Mom says "du" to the Pastor

The Pastor insisted that all of us students had to be in church on Sunday. If someone missed a Sunday, he always singled them out at the next confirmation meeting and asked, "Why weren't you in church?" One time a boy stood up and said, "I had to stay home and cut wood." The Pastor said, "Well, Jesus was a carpenter." We thought this was a funny answer because usually no excuse was valid except for sickness or something like that in the family.

When it came time to go to church, I usually had someone with me but one time, I was the only Boberg who was at church. I've told you before how I always wanted to be as good and as big and as clever as Sara. There were times when I tried to be smarter than her, so on this one Sunday I came home from church and told Sara, "I said du to the Pastor today. " Her eyes got wide and Oh, she was horrified: "What did he say?!" I was so pleased to have surprised her and felt really proud and clever when I said, "It was in the liturgy."

So now let me go back and explain this some. In Swedish, there are different kinds of "you;" there are formal words like ni and informal ones du and dig. And in those days, a kid would never say du to a grown-up. You had to call them Mr. or Mrs. or their title and in any kind of conversation, it would be up to the person who had the most education or age or was however a little higher up on the scale, it was up to that person to suggest to the lower person, "Can't we say du?" Otherwise, it just wasn't done. And here I had told Sara that I had said du to the Pastor. And I hadn't gotten in trouble. My trick was that as part of the liturgy, the Pastor said, "Herren vara med eder" and the whole congregation responds, "Med dig vara ock Herran." And dig is a form of du. This is the same as when we say in English, "The Lord be with you" and the congregation

Mom and Moster Sara in Mom's kitchen in March 1997.

answers, "And also with you." Of course, I don't remember anything else about that service, not the sermon or the scriptures because I was so busy thinking about the joke I was going to tell Sara when I got home!

That reminds me of one other time when I thought I was clever. One spring morning Dad said, "Now, as much as you know it kids, you cannot go across the lake anymore. The ice is getting too loose around the edges." As I was riding home from confirmation, I kept thinking about what Dad had said. When I got home, I said to Sara, "I rode across the lake today." She said, "You are crazy! Dad just told us we can't do that anymore!" I grinned and said, "Well, I rode across the bridge." Oh I thought I was so smart.