An awakening

I never wanted to hear the usual bedtime stories. I was his princess and he was my hero, and that was enough. Instead, I wanted him to tell me tales from his childhood. So he did. 

Growing up in the 60s, he said, was in many ways like living in a fairytale. Even though his own life was filled with angst and hardship, he was always told that he lived in the best of societies. The rest of the world envied the stability and security enjoyed by common men in his country, and the economic model embraced by the government seemed flawless. 

But the Swedish nation, he said, suddenly encountered difficult problems in the early 70s. Problems that no one had expected and that came to define my father's life through his father, and in a way also affected me. It seems there is no escaping a lie that transcends generations: the one about the final state of perfection.