's bare
white walls.
"They used it too much," Farmor said. "Especially in the winter
when it stays dark for two months. No one even knew what a fuse
box was back then. They didn't know that the wiring had to be
insulated."
Garrin closed his eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like
to live without the sun.
"But it was summer when I stood on those rocks and watched my
parents pour buckets of water on our house," Farmor said. "I
remember I was barefoot and the midnight tide kept washing up
cod. A whole school of lost cod. They were dead. Cold and dead up
to my ankles."
"What about the ocean?" Garrin asked. It was getting dark out
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