Dad, I’ve missed you

There’s a question that has followed me through almost my entire life:

Where is my dad?

I was three years old when I came to a foster home.

I’m 58 today, so it’s been 55 years since then. I don’t have many memories from that time. But one of them remains very clear.

I was wearing a blue and white sailor suit. In my hand I carried a mesh bag like the ones they used to have for footballs. Inside it were my little cars.

It’s a strange image to carry with you through life.

A little boy with his little cars in a mesh bag, on his way into a home that would become his childhood.

I didn’t know then what awaited me.

I didn’t know that that home would become a place where I would learn to be afraid.

I didn’t know that I would hide to avoid being beaten.

I didn’t know I would lie in bed and cry myself to sleep.

And most of all, I didn’t know that the father I so desperately longed for would never come.

I was waiting for my hero

My biological father wasn’t in my life.

At first, he didn’t even want to admit that he was my father.

As an adult, I can understand that a person can carry things that others don’t know. Fear. Shame. Bad decisions. Circumstances. A life that may not have turned out the way you imagined.

But a child doesn’t understand that.

A child thinks differently.

I had a father somewhere.

And in my world, he was my hero.

I dreamed several times during my childhood that he would come and get me.

That he would suddenly stand there.

That he would take me away.

That he would see what was happening and say:

”That’s enough. You’re going to come with me.”

That was my fantasy about the rescue.

And maybe it was that fantasy that gave me the strength to continue.

Because somewhere inside me there was a thought that this was not how life was supposed to be.

My dad would come.

One day someone would come and get me.

Learning to be invisible

I still remember some of what happened.

I remember once when I was beaten in the bathroom with a carpet whip.

I remember the blood on the tiles.

I remember the blood in the bathtub.

And I remember that I had to wash it off myself.

It is a memory that still remains with me.

I also remember how on another occasion I crawled deep under the sloping ceiling of the house, into a space where there was a wardrobe.

They couldn’t get to me there.

I could hide there.

I learned early on to become as small and invisible as possible.

In the morning I lay in bed and listened.

I listened to their voices.

I listened to their tone.

I tried to understand what mood they were in before I dared to get up.

If they were irritated, I knew that I was at great risk of being beaten.

So I pawed around.

Tried not to be seen.

Tried not to be heard.

Tried not to do anything that might arouse their anger.

It may be difficult for someone who had a safe childhood to understand.

But for me it became normal.

I didn’t know anything else.

I thought all kids were like that.

I wasn’t allowed to play with other children after school.

I wasn’t allowed to bring friends home.

I wasn’t allowed to go to their birthday parties when I was invited.

I wasn’t allowed to have my own birthday parties.

I wasn’t allowed to play soccer during school breaks.

When I got home, my foster parents could check the bottoms of my shoes to see if they were green from the grass.

So I started taking my shoes off and playing in my socks.

After a while, they noticed it too.

Today, I can think about it and almost smile at the ingenuity of that little boy.

But it’s really sad.

Because that boy was just trying to be a kid.

I hardly met any other kids outside of school.

And because I didn’t know anything else, I thought for a long time that’s how life was supposed to be.

I thought that was how families worked.

Deep down, I probably knew something was wrong.

But I had nothing to compare it to.

”You’ll never amount to anything”

I was told that I would never amount to anything.

That I would become an alcoholic.

That I wasn’t worth anything.

Words like that can go deeper than punches.

A blow hurts when it hits.

Words can continue to hurt for decades.

I got no comfort.

No one to hold me when I was sad.

No one to tell me it would be okay.

So I cried myself to sleep.

And the next morning I started all over again.

A little boy needs a hero

A boy doesn’t need a perfect father.

He doesn’t need a father who can do everything.

He needs someone to look up to.

Someone he can think:

”When I grow up, I want to be like dad.”

But I didn’t have that kind of person.

There was nothing positive about my foster father that I wanted to emulate.

And maybe that’s why my biological father had such a big place in my imagination.

I had learned that he worked as a waiter.

When it came time to choose a high school, I wanted to be a waiter.

Maybe that was my way of getting closer to him.

To do something he had done.
But my foster parents forbade me from attending that school because it was 45 kilometers away. They wanted to be able to control me.

So I was forced to choose a different high school major in the city were we lived.

Once again, someone else was deciding my life.

Then I escaped.

When I was 17, I escaped from my foster parents.

That was the beginning of a different life.

I got in touch with my biological mother. Through her, I found out that I had half-siblings.

I thought they knew about me.

I thought that if they didn’t contact me, maybe they didn’t want anything to do with me.

Finally, I plucked up the courage to call my half-brother.

I said:

”Hi, my name is Christer. We have the same father, I guess.”

The phone went silent.

It was the kind of silence that says more than words.

Then I understood.

They didn’t know either.

I started searching

In 2000, I started looking for him.

I’ve been searching for over 25 years.

I’ve hoped.

I’ve waited.

I’ve imagined what it would feel like to find him.

For a long time, I thought it was just a matter of time.

Even when a TV show, Missing Without a Trace, tried to find him, I hoped it would succeed.

But they didn’t find him.

And in recent years I’ve come to understand that I may never know what happened.

It’s a special kind of grief.

Missing someone is hard.

But missing someone without knowing where they are is something else.

If I found out he was dead, of course it would hurt.

But at the same time, I would finally know something.

I would know that my search had come to an end.

But if he’s alive…

Then there’s still a chance.

Dad, I don’t want to ask why

If I were standing in front of him one day, I think the first thing I would say would be:

”Dad, I’ve missed you.”

Then I would hug him.

A long hug.

And I don’t think I would want to let him go.

I’ve thought a lot about what I would ask.

Why did you leave me?

Why didn’t you ever hear from me?

Did you think of me?

Did you know what happened to me?

But the older I get, the less interested I am in accusing him.

I want to understand.

I want to hear his story.

He was born in Hungary in 1937.

He fled his country in 1955 and ended up in a refugee camp in Austria before life finally brought him to Sweden.

There is a whole life there that I don’t know about.

I want to know what his childhood was like.

I want to know why he left Hungary.

I want to know what he experienced in Austria.

I want to know what it was like to come to Sweden.

I want to know what he dreamed about.

What he was afraid of.

Who he loved.

What he worked with.

How his life turned out.

And somewhere in all of this is the question I still carry:

What was it like for you to become my father?

I’m not angry with you

It may sound strange after everything I’ve told you.

But I’m not angry with him.

Not anymore.

I don’t know what happened.

I don’t know what circumstances made him disappear.

I don’t know if he ever tried to find me.

I don’t know if he’s carried guilt.

But sometimes I imagine him as an old man.

Maybe he’s sitting somewhere thinking back on his life.

Maybe he’s ashamed.

Maybe he’s thought of me many times but hasn’t dared to contact me after all these years.

Maybe he’s told himself it’s too late.

If that’s the case, I would like to say:

It’s not too late.

I don’t want an explanation in order to forgive.

I just want to see you.

Then I became a father myself

And here is perhaps the greatest sadness in my entire story.

When I held my own child for the first time, I didn’t just feel joy.

I felt shame.

I was ashamed of my childhood.

I was ashamed that I didn’t have a father.

I was ashamed that I didn’t have any good memories of what a father should be like.

Because how do you become a good father when you’ve never seen what a father does?

I’ve had difficulty with physical closeness.

Hugging my children.

Showing love with your body.

Just being close.

The same thing has been difficult in my relationship with my wife.

And I’ve felt guilty.
Just being close.

I have thought that a good father should be able to do that naturally.

I have sometimes felt like a bad father.

But somewhere I have begun to understand something.

I was not bad because I had not been taught.

I had never had a role model.

I had never experienced the safe touch.

I had never seen what love looked like in everyday life.

But I decided one thing

I would not be my foster father.

That was perhaps the most important decision I ever made.

My children would be allowed to have friends at home.

They would be allowed to sleep over at their friends’ houses.

They would be allowed to invite people over.

They would be allowed to play.

They would be allowed to have the childhood I had wanted for myself.

I could not give them my own childhood.

But I could try to give them the childhood I never had.

And maybe that’s also a kind of victory.

Because even though my foster father tried to teach me that I wouldn’t be anything, I still became something.

I became a father.

And I tried to do something different.

To the little boy

If I could travel back in time and sit next to the three-year-old boy with the blue and white sailor suit and the mesh bag with the little cars, I would say:

Hold on.

I know you’re scared.

I know you don’t understand why no one is coming to get you.

I know you think this is your whole life.

But it’s not.

You’re coming out of here.

You’ll survive.

You’ll grow up.

You’ll have children of your own.

And even though you will carry things from this time with you that hurt long after you leave the house, you will be able to choose what you do with what you have experienced.

You will not be able to change your childhood.

But you will be able to change what comes after.

And to you, Dad

I don’t know where you are.

I don’t know if you are alive.

I don’t know if you will ever read this.

But if you do, I want you to know one thing.

I have been looking for you for over 25 years.

Not because I hate you.

Not because I want to hold you accountable for everything that happened.

I have been looking for you because you are a part of my story.

I want to know who you were.

I want to know who you became.

I want to hear your story.

And I want to tell mine.

I want to tell you about the little boy in the blue and white sailor suit.

About the mesh bag with the little cars.

About the boy who hid under the sloping roof.

About the boy who listened to the voices of adults in the morning to determine if the day would be dangerous.

About the boy who dreamed that his father would come and save him.

I want to tell you that the boy survived.

And if I ever have to stand before you, I don’t want to start with an accusation.

I want to start with a hug.

And say:

Dad.

I’ve missed you.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve missed you.

But I’m not angry.

I’m just glad I finally got to meet you.

And then I’d like to listen.

Because after 58 years of questions, there’s really only one thing I want.

To hear your story.