The first time I realized this was a few years ago, when I observed Stella and Amina’s friendship and saw something I longed for. It was a thoroughly unnatural feeling, to feel jealous of one’s own daughter’s relationship with a friend. It took quite a bit of time, resentment, and tears—a full-fledged catastrophe around the corner—before I realized that even if I have strong feelings about Amina, even if I see myself in her and feel a great kinship with her, what I really longed for was my own family.
I longed for Stella. I longed for my beloved little girl.
And I missed Adam.
85
I think it was Adam’s humble image I fell for first. I had seen him gliding past me in the hallways of Wermlands dorms before, but I never really noticed him. One late December night, we happened to end up sitting across the table from each other in one of the shared kitchens, and a few years later we had made a family.
It sounds ridiculous in hindsight, but I was hardly aware that men like Adam existed. I’d had many boyfriends back at home, but there was seldom anyone worth keeping more than a few months. The guys I was interested in were attractive, outgoing, and confident, which often meant that as soon as you scratched the hard outer surface you found a scared little boy.
For a few weeks in the last semester of my third year of high school I dated a guy named Klabbe, who did arms and chest in the gym four nights a week whenever he wasn’t driving back and forth between the two city squares in the BMW that ate up half his salary from the bread factory. He liked to call me Princess because I made him rinse the tobacco from his teeth before we kissed.
Certainly there had been other men like Adam in my vicinity, but they passed under my radar since their position and status were practically nonexistent in the small town I came from. In Lund, everything was different. Other characteristics and attributes were of value here. I was absolutely determined never to return home.
Adam offered thrilling perspectives on both our little world and the wider one. More often than not, the starting points of our discussions were our diametrically opposed views, which eventually led us to fresh insights and some form of consensus. He was in possession of an incomparable ability to treat others’ thoughts with such dignity and respect that it was impossible to become angry with him. And that made me angry.
“You can’t just acquiesce, Adam! On the one hand, on the other hand, everyone is right in their own way. The whole point of a discussion is to win!”
“You think so? I think the point of a discussion is for us to develop as people. Every time my views are questioned, I learn something new.”
We sometimes spent half the night sitting in his small dorm room: Adam on the bed, his knees drawn up beneath him; me on the floor below him, my legs outstretched. A bottle of wine and a bag of chips.
“All this increasing relativism makes me nervous, Adam. Certainly some values must be absolute. Isn’t that true of religion? Are you really allowed to believe as little of it as you like?”
“Of course. That’s why it’s called ‘believing,’ not ‘knowing.’”
This whole idea of belief was new and rather frightening. Without quite knowing why, and as a matter of routine, I had judged all religion to be dogmatic and the enemy of individuality. There was no room for such things in my liberal, secular worldview. I came from a place where it was as natural to christen your children in church as it was to scorn and ridicule those who called themselves Christian.
“I don’t think it’s a good thing to be driven by conviction, no matter what sort,” said Adam. “It has nothing to do with religion or a belief in God.”
“Stop sounding so sensible,” I said, stuffing more chips into my mouth. “I want to have a discussion I can win!”
“You’re going to make an excellent lawyer.”
We laughed and kissed and had sex. This was all new to me. Adam touched me with new hands; he looked at me with a kind of gaze I had never experienced before. He put his heart on the line for me, laid his soul bare, and sat before me, absolutely fearless, in his sloppily made bed that smelled of Axe body spray and sour cream chips.
I saw it as a stormy relationship. Somehow I assumed all along that it would end as unexpectedly and explosively as it had begun. That was my image of romantic relationships: they were brief, intense, and hastily forgotten. You should enjoy them while they lasted but get out before everything was reduced to rubble.
People around me always reacted strongly when I mentioned Adam’s education.
“Is he really going to be a pastor?”