Mystery Solved

by Ingrid Pires

It has been thirty years since my dad died.

He said I would find it in the album…a mystery to be solved.

I finally opened the album. Right inside I spotted a photo of me and my Aunt Astrid, living with us on a prolonged visit in our Castro Valley home. She was kneeling by my side. Just four years old, I wore a summer dress, functional and pretty, though not frilly. Frilly wasn’t my style. Astrid was smiling at him, her older brother who had had the courage to come to a new land after five years of Norway’s occupation during the war.

Another photo quickly caught my eye, my aunt and I looking over the fence at the horses in the pasture next door. Already then I loved horses, smiling at the thought of getting on top of one. My thoughts raced ahead to the riding experiences he later gave me, up in the hills above San Mateo and down the other side in Half Moon Bay, 1600 pounds of muscle and magic moving under the saddle and between my knees. And after riding faded into my past, after he was long gone, I experienced the power of horses as therapeutic truth tellers, providing human coaches, and me, with indicators of my authenticity or lack thereof. Horses tell the truth to those who listen. Do we believe what we’re saying? They’ll tell us. Are we genuinely grieving? They’ll bring us comfort with a nuzzle and by sharing our space. My dad was the first to indulge me in my love of them.

The next photo that captured me was taken in his homeland, where we ended up living for two-and-a-half years. Now age five, shortly after moving to Norway, I experienced a different country with different traditions. It was their Constitution Day, equivalent to our Fourth of July, but with no fireworks celebrating their becoming a country in 1905. Children marched in the streets instead, playing instruments or bearing flags and smiles as they dipped their flags in salute while passing by the Royal family. Joyously immersed in my family of paternal aunts and uncles, cousins, and one solitary grandmother representing the older generation, we gathered in her garden to enjoy this sunny mid-May day. After feasting on their traditional hot dogs—the kind that crunched when we bit into them—we headed to nearby Huseby Camp, headquarters for His Majesty the King’s Guard. Every May 17, the camp’s gates were thrown open to neighborhood children and their families. The photo that evoked these memories was a closeup of me, with a few other children in the background. All of us were keeping our hands off the tasty cardamom sweet buns dangling by a string in front of us. The object was to grab our bun, using only our mouths and to finish eating it before anyone else ate theirs. As if that wasn’t reward enough, the winner also got a festive token. There were other games as well, but this was clearly a favorite with my age group. A separate memory, not in a photo, was returning to Huseby Camp a year later to be taught how to swim by the KING’S GUARDS! Alas, they no longer offer this service.

Other photos from those two-and-a-half years in Oslo include ones of swimming and rowing in the fjord; fishing for tiny crabs using bamboo poles—with mussels raked up from the shoreline as bait—and tossing all the crabs back in when we grew tired of it; putting on our skis in the yard since we could ski right out the gate and into nature; taking a tram downtown with my grandmother to feed dried ends of whole-grain bread to the ducks swimming in a pond behind the Royal Palace; picking mushrooms and lingonberries in nearby forests; and a special photo taken on Christmas Eve in my grandmother’s living room in the four-story home—if you count the full attic and basement—where Jule Nissen, their name for Santa Claus, knocked at the door and came right in with a bag of presents for us. The most poignant photo from this time, however, was right at the end of it. It shows me and two friends, one older and the other younger, lined up next to my luggage as I’m preparing to go back to California with my dad. We are a trio of sad yet courageous girls in the photo, heartbroken yet determined to be brave. Two of us remain great friends more than six decades later. 

From this point on I lived exclusively with my dad except for visits to Norway every other summer. My dad, not an openly affectionate man as a Norwegian of a certain era, was more stoic than emotional.  An older teen when World War II broke out, he had endured the occupation by Germans for most of the war until escaping to Sweden towards the end to train as a policeman. These Norwegians were trained to help keep peace when the war ended until the rightful government could be reestablished.

During the dozen years we lived together after returning to California, my dad did his best to fill in for the lack of a larger family. Without the affection of my grandmother and aunts, however, it was lonely at times. He nevertheless poured attention into me as shown in photos of us enjoying nature and travel, cultural experiences, good food, museums, a diversity of exhibits and events, planetarium shows, classical concerts, flamenco performances, dog shows, missions and other historic places, and even in a 1968 trip over the border into Mexico where I got the “revenge,” though he somehow managed to escape it. I know the timeframe of this last memory as it took place as it was nearing, though not yet the end of, the original Star Trek series which we both enjoyed.

There were more photos for me to go through, but I no longer felt a need to. For me, the mystery was already solved. While it was difficult for my father to tell me he loved me, or even to be physically affectionate, it was clear now that I was deeply and truly loved. He showed me in the only way he knew how… through giving me the world as he saw it. Many thanks to my dad, Jan, who never got the full praise he deserved while he lived. Rest in peace, dad, I love you.