Never Stop Walking_A Memoir of Finding Home Across the World

by Christina Rickardsson

  We have a wonderful time, and even though the elderly man in the house is drunk, despite it being the middle of the day, he also seems happy and content. He hugs me, and I smile and hug him back. He holds me for a little too long, and I suddenly no longer feel comfortable with the situation. I force myself to smile and try to get out of his grasp. I’m about to succeed, when his wife joins the hug and it feels a little better. She starts chatting with me, and everyone has more or less gathered around me now. They’re all curious about my history. I hear Rivia start to tell my story for what feels like the hundredth time. They ask a bunch of questions, and I try to answer them all. It’s strange how you can be away from a place for so long and yet so much can still feel familiar when you return. An elderly woman says that she’s proud of me, and I’m a little surprised. What have I done for this woman who’s barely even known me for an hour to feel proud of me? Rivia tells me that she says, “You’re Brazilian, and you haven’t forgotten your roots, and now you’re here to see us. You haven’t forgotten us, your people.” I admit that she’s right. This is a part of me, and I haven’t forgotten or tried to deny this part of my life. I’ve just been in a different part of the world.

  These people have a lot of love and warmth. They have so little, but what little they have, they offer to share, and they do so with happiness and pride. I feel proud to have my roots here, despite all the injustices, despite all the horrors, in this warmhearted country, among these warmhearted people. We thank our hosts and walk the last little way down to our car.

  What a day! At the car, we all stand around chatting for a bit, and a boy comes running by with his homemade kite. I ask Rivia to ask him if I can try it. He’s a little skeptical at first, but eventually he hands me the string attached to his already airborne kite. I take it and run a little. It’s a wonderful sensation to let the child in me play a little . . . Oh, no, no . . . There are electrical wires everywhere, and the kite gets stuck. The boy looks less happy when I hand back the kite string with the kite now tangled in the wires. I smile apologetically and pull some candy out of my bag to give him. The boy looks happy again, and I have the sense that he’ll get the kite down by himself. I have no choice but to admit that the intervening years have definitely turned me into a lousy kite flyer.

  I leave the favela completely exhausted but feeling wonderful inside. It’s not where you come from; it’s where you belong that matters. And it’s OK to feel like you belong in more than one place.

  With Mama in the City of Angels

  1990S

  One day when I was twelve, Mama and Dad yelled for me. They were in the bedroom. There was something in Dad’s voice that didn’t sound right. What had I done now?

  Mama was half lying, half sitting in bed on the pink quilt she’d made. Dad was sitting on the edge of the bed next to Mama, holding her hand. They asked me to come in and then come closer. Mama looked sad, but tough at the same time. I’d always thought of Mama as weak. She was frail, the opposite of me. She was so gentle and always understanding. Dad was more decisive, hard, and if I was anyone’s girl, I was mostly Dad’s. He let me work and help out, and he viewed me as strong. Mama always wanted me to be a girl, a child. How was I supposed to explain to her that I wasn’t like her, that the soft part of me had withered away and there wasn’t much of it left? We were as different as people can be.

  “Christina, come sit here next to us,” Mama said.

  This didn’t feel right. This felt very wrong. A sickening sensation spread through me, a feeling I’d had so many times in Brazil. Run! my senses screamed. Get out of this room now!

  I could hear my parents’ voices talking to me, but I didn’t really know what they were saying. I just felt so weird. Then I heard Mama say the word sick, and I snapped out of it. Had she said cancer? Liver cancer? I didn’t know that much about diseases, but I knew that cancer killed people. Mama and Dad chatted about how the disease could be treated and so on. But I knew better. I knew that this was death again. It didn’t matter where I was in the world, death would always find me. The worst part of it was that death didn’t take me. It took everyone else around me, everyone who cared about me.

  I don’t remember what I said to them. I remember only how I ran down the stairs to the basement where my room was. I don’t remember if I shut the door or slammed it. I flung myself on my bed and cried. I was so angry. There are no words for how heartbroken I was. Alone in my room, I said out loud to God, the angels, and to myself, It isn’t fair, because she’s good! Take me instead! Please, please take me! I don’t want everyone I love to be taken away. That was when I knew that I loved Mama. I had worked so hard at not loving her, not letting her in. So many times I had yelled at her that she wasn’t my real mother and that she couldn’t tell me what to do, but somehow her love had always made it through. I was so angry. Why was I being forced to care about her? It made it so much harder to lose her. Everyone I loved had been taken away or died or left me alone in a world I didn’t understand and that didn’t understand me.

  God, whatever I’ve done, please, tell me, show me so that I can make it right again! It’s not fair to hurt other people because of what I’ve done. But I knew that God wasn’t listening, and, on some level, I understood that that wasn’t how the universe worked. I could hear a nasty voice in the back of my head. It was my voice, and it whispered, You know what you did, and you know why you’re being punished. Did you really believe you could take a life without being punished?

  I knew it was true. I was so sad, but I knew I couldn’t change it. I knew that I would always be punished for it. Punishing myself wasn’t enough.

  I felt so much rage growing up that it frightened me. It filled me and destroyed me. I felt it, but I didn’t know how to handle it, so I smiled and laughed even more and did well in school. I had learned to manipulate other people, to make them see someone other than me. They saw a happy little girl who was having a much, much better life and who was grateful for it.

  My life had taught me that. I had started doing this on the streets, I became even better at it in the orphanage, and I let it go into full bloom in Sweden. I had walled off my true self. I felt I needed to fit in and stay unnoticed. And people were so easy to manipulate. I knew how far a smile could get you, and I knew the power of a nice word. I had also started to learn how to use words as weapons. But I was also manipulating myself. I wasn’t hurting anyone but myself. I wanted to fit in and be like all the other children. But I was different. How could I not be? They played with plastic horses in plastic stables. They knew nothing about life. They had received all kinds of love, but they didn’t understand what it was worth. They didn’t understand how evil people could be. They knew nothing about death. They didn’t know what it was like to lose the only person who had loved you. They didn’t know what it was like to live with strangers. They didn’t know what it was like to begin to let other people in again, to feel tired, alone, scared, and to pray to God for strength every night even though you knew he had forsaken you.

  Sometimes you meet people you only get to be with for a short time. What’s difficult is accepting that and moving on. But sometimes that may be what you have to do. Accept that a relationship is only a loan, and when it’s not there anymore, you should rejoice at having had the honor of having it at all, of receiving so much without needing to give. Maybe it didn’t end the way you wanted or expected. Maybe it ended before it really had a chance to begin, or ended without your having a chance to say goodbye.

  The first and only movie that Mama and I watched together in a movie theater was City of Angels. It was 1998, and Mama was very sick. I asked her to see it with me, even though Dad didn’t think it was such a good idea. We needed to drive from Vindeln to Umeå, a trip that took about fifty minutes, but Mama understood that I wanted to do a mother-daughter thing, that I wanted to have something that was just ours to take with me into my life and remember.

  We reserved the tickets and drove to Umeå. The movie was showing in
the biggest theater, and we sat right in the middle, a little toward the back. It was about a male angel who falls in love with a human being. She’s a doctor, and she falls in love with him, too. Then the angel gives up his immortality for her. They manage to spend one night together, and then she dies in a traffic accident. A beautiful and melancholy film that came to mean so much to Mama and me. It contained everything we never talked about: angels, love, life, but most of all, death.

  I remember the tears streaming down my cheeks now and then during the movie, and I tried to wipe them away discreetly without Mama noticing. She cried, too. We saw each other crying but didn’t say anything. I’m grateful for those one hundred fourteen minutes that we shared in front of the screen at the movie theater in Umeå. We had never communicated so clearly with each other. Emotions are so powerful. They can say more than words ever can. One glance between us conveyed so much love and pain, fear and hope, and through all this, I think we both knew that we didn’t have much time left. We watched and felt; it was as if we were alone in a theater full of people. I wanted to take her hand, but I didn’t. At that moment, it would have been like saying goodbye, and we weren’t there yet. She lived significantly longer than the doctors had predicted, I think because of us kids. Maybe mostly because of Patrick. Those two had a strong bond. Anyone who claims that blood is thicker than water, that the ties in a family who share the same genes are stronger, does not understand how love works. Mama stuck it out as long as she could. She prolonged her life because she was afraid her family would collapse if she left us too soon.

  We have scarcely been able to stick together since she left us. It was an enormous loss. Every day she is with me in my thoughts, and I almost always wear something that belongs to her: a piece of jewelry, clothing, a belt. Something to keep her with me. Even though she fought hard not to leave us, it still came way too soon. She was only fifty, and she deserved so much more. I’m glad that she was able to have the experience of seeing how wonderful her love was for Patrick, and seeing that her love had also reached me. I’m glad that I opened myself to her love, and I know that before she died, she knew that she had my love completely. We—Patrick, Dad, and I—were never the same without her. Our destinies changed, and the pain of losing her broke our hearts and caused us immense grief.

  Only now as an adult do I understand what a mother can mean to a family and what Mama’s love meant to me. At one time, I saw her as weak, but now I see how strong she was. In solitude she cried about her illness and her awareness that her death was approaching and that she was going to leave us. To the rest of the family and the world, she kept on as if nothing had changed, as if life were as it should be. Not even when she lost all her hair, when she stood in front of the bathroom mirror and watched her femininity being wiped away, even then she didn’t break down. I witnessed only one lone tear fall on her cheek as I passed the bathroom on my way to the kitchen. She quickly wiped it away, put on her wig, and walked into the kitchen. She was an amazing woman and an example to me every day. I learned from her that being gentle and nice isn’t a weakness but a strength. She fought her illness for four years. Even though the doctors had given her one year to live, at most, she battled on for four years. Witnessing her fight against cancer, but also her struggle to live and stay with us kids, allowed me to really see how strong she was. Being by her side during her chemo treatments made me realize just what vitality she possessed. Despite the all-consuming, debilitating therapy, she still talked about the future and everything she hoped for. We never know our strength until life tests us. But most of all, we don’t know what strength and power another person has until we follow them for a while on their journey.

  It’s not easy saying goodbye, and for Mama and me, it was almost impossible. How do you tell someone that you hope you’ll see them again, that you’ll see each other on the other side? Is there another side? How can you show your love in the proximity of death, when every emotion you show is like a goodbye? Every day the compact, heavy, painful lump of unspoken emotion grew bigger still in my chest. I was lost, but we didn’t talk about it. No one in the family talked about the unavoidable. We took it one day at a time. We felt and we grieved, but we didn’t talk.

  I knew that the time was coming, but I didn’t want to accept it. I wanted to pretend there was time. I wanted to pretend that you would sew me a pink ball gown, like we decided when I was ten, to wear to the prom. I wanted us to go to London, like we’d talked about doing when I got older. I wanted to still have you so you could tell me what I should do when things felt dark and gloomy, when a boy I liked broke my heart, when school felt hard, when I needed love.

  How do you say goodbye to the future we pictured, to the future we planned? How do you say goodbye without hurting the other person? Saying goodbye is like saying, You’re alive now, but you’ll be gone soon, and there’s no hope left. How was I supposed to say goodbye when I didn’t want to strip you of your hope? As long as you were breathing, we could still pretend there was hope.

  So I sat on the edge of my mother’s bed at Norrland University Hospital. She had her own room. Dad and Patrick had left the room, which gave us a little time to ourselves. The mood was fraught. The words hung in silence like a dark rain cloud. I sat hunched over, looking at anything and everything other than into my mama’s eyes, which I knew were resting on my face. I took a deep breath and looked her in the eye. She gave me a sad little smile, and the heavy lump in my chest grew. I took another deep breath and smiled a fake smile. I asked if there was anything she wanted, if I could get her anything. Mama said she was doing fine.

  Fine? This was anything but fine, but I kept quiet. She asked how I was, and I answered, “Fine.” Mama asked if I liked the gold bracelet she’d given me for my fourteenth birthday. I said I loved it. She said that when I turned eighteen, I would get the matching necklace. The jewelry had belonged to her mother. I think that was Mama’s way of saying goodbye, of saying that she would always be there. I stayed sitting there and held her hand. I remember feeling like I wanted to say something to her, explain that I loved her and say goodbye. I started feeling a sense of panic. It wouldn’t be long until Dad and Patrick came back. So, I did the thing I’m worst at; I sang to her. I sang the only song I could think of, and I sang it off-key. I tried to hold my tears back and keep my voice steady.

  After that, we sat in silence for a few seconds, which felt like an eternity. My eyes lingered on the floor and Mama’s on me. She squeezed my hand to urge me to look at her. I had tears in my eyes, but I held them back. Our eyes met, and Mama said, “Christina, take care of Patrick and Dad.”

  I looked at her and knew what she wanted me to say, what I was supposed to promise. The words hurt. Eight years earlier, my biological mother had shouted through the orphanage gate that no matter what, I should take care of Patrique. And here I sat, eight years later, and my adoptive mother was asking the same thing of me. I felt trapped. That was a lifelong promise, and I didn’t know if I was strong enough to handle it. I didn’t know if I could bear it. But how could I be selfish in this moment and say no, or say that I’d do my best but that I couldn’t promise anything? So I responded the way you’re supposed to in a situation like that. I said what would give her a little hope for those of us she loved and was leaving. “I’ll take care of them, Mama. Don’t worry. Patrick will be fine.”

  I said Patrick because I knew she was probably most worried about him. I mean, he was only eight and was about to lose his mother. I was worried for him, for me, for Dad, and for us as a family. At times like this, it becomes so clear who holds a family together. In our family, Mama was the glue that held us together. She was the interpreter in the family, and through her flexibility, she understood us all. Dad and Patrick walked in right then. Dad was chatting, and Mama turned her attention to him, but she gave me one last look that conveyed strength and a smile that confirmed that she knew that I would be there for them, for Patrick. And then the moment was over. We’d said goodbye to e
ach other without saying goodbye, without saying that we loved each other. I walked over to the window while they chatted and looked out. It was a sunny day, and I looked at the sky without seeing it. Behind me lay my dying mother, her skin yellow, her sick liver unable to clean out the toxins anymore. She was so thin.

  Death has the ability to hang over you, enough so that you feel alive but wish to be gone. It reminds us at regular intervals that life is not to be taken for granted. Life reminds us that we don’t always get what we want. Life reminds us that death is out there.

  Together, my biological mother, Petronilia; my adoptive mother, Lili-ann; and Camile gave me enough warmth for me to be able to clench my teeth when times felt the darkest and not stop walking. Sometimes life offers food scraps from trash cans in a filthy alley in São Paulo, and sometimes it offers a five-course dinner at Grill in Stockholm, Sweden’s beautiful capital city. Life is fickle.

  My biological mother protected my brother and me as well as she could and wholeheartedly—I don’t doubt that for a second. My adoptive mother taught me that in pain there can be love. Camile gave me a friendship that went beyond the ordinary. Two normal women and a girl have made all the difference in my life. I think that we often underestimate the significance we have to others. We don’t fully understand what we can accomplish for another person. What you do with the time you have available is what counts. What we remember often isn’t what we received, but rather how it felt to receive it. I’ve received expensive presents and been happy, but nothing has ever beaten or will ever beat the feeling I had when I got that box of Bon O Bon chocolates from my biological mother when I was lost and alone at the orphanage. Nothing can beat the way I felt when my adoptive mother gave me Helen Exley’s book To a Very Special Daughter or what I felt when we sat in that movie theater together. Love can’t be bought, manufactured, or elicited on request. It’s a gift that we choose to give and to receive. It’s unselfish and maybe it can’t move mountains, but it can do something even better: it can save a life.