In his only interview since his dramatic Christmas Eve reunion with the son for whom he has waged a five-year international custody battle, David Goldman revealed that Sean, 9, has yet to call him Dad. “But now we’re together and we'll heal,” Goldman said.
“He hasn’t really called me anything,” Goldman told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira in Orlando, Fla., where he and Sean were getting reacquainted after their long separation. “And I think he’s struggling with that. I said, ‘You can call me Dad.’ And he didn’t say anything.”
But Goldman feels certain that day will come. For now, it’s enough that the long nightmare that began when his Brazilian wife took Sean to Brazil in 2004 for what was to be a two-week vacation is over.
A Christmas miracle
The way it ended, with a Christmas Eve handover in downtown Rio de Janeiro, seemed to have something of the supernatural about it.
“It’s a miracle,” Goldman told Vieira. “There was 364 other days that [it] could’ve been, if he ever were going to come home. But it was Christmas Eve. Somebody’s up there for sure. That’s amazing.”
Vieira asked Goldman to describe Christmas Eve and Christmas, the first night and day the two have spent together in five years.
“Two beautiful nights,” is how Goldman described it. “There are no words to describe the pain and suffering these last five years. And there’s no words to describe how joyous and wonderful it is to be with my son again.”