WHAT IS NOT THERE? by Hans B. Hallundbaek

My childhood is what is not there.
I had a childhood of course, we all did. But I have spent most of my life running away from it, faster and faster the older I got; like seeking the pot of gold at the end of the ever escaping rainbow.

If twenty years ago you had asked me about my childhood, I would have tried to convince you that it was great, just like I had succeeded convincing myself.

But one day in a silent retreat at Mohonk Mountain House mediating and reminiscing I finally realized in a flash that I had a lousy childhood.

I was born in the height of the depression of the thirties on the flat, poor, windswept west coast of far away Denmark. A typical weather forecast would say: Tomorrow rain all day, possibly interrupted by heavy showers. I do not recall that we had umbrellas in those days, so I guess we just got wet.

But of course the weather was only a small part of the issue. We were occupied for five years by the Nazis, who had decided to build the largest military airport five miles east of our house. That was not a problem until the allied forces three years into the war got their act together and with much determination bombed the airport with scheduled regularity, first by the cover of night and later in day time raids.

They would come in from the west over our house on the way to the airfield. Brigades of flying fortresses B-19 or was it B-23’s, cruising in tight formation at 15.000 feet on their way to the target. Five minutes later these flying bird-machines would lay their strings of eggs over the airfield. They would drop from the opened bomb bay and they would whine demonically as they hurled towards their targets. There in rapid succession they would explode with large thumps. The vibrations shook the ground for miles and reached all the way to our house where we huddled in the basement. I was five and I was scared. My parents prayed and tried to comfort me as I struggled to be brave.

In retrospect the bombing raids, were not the worst part of my childhood, for I was told the Americans were there to liberate us.

The worst part was that I was convinced I was a mistake. Technically I was, for I was born the youngest of four children, and 9 years after my next sibling, when my parents were in their forties.

This meant that they must have had sex at that ripe old age of forty, which was not well thought of in a old fashioned Lutheran church community where each Sunday morning the priest assured ignorant poor farmers and children alike that they were born sinners heading  straight to hell unless we were washed in the blood of Christ.

I do not know how the others took that idea, but for me it was a disgusting thought and the supposed light of Christ’s love never illuminated my childhood darkness.