As a child, I often played with the thought of having been born as a different person, for example, as one of my friends, as the neighbor’s kid, or as if I had been one of my own siblings. I chose Tatabánya because it was the place where my two step-siblings from the second marriage of my father lived. We had lost contact a long time before, and it was a strange thought that we had known nothing about each other. When I went to Tatabánya, I had the chance to assume their lives a little bit. Not their childhood, only their present: the end of their adolescence. I befriended their friends and spent two summers with them.
By that time, my father had divorced again, and he did not keep in touch with my siblings either, due to the spoilt marriage. This I found a little disturbing, and he was disturbed that I cared. He died in 2012, so it does not bother him anymore if I speak about this. Looking back from here, it is easier to see that this was also an attempt at family therapy. For a short period, it brought the family together again; we started to talk to each other again, and we knew about each other. But as it came, it mostly passed. As for myself, something was made a whole again, but it was not enough to make a lasting impact on the life of the others.
