As I’m sure most readers know, Olof works at home.  Though he’s explained it all to me many times, I’m not sure what, exactly, it is that he does.  I know the name of the company that he works for and that he writes software, but I’m pretty fuzzy on the details. What I see is that his days are made up of endless hours in front of the computers–he’s got a total geek set-up with two desktops and a laptop on his work station–interspersed with lengthy, closed-door phone calls (all too often right in the middle of our dinner, since most of his colleagues are in California, nine hours behind Swedish time).

He’s been working this job since before I moved to Sweden, so we’ve all come to take it for granted that he’s around most of the time, sometimes more available than others.  The kids mostly have a healthy respect for the phrase “Daddy’s working,” and know that if the office door is closed, he’s “really, really working,” and the door must. not. be. opened.  Even so, they have no better idea than I do what he does behind that closed door, and their ideas of what his job is are even more vague than my own.  Last week, when he and Tage were walking home from school, Tage told him, “I know what your job is;  you work with lights.”

“Lights?” Olof asked, bemused.

“Yes, you fix lights.”

When he recounted this exchange to me later, Olof and I tried to figure out where he’d gotten the light-fixing idea.  Was it because Olof changes the light bulbs around the house when they burn out?  Maybe, but that seems like a stretch, since it’s not even a once-a-month event, and surely Tage’s noticed that his dad spends a lot more time in the computer chair than he does screwing in light bulbs.  Olof did try to set him straight, saying that he works with computers, but I’m not sure he was convinced.  Maybe he thinks fixing lights is cooler.

I have to say, though, that neither lights nor computers is as cool as what Lydia came up with a few years ago at school, when asked what kind of work her dad did.  Unsure, but remembering that his company’s logo is a dolphin, she told her class that he worked with dolphins.  Not only that, but somehow she came to believe it herself, and was visibly underwhelmed when the truth came to light some months later.  And can you blame her?  I mean, who hasn’t wished her dad was a dolphin wrangler?