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She pulled back far enough that I could see her face. A red mark was starting to swell on her cheek, and there was a smear of blood in the corner of her mouth. Tears streaked down the sides of her face, but she smiled at me.
“I am, my brave little man,” she whispered, then kissed my forehead. “I want you to go to your room and choose your favorite toy – just one. I’ll come in and help you pack, and then we’re going to leave.”
I remember her voice on the phone, murmuring from her bedroom, as I tried to choose one stuffed animal. I remember it being the most agonizing choice I’d ever had to make.
Then my mother came into the room with a suitcase. She grabbed things out of my drawers and stuffed them inside the suitcase with her own clothes… and she let me take two stuffed animals. I can still remember my relief and joy.
Minutes later, a taxi pulled up. We got inside and went to the bus station –
And I never saw my father again.
8
We went to go live with my Aunt Ingrid in Gothenburg – a small, beautiful city on the Western side of Sweden, across the country from Stockholm.
I remember she met us at the bus station very early in the morning when it was still pitch black. I was half asleep as I got off the bus, but I remember Aunt Ingrid hugging my mother for a long, long time. When Aunt Ingrid knelt down and hugged me, there were tears on her cheeks. I remember she kissed the top of my head, then took my hand and asked about my stuffed animals as she led us to a waiting taxi.
Aunt Ingrid was smart and funny. I liked her because she always talked to me like an adult, even at four years old, but she also joked with me constantly.
We lived with her for six months in her tiny rented apartment. She and my mother slept in the same bed while I got the sofa. We moved out after my mother got a job and saved up enough money for us to get our own place. However, our new apartment was only a mile away from Aunt Ingrid’s, so we still ate dinner with her at least three nights a week. That continued until she got married and moved to the suburbs, but even then we ate Sunday dinner with her and her husband for years.
I liked her husband, but it felt weird calling him ‘uncle,’ so he let me call him by his first name, Leif. He and Aunt Ingrid never had children, so I didn’t have any cousins.
My mother never dated anyone. Ever. I think that after my father, she was through with men.
I only occasionally missed my father – mostly when I saw other boys playing sports with their dads. Even then, I mostly missed the idea of having a father rather than my actual father. Any time I thought of him, I pictured the enraged man standing over at me, stinking of liquor, his hand raised in the air to strike me. That usually cured any desire I had to get a new father.
The one thing that made me sad, though, was I always wanted a brother. I would have liked a couple of them, actually – and a little sister.
It was a feeling that never went away.
Growing up in Gothenburg was nice enough. I liked the city, but I hated school. I thought it was boring, and I never did very well. It wasn’t that I was dumb; I just thought everything other than reading, writing, and basic math was pointless.
He’s just not living up to his full potential was a constant refrain from my teachers.
I didn’t care. I figured I didn’t need history, biology, or algebra to become a soldier, which is what I wanted to be when I grew up.
Maybe it was all the American movies I watched as a kid. In American movies, the military were usually the good guys, and the good guys always kicked the bad guy’s ass.
Considering my first (and last) memory of my father – and how terrifying it was – the idea of being able to kick the bad guy’s ass was extremely appealing.
When I was 6 or 7, my mother supported my notion of being a soldier in the same way other parents supported their kids when they said they wanted to be an astronaut or a cop.
As I became a teenager, though, and my intentions never waned, I could tell she was nervous about me getting hurt in the military – but she was still supportive.
“Just as long as you stay kind and good, and you protect women, like you did that night when you were four years old,” she would say as she kissed my cheek.
She wasn’t happy, though, when I actually enlisted – mostly because I did it the morning I turned 18. I skipped school and went straight to the Gothenburg enlistment office, and only told her that afternoon when I got home. That was not a pleasant scene.
She liked it even less that I didn’t bother to graduate from high school. I signed up for the earliest basic training camp I could get and never looked back.
But my mother had to admit that the Swedish Armed Forces had a profound and positive effect on my life.
First and foremost, the discipline did wonders for me. With my superiors more than willing to put me on latrine duty for the slightest infraction, I quickly realized I’d better get my shit together – or I would be scrubbing shit for the next four years.
I buckled down and took my time in the service seriously. As a result, I rose quickly through the ranks of enlisted men.
As far as relationships, they were limited to flings with women who lived near the bases where I was stationed. While most of the women I dated were fun, I never met anybody I wanted to stay with for the long term. My focus was on my career in the military; everything else was a distraction.
