Writing inspired by the following SWC prompts:

Who made who? Who made you?

Becoming Me

by Michaela Fricek

The story of my origins is difficult to explain, and it certainly doesn’t align with what’s written on my birth certificate. As you know, a name must be listed for both the mother and the father, along with the child’s own name. But the names on that document don’t tell the real story. The two people listed weren’t truly my parents.

Let me introduce myself: Katharina Glück. Born on August 14, 1967, in Vienna, at the Goldenes Kreuz, a private hospital.

The parents I grew up with were not the ones who had made me. The woman I called “mother” was cold and distant. She believed it would be easier to raise a foster child – a child who, on some subconscious level, rejected her.

I have to admit, I wasn’t an easy child. I was tormented by terrible fears and vivid nightmares. I would scream in my sleep, battling demons that visited only at night. My anxiety created a vicious circle: it triggered my foster mother’s anxiety, which she fought hard to conceal. She was afraid of so many things, and she shared them all with me.

There was the bad man who would appear once the streetlights were switched on. There was Doomsday, which she said would arrive soon, bringing earthquakes and fire. Only those who prayed hard enough would be saved, she said. And then there was my real father, at least in her telling. She claimed he watched us from a distance with binoculars when we were in the park. She said she saw him, standing near the playground, watching us from above. Every time I turned to look, he was never there. Was he just a figment of her imagination? Did he really exist? Her fantasy was so vivid that once, she even claimed he was not properly dressed.

That frightened me. But more than anything, I wanted to comfort her. Sometimes, it felt as though I were the mother, and she the frightened child.

My foster father was more affectionate, though a bit eccentric. I could feel that he loved me, just as I was. But fidelity wasn’t his strong suit, and I could sense how much my foster mother suffered because of that. Like a mangy dog, he was drawn to every woman between 16 and 60. Though she believed he had never cheated on her, he left us when I was only four. He had been seeing a woman from a village in Lower Austria for almost three years by then.

When I turned nine, I felt like Pippi Longstocking – bold and determined. With the help of my best friends, I began my mission to find my real parents. There had to be documents somewhere. We just needed the right strategy. My foster mother was a housewife and home most of the time, but she was also lonely.

Beatrice, my best friend, had overheard that she was looking for a new husband. So, we arranged for a quality Austrian newspaper to be delivered to our house—one that included a large section of lonely-hearts ads.

One evening, my foster mother said, “My dear Katharina, I’m going out tonight. I won’t be long. You’re old enough to stay on your own. You can even have a friend sleep over.“

Trying to seem casual, I replied, “Sure, that’s fine.”

Finally, the search could begin. I was overjoyed.

“Beatrice,” I whispered once she arrived, “we have to be fast. I don’t know when she’ll be back. Let’s go through every folder we can find.”

We searched for two hours but found nothing, only some strange coins from the Azores. One side showed two monkeys kissing; the other, a large sunflower.

“This doesn’t help us at all, Beatrice,” I sighed.

“How can you say that?” she replied. “It could be a sign!”

“You’re letting your imagination run wild. Coins aren’t clues. We need real documents.”

“We’ve looked through nearly everything and found nothing. Maybe you should ask your foster mother. Tell her you had a dream about the coins.”

And so, I did.

She looked at me, startled. “Wow, Katharina, you really are a little prophet. How did you know? MS, those are the initials of your mother: Marietta Stevens. I had tried to get pregnant for a long time. I wanted a child so badly. Then a friend told me about the option of taking in a foster child. The babies were handed over right after birth at the Goldenes Kreuz.

“Your mother was very young when she got pregnant. Keeping you would have been impossible. And your father – he was much older. He was also the priest of the village she lived in. It would have caused a scandal. So, when she was four months along, she was sent to live with her aunt in Vienna.”

“And what do you know about my father?”

“Not much. He already had two children. They live in different places now. As you know, a Catholic priest isn’t allowed to have children.”

“What’s his name?”

“João Antonio Silves. He lives in Horta.”