Svend

It has been a little while…the lag in time is purely based on my laziness. I did not want to force a post when I did not know what to say. I have been struggling with how to tell those who are coming into my life, as a new friend, of my past. What is sharing too much and what is sharing too soon? What is not sharing enough? It is easy to say, “I have a past…” but who doesn’t? Who really has not dealt with a loss of a loved one, a loss of part of themselves, being deployed, changing finances, losing jobs, etc. We all have our baggage and we all have a past…many just look different than others. Some are more opaque and some are completely transparent, but again, this does not make mine any worse or any different. It is when you find a trust in those who find that same trust in you is when you can finally reveal just enough about your life…where they are genuinely interested in learning more. You can tell…immediately. You can tell when someone is listening with the intent to know and those who are listening with the intent to move on to something they are interested in…something of themselves.

Sharing/writing has been very natural to me now and does not feel forced. It has been incredible to find out that many have found my journey on their own. There are those who have approached me stating they knew me before I even knew them…before I moved back to Dallas…following me along in my journey as it was happening. I never realized the wingspan this story had and the amount of people (family, friends and strangers alike) who took interest, either. For that, I am eternally grateful and even more so that there are those out there asking me to continue writing. As I have stated before, it is therapeutic and I will never stop writing, it is just taking me more time than usual to pull my thoughts together. I have, in typical Cat fashion, started writing several entries and could not bring myself to finish or post. It never felt right and I kept going off on tangents rather than really describing my life now and how I was feeling. What has happened these last few days, I feel is worth writing about and cannot believe the details of my life, as of late.

My childhood is an interesting one, to say the least. I was born in Monterrey, Mexico and shortly moved with my mother, brother and birth father, Svend, to Houston, Texas. It is there where we started our lives together in the States, as a family. I have always been told by my family that Svend was a dreamer. He would always have these extravagant ideas with little to no research backing his new ideas/businesses. He left us in Houston in 1988 to go on a business venture in Africa…a business venture he needed to fund with our family money. He emptied our bank accounts, without my mother’s knowledge, and we dropped him off at the airport to never see him again.

I remember, vividly, dropping him off that day. I was kneeling in the back seat, my brother on the other side of me. Svend got out of the passenger seat, started to walk away from our car, until I screamed for “my father” to come back to me…to say “good bye and I love you.” He did…he turned around, called me his “princess” in Spanish, and walked away from our lives. I never thought that would be the last time I would see him. I was too young to understand what events were to follow and always believed, after dozens of letters from him on his return “soon” that he would appear at our front door again. The letters became less frequent and then finally stopped a few years later when I was 7 years old. Without any additional form of communication from him or anyone else, I mourned his death. It was then, I realized that whether or not he was officially alive, he was no longer a part of my life and had passed away.

I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom at 16, then living in Dallas, when my mom came into my room with my brother following her footsteps. I looked up and she had a look of disbelief on her face. She sat on the computer chair next to me, my brother standing by the door and she uttered, “Well, I just got off the phone with your half-brother.” Svend was married to a Peruvian woman before he met my mother. They had two boys who were a part of my life when I was a young child. I no longer had contact with the older son, but occasionally received emails from the younger who would speak of our lives growing up and how much he missed the family. My mom used to joke around saying that the older brother looked just like Jason and the younger looked exactly like me…lighter skin tone, freckles, blonde hair and my same smile. Jason and I looked to her to continue after her long pause and she shared, “He said Svend is alive and wants to talk to each of you.” I could not believe the words that came out of her mouth. I sat there confused thinking I would never hear that name again, much less him wanting to talk to me. For all this time, he was gone. As a family of three, we struggled to make ends meet. Jason and I can joke today of our struggles of being “poor” and not having what those around us were fortunate enough to have, but in all reality, going through our day to day felt impossible. My mom had three jobs, at all times, for as long as I can remember and had to come up with creative ways to feed her children. She would take any extra work she could find without ever complaining of not having enough. She always said the only thing she needed were her healthy children to be as happy as possible. I will not go into too much detail about every year, every sacrifice she and my brother made, every tear, every move or every heartache we experienced because this blog would never end. Thinking through all those mishaps, sitting on the floor of my bedroom and contemplating whether or not to pick up the phone to call this man made no sense to me. I should have hated him. I should have wanted to erase him from my life and move on like I had been doing since the day the letters stopped…but I could not bring myself to do so. I wondered where he had been, where he was currently living, why he had decided to never return, and why on earth he decided to reappear now? This thought went through my head for years and finally, after college, I emailed him. I could not find the courage to call him so I figured emailing him would be the best way to open the door of communication…and it did.

I worked up the courage to try to find him in Lima, Peru. I heard he was living with my half-brother and I decided it was time to see him. While standing in my grandmother’s living room…hands and knees trembling…I picked up the phone to call Svend. My courage was shot. I stood there, second guessing my trip with the sole purpose of seeing the man who could never rightfully call himself, my father. I called myself an idiot over and over again in my head, thinking I would see him and things would somehow be magical. There was a small piece of me hoping it would be…and all of a sudden, with the phone in hand, I called him. The phone picked up and I heard a strikingly deep voice on the other end. It was my half-brother…he told me he sent Svend home…and I was once again, broken hearted. I spent the next two days seeing my beautiful brother, catching up, talking of our past and receiving some of the closure I needed to move on with my life. My mother was right…he looked just like me. The entire time we jested at the fact that it was like looking in a mirror at each other. It felt amazing and I was thankful I at least got to see him. He told me of Svend’s departure from Lima and I understood why he sent him back to Denmark since he could no longer afford to keep up with his extravagant expenses.

Upon my return to the states, I continued to email Svend and for years, we would share what was stirring in our lives. Sometimes, it was like exchanging words with a stranger…I was learning about his life and the journey he had been on since leaving our family. Other times, it felt like he had always been a part of my passage. I told him about where I had been, the moves I had made, graduate school, John, taking care of him, and the feelings I had in those final moments. He seemed heartbroken to hear the news and seemed as if he really cared. I say “seem” because I do not think I will ever believe much of what he said. It is hard to have that confidence in someone who did not seem real. Most of his answers appeared to dance around my questions and he never seemed to reveal what he really thought or what really happened in the past. Even after I moved to Dallas, we kept in contact with each other until March and that is when he disappeared…again. I emailed him a few times in May, asking if he was okay, and heard nothing back. I once again felt a betrayal and began to write him off. On August 29^th, those feelings all changed.

I received an email from a woman name Susan. In the subject line it read “Your father”. I had never thought of him in that way. The man I call my father is my step-dad, Mike. He has been a part of my life since I was 14 and he was the one who raised me to be a better woman. He...a man who I know would never leave me…is my father. Reading “Your father” from an unknown sender, threw me back in my tracks and I assumed the worst…and I was right. When I opened the email she stated she had news of Svend and to write her back. I did…waited for a response…and the next day, she revealed to me that Svend Thorsen passed away on May 31^st of cancer. I must have read the email and those words over 100 times. I could not believe what I was reading or if the information was even true….why did it take so long to hear of this information? Why didn’t Svend tell me he had cancer? Who was this mystery woman and how did she get my information?

This is what I have been experiencing the past week…information gathering. I am on a mission to find out more and find out where this information will take me. I thought I would feel a weight lifted off my shoulders when I found out Svend was finally gone…but in all honesty, I feel the exact opposite. He is the reason I am here. He is the reason my brother is here. His decisions are the reason I am who I am today and the reason I went on the journey I have been on thus far…and for that, I feel it has been worth every ounce of pain he put us through. I will continue to gather information from this woman and understand why this feeling is not relief, but hurt…until then, thank you. Thank you, again, for always reading.