When I was in counseling during my divorce drama, I was told to ask my family for stories from when I was tiny. My counselor said my inability to trust and my abandonment issues may be the result of early childhood trauma I cannot remember. 

I was in New York at a family reunion so I cornered each person and asked. My parents just looked puzzled did not have any answers. My older brother Paul didn’t have anything to offer. Winnie was not there. When I asked Lani (14 years my senior), she told me: “You had an amazing childhood!” She seemed offended that I would wonder. She was sitting across the room at Paul’s in the living room.  Lani was a storyteller, so I settled into the recliner and prepared to listen. 

Dad and Mom lost Timmy to cerebral malaria when he was four. Dad tried to do CPR on him and wouldn’t accept he was dead. They drove his body up to Aba to bury. He would have been five  years older than you if he had lived. But they only wanted four children so maybe you wouldn’t have been born. Mom lost a baby on the first try, but you were perfect. I got to take care of you, and carried you on my back like the African moms. You went everywhere I went. I took correspondence school so I could stay with you. Paul and Winnie were both at boarding school so it was just us. I told you stories, read to you and taught you to read, played imaginary games with you, and we spent all our time together. I rode my bike with you tied on my back. 

“What about mom and dad?" 

They never got over losing Timmy. They worked most of the time. I loved taking care of you.

I think to myself she must have missed friends her own age to play with. Or her teachers? She made it sound like she was disciplined enough to study by herself without supervision, while being solely responsible for a baby. She rambled on, while I watched her, not really paying much attention. She started telling me about how we ordered things from the Montgomery Ward catalog for presents. 

Mom got me a huge paint set from America for my birthday. I was so excited, I was going to paint a mural on the back of my bedroom door of a sunset.

Suddenly she scrunched up her face, balled up her fists and her voice went high and squeaky, child-like. Her face was red with anger. 

You tried to help me paint and messed up my mural, smeared my special paints all around my room!  And I got in trouble for it!

Her voice returns to normal as I stare in astonishment.. She moved through my toddler phase, naps in my screened crib (which I remember had a lock on the outside), and on to my being three. She then started becoming tearful. 

I had to go back to the States for my last year of high school when you were three. You packed your little suitcase and I packed mine. We drove to the Isiro airport.You put your little bag next to mine on the luggage cart for the plane. I took you up in the plane with me to show you where Jesus would be sitting next to me, and let you sit there for a bit. When it was time to go you started screaming and clung to my legs, refusing to let go. Mom had to drag you away. My last memory was of Mom telling you; “I will  give you something to cry about if you don’t stop screaming”. They didn’t even wave goodbye to me. 

Her story of my childhood was done, and she moved on to how she and Paul were in Wheaton Academy finishing high school in Illinois and Mom and Dad still in Africa. They were even younger than I was when they were left in America for school without parents.