I Never Thought I’d Become My Mother
How a football tournament showed me what I had inherited from my mother and what my daughters may inherit from me.
After Training
It was after Dana’s training session. We were standing outside by the bikes. Nothing remarkable, really. One of those ordinary moments after football, when everyone is trying to get home, someone has lost a water bottle, a coach needs to say something, a parent is standing there waiting. Dana is going to Gothenburg for a football tournament, and they will be sharing rooms, three girls to a room. One of the coaches asked me who Dana wanted to share with.
Then she began to explain.
Not dramatically. Not as a problem. Just matter-of-factly, warmly, attentively. She had understood from a previous tournament that Dana needs certain things. She needs peace and quiet. She needs to prepare herself. She needs time on her own. She does not need a room where people are running in and out all the time, joking around, making a mess, talking, throwing bags down, going back and forth. She needs a calm room.
I stood there listening, and at first I only thought how fantastic it was that the coach had really seen her. Not just seen Dana as a football player, how she runs, passes, fights, tackles, or whatever she does on the pitch. But seen her as a human being. Seen what she needs in order to feel well. Seen that she cannot simply be thrown into any room and be expected to function. It moved me.
Then it hit me. That is me.
That is exactly how I have been my whole life. I need peace and quiet. I need time alone. I need to prepare myself. I do not want people running in and out of the place where I live. I want to know where my things are. I want the home to be harmonious. I want my routines. I want time to adjust before the world comes in.
And then came the next thought. That comes from Mum. From Hedvig.
I never thought I would become like Mum.
The Chain
Not in that way. Not so clearly. Not this late in life, when you believe you have long since become yourself. Because that is what we like to think. That we have built something of our own. That we have travelled, broken free, taken our own paths, gone on our own expeditions, lived our lives, made our mistakes, chosen our own habits.
And then you find yourself standing outside a football training session in Malmö while a coach asks who your daughter wants to share a room with.
Suddenly you see the whole chain. Hedvig. Me. Dana. Perhaps Eva too, in her own way.
It is strange what travels with us. Not only the words. Not only the big things we think we remember. But the mornings. The coffee. The walks. The food. The rest. The silence. The way of getting yourself ready before the day is allowed to begin. The need for harmony. The need for the home not to be a place where other people’s unrest blows through the rooms.
Morning Discipline
Mum got up early. The first thing she did was make coffee. She smoked too, but that part, thankfully, I have not taken with me. The coffee, though, I understand. That first cup in the morning. That small passage between night and day, before everything else begins. Then she did her morning gymnastics.
It was early. Not only the hour of the day, though it was early in that sense too, but early in the time she lived in. This was not an age when everyone talked about training, health, mobility, and diet the way we do now. It was the late 1960s, the early 1970s, and onwards. Many people probably thought she was a little unusual. At least that is how she herself told it. I never heard anyone say she was odd, but that was the picture she carried. That she did things other people did not quite understand. But she did them anyway.
Then she made breakfast for me. I ate and went to school. And she went out walking. One hour. Two hours. Sometimes three. The walks were part of her life. As self-evident as eating, sleeping, and getting dressed. It was not something she did to show anything off. She did it because that was how she held herself together.
I have taken that with me. Completely.
My days are built on such things too. Routines. Food. Training. Walks. Rest. Preparation. Trying to keep the body and the mind in some sort of order. And the lunchtime rest was extremely important to Mum. She had to sleep at lunch. It is the same for me. My whole life has been built on those lunchtime rests. I have got up in the night for most of my adult life. Written, trained, travelled, filmed, planned, lived in a rhythm that perhaps has not always been wise, but has been mine. And then rest in the middle of the day is not laziness. It is a necessity.
So much of what I thought was me turns out to be her.
It is not unpleasant. It is, rather, fascinating.
The Late Child
Hedvig was born in 1922. She was forty when I was born. She had my sister when she was twenty-two and my brother when she was twenty-eight. Then I came twelve years after my brother. That did something to the family. I grew up with siblings who were already much older. In many ways I was almost like an only child in a home that had already lived a completely different family life before me. My sister was eighteen years older than I was. My brother was twelve years older. They had had another mother than I had, in a way. Not another person. But another phase of the same person.
When my sister was born, Mum was young. And who is mature enough to be a parent then? Perhaps we think we are supposed to be, just because the child is there. But it does not always work that way. Parenthood is also something you grow into. You fail. You learn. You become better. You understand more. And when I arrived, Mum had become complete in a different way. She was forty. She had lived. She had lost. She had fought. She had shaped herself.
I received a great deal of the love that perhaps should have been distributed more evenly between all three of us.
I do not say that to accuse her. I do not think she meant to do anything wrong. But I think that is what happened. It was to my advantage. Of course it was. It gave me something enormously strong. But I also think it complicated the relationship between her and my older siblings. It hurts to see such things afterwards. How love can be true and still unevenly distributed. How a parent can be wonderful for one child and at the same time have missed something in another.
That is one of the things I think about a great deal as a father.
Not repeating it.
Not favouring one child. Not allowing one child to take up all the space simply because that child’s life, at that moment, demands so much of me.
And right now there has been a lot of Dana. Football. Training sessions. Matches. Tournaments. Team gatherings. Driving. Food. Rest. Preparation. Joy. Disappointment. New matches. New training sessions.
And I love it.
We all love it. It is a wonderful time, being allowed to follow this wonderful girl’s development in football. To stand by the pitch and watch her grow. To see how she becomes stronger, more secure, faster, braver. To see her concentration. To see how much it means.
But I must not forget Eva.
Seeing Eva Too
It happens so easily. Not because you love less. But because life sometimes pulls in one direction. A football season can swallow a family. One child’s interest can take up so much space that the quieter needs of the other child risk ending up in the shadows.
That must not happen.
Eva has had her eye problems. That is no secret. Football was no longer possible in the same way, and she did not want to continue either. She is fifteen. A teenager. She has to be allowed to find her own thing.
So last week we began something else. We went to a rock club.
Medley in Malmö. The kind of club that belongs in the 1970s. Many in the audience were my age. Hell, many of those on stage were too. It was Sator from Borlänge. They played songs I recognised. I’d Rather Drink Than Talk and that whole world.
And there stood Eva. So much younger than everyone else.
But she thought the songs were good. She likes live music. Music is extremely important to her. And I saw how much she appreciated us doing it together. It was beautiful. Perhaps not big on the outside. Not an expedition. Not a journey to the other side of the world. Not a mountain, a desert, a bike ride, a film. Just an evening at a rock club in Malmö with my daughter.
But sometimes that is where the most important things happen.
You are together. You show. I see you too.
What Children Inherit
There is research on this, but really you do not need the research to understand it. Children do not only do as we say. They do as we do. They see our mornings. They see how we handle worry. They see what we do when we are tired. They see whether we go out walking, whether we train, whether we eat in a certain way, whether we keep things in order, whether we run away, whether we stay, whether we become hard, whether we apologise, whether we show love.
They see everything.
Also the things we think they do not see.
Of course I already knew this, on some level. But knowing it is one thing. Standing outside a football training session and understanding that your daughter carries the same needs you have carried your whole life, and that you yourself received them from your mother, is something else. Then it is not theory. Then it is Dana in Gothenburg. Then it is Hedvig at the kitchen table with coffee. Then it is me needing silence in the morning.
And that is when the memory begins to move backwards. From Dana’s need for a quiet room, to my own need for order, and from there to Hedvig — not only as my mother, but as a girl, a young woman, a person shaped by a place long before I existed.
Back to Lima
Mum grew up in Lima, in Dalarna. Not exactly in the house I am now rebuilding, but in that area. There is something strange in that. That I am now building a house on the land, in the community, in the world where she was shaped. A fantastic house, I hope. A house for the future. For my children. For guests. For life.
But also, in some way, a house that reaches backwards.
To her.
She said she was bullied at school. She played a lot on her own, in her own worlds of imagination. I remember how she could tell those stories. She had a good way of telling things. It was never only facts. It became images. Atmospheres. She could turn a walk into something larger than a walk.
I remember some march in the Lima or Limedsforsen area. I cannot remember what it was called. Something with “march” in the name. Perhaps between summer pasture farms. Perhaps ten kilometres. It was probably not far by today’s standards. For me now, with all the training, all the expeditions, and all the miles in my body, ten kilometres is nothing remarkable. But for her it became an expedition.
And that is interesting.
Because perhaps that is where much of it began. Not in the great journeys. Not in the extreme projects. But in her way of charging an ordinary walk with meaning. She walked. She told stories. She made it into something. A march through forest and community could become an adventure.
She travelled too. She and her sister Dagmar. I remember England. I remember Lake Garda. Trips like that. Not like my later journeys, perhaps, but journeys all the same. Movement. Curiosity. The sense that the world existed out there. And she came to visit me on my bike journeys. Thailand. Other places. That meant something. That she did not simply stand at home and say no. That she did not make the world smaller for me. She was part of it. I think my travelling comes from there too. Not only from restlessness. Not only from the desire for adventure. But from a mother who showed that it was possible to move, to be curious, to let life be larger than the nearest yard.
Dignity
At the same time, she was very much Lima. And the community. Decency. Dignity. Morals. Respect. Not boasting. Keeping going. It was not only her. It was the whole area. Such things lived in people. You were supposed to behave. You were not supposed to think you were special. You were supposed to do right by others. You were supposed to hold together. You were not supposed to complain unnecessarily.
That has followed me too. Sometimes it has helped me. Sometimes it has probably made me hard on myself. But there is something beautiful in it as well.
Dignity.
Mum had dignity. She preferred to live without a man. And I understand her. After all the trouble with Dad, who would want someone else in the home? I am glad she never brought some other bastard home. The one time there was some slight threat of it, it came to very little. Men were not what you wanted indoors. Not like that. Not in that home. Not in our peace.
It makes me think of my own children. What do they think about the women I have brought home after the breakup with their mother? It would be interesting to know. I know they at least liked one of them. But these are the things you think about as you get older. What did I bring into their home? What feeling did I give them? Was the home calm? Was it safe? Or did I carry my own unrest into it?
What We Bring Home
That is perhaps the hardest part of parenthood.
Not the love. That is simple. I love Eva and Dana above everything else.
The difficult part is everything else. What you pass on without understanding it. What tone you give the home. What worry settles into the walls. Which habits become theirs. Which shortcomings they will one day discover in themselves and think, I got that from Dad.
I know what I want them to carry with them. That I loved them above everything else. That I was a good parent. That is the most important thing. Not that I succeeded in everything. Not that I was always calm. Not that I was always enough. No one is. But that they should know, deep in their bodies, that they were loved. That I saw them. That I tried. That I put them before everything else.
And I know what I do not want them to carry on. My eternal worry that I am not enough. That I am not good enough. I do not want to give them that. I do not want them to inherit it.
The Gift She Gave Me
Mum gave me something else. She gave me the feeling that I was special. It began almost before I could remember anything myself. I was born prematurely, in a taxi. I survived. I lay in an incubator. And Mum told me I had shown so much life even there. She built that story inside me. Not in a boastful way, I think. Not as if I were better than others. But as if I had strength. Life. Something particular. She made me feel unique. And that did something to me. I grew up with a sense that nothing was impossible.
That almost sounds naïve today. But it was another time as well. Sweden felt positive. Inequalities were shrinking. Everyone was supposed to have equal value. The future did not lie ahead like a threat, but like an opening. I stepped out into existence with the feeling that it was possible. That you could. That the world was there.
It was an enormous gift. And it came from her. From Hedvig. From her love. From her discipline. From her way of living.
The Buckwheat Jar
She also had her own struggle with the body. She watched her weight all her life. I remember the sound of the scales early in the morning. How she stepped onto them. How weight was something she followed. She read weekly magazines. I probably did not understand then how important they were to her. That was where she learned about diet, health, food, the body.
I remember her porridge. Or whatever one should call it. Buckwheat. Prunes. A lot of other things. She put it all into a large jar overnight and ate it cold in the morning. Slimy, I thought then. But probably very healthy. Now I can almost smile at it. She was ahead of her time there too. Today someone would have posted the same jar on Instagram, called it overnight buckwheat breakfast, and received thousands of likes. Mum just ate it. Because she believed in it.
She also smoked, and perhaps believed it helped her keep her figure. It did not. We know that now. But human beings are not consistent. Not even the disciplined ones. I recognise that. I am very careful with food and still I can overeat, especially after expeditions, when the body screams for recovery.
But there too she remains in me. Not as a perfect role model, but as a reminder that we try to hold ourselves together with the tools we have.
It is almost comical. You think you have travelled far. And then you end up back at the kitchen table of your childhood.
What Travels On
I became Mum.
And now I see how my children are becoming me.
Not in every way. Nor should they. They are their own people. Eva is Eva. Dana is Dana. They have their time, their screens, their languages, their friends, their dreams, their problems. They are not growing up in Hedvig’s Lima. They are not growing up in my 1970s. They are growing up now. In a much stranger, faster, harder, more connected world.
But certain things still move through the generations.
The need for time alone. The need for calm. The worlds of imagination. The music. The football. The food. The training. The walks. The rest. The worry. The love.
And that is where parenthood becomes so terribly vast. You think it is about what you say. Do your homework. Eat properly. Be kind. Keep fighting. Believe in yourself. But that is only a small part. What matters is what you show. How you live when no one thinks it matters. How you get up in the morning. How you treat other people. How you talk about yourself. How you take care of your body. How you handle fear. How you love. How you fail. How you come back.
It was not a lecture from Mum that shaped me. It was her life.
The coffee in the morning. The gymnastics. The walks. The food. The weight. The rest. The dignity. The love.
And now, when I stand outside a football training session and a coach tells me that Dana needs peace and quiet, I suddenly see how far that life has travelled.
From Hedvig in Lima. To me. To my children.
I do not know whether it makes me happy or afraid. Perhaps both. Because it is a responsibility to understand how much you leave behind. Not only money, houses, things, photographs, stories. But behaviours. Tones of voice. Mornings. Ways of loving. Ways of worrying. Ways of holding yourself together.
I hope Eva and Dana one day remember that I loved them above everything else. I hope they remember that I tried to be a good father. I hope they take with them the discipline, the curiosity, the travelling, the music, the football, the food, the walks, the rest, the belief that the world is possible. I hope they do not take my worry with them. Not too much of it, at least.
And I hope that one day, when they themselves are standing somewhere in life and suddenly hear themselves say something or see themselves do something, they might think: that was Dad.
Just as I now think. That was Mum. Hedvig.
I never thought I would become her. But perhaps that is not the worst thing that can happen. Perhaps, on the contrary, it is one of the finest things about life. That someone who loved us continues to live in the way we make coffee, go out walking, place a hand on our children’s shoulder, and say without big words:
I see you. I know what you need. I am here.
A pleasure to read first thing this morning before the sun is up. Good for thought indeed. X