I like flipping through family photo albums. Especially the old ones. Each photograph is a snapshot, a glimpse, into someone else’s life. It’s amazing and eye-opening to see how other people lived, celebrated, and enjoyed life. (And it’s also kinda cool to see old people young; it makes you realize the subtle severity a decade or two can do.) And there’s something inexplicably timeless and elegant about an old photograph. If you haven’t figured it out already, I like to romanticize things.

So earlier, when Mamma showed me where the family photo albums were, I began to look through them. And I always get a thrill out of looking at old Thrane photographs ’cause…it makes me feel more part of the family, I suppose. (And it’s fun to see old people young, like I said.) But anyway, there were quite a lot of pictures of Pappa with the children. And they made me smile, because they seemed to be having so much fun; but it also made me sad and admittedly–envious.

I would never say it to Mom, ’cause God knows she has worked hard enough to raise a kid on her own while managing the house and a salon. But I feel cheated. I feel cheated out of a family. I feel cheated out of a dad. How is it that in five months with Steinar, I already like this man so much better than my own father? How is it that I so readily call him Pappa when I can’t even bear to call my own “Dad”? How is it that in just five months here, I’ve made so much more memories, laughed so muched more laughs, and felt so much more appreciated and loved than I ever had in five years with William Wei? Er det mulig?

I am jealous that I wasn’t in those pictures. That I’m not the one being carried on Pappa’s back. That I’m not the one eating the pizza he made. That I’m not the one going fishing with him.

There’s one distinct memory that’s always pricked the back of my mind. I was in kindergarden, and everyone was being picked up by their mom and dads. I remember thinking to myself, quite convincingly, “my dad would pick me up, but he’s in America. But one day, we’ll join him and he’ll pick me up and all the other kids will be jealous.” He never did pick me up, even when we joined him.

I used to think it was because it was too late. After all, six is not really so early an age anymore to be meeting your dad for the first time. But now I realize that that was never the case. He was just never really there. Maybe he never cared. Or maybe he didn’t see me as a son. Kinda ironic, isn’t it? That I’m welcomed with open arms into a loving home in a little random place in Norway when my own father couldn’t even give me a pat on the back unless he was being directed to.

I hate talking about it, actually, because it makes me feel irresponsible and weak…because I blame him for a lot of how I turned out. But I do. I blame him for my problems. I blame his hands for beating fear into me. I blame those feet for kicking the confidence out of me. How am I supposed to even find an excuse in calling this man my dad? Because he’s in my blood? I’d drain out his genes if I could; the closest thing I could do was change my name.
And you want to know the reason for why he beat me? It was because I got C’s on my report card. Apparently, an A wasn’t enough for him to be proud of me, but a C- was a valid excuse for a good choking.

So maybe you can see how this leads me to think some of the things I think and do some of the things I do: my fear of confrontations, my dislike of contact sports, my awkwardness, maybe.
And maybe you can now see why I’m so jealous. And thankful. And afraid. It’s a bit of a melancholic chain-of-thought. But one thing that I do know–it doesn’t matter even when this year ends: I know there is a person I can be proud to call my dad.