Back to Childhood

my mom cutting my hair

I've been taken back to childhood over the past couple of weeks.

About two weeks ago, I noticed a few pimply-looking things on my body. I thought it was heat rash, a mild rash I had every summer during my years in Towson, these little water-filled things on my body that never amounted to anything much, and went away once the hot, humid, weather passed. What I had this time was not a heat rash; a few days later I was diagnosed with chickenpox, an illness most people come down with when they are children.

One year, while we were living in Zaria, every friend I had came down with the chickenpox, but, for some reason, it skipped our house. Neither my sister, Emily, nor I, came down with it. I always attributed this to my awesome immune system, which I still brag about.

After I had moved away from Towson, sometime while I was in college or living in California, Emily told me she had gone to a doctor, who told her that she had had chickenpox. This, of course, surprised me. I now assumed that we both got a mild case of the chickenpox that year, back in Zaria. I still thought I had an awesome immune system, because now my thinking was, my immune system was so awesome that I got the chickenpox, and didn't even know it. I guess my immune system was weakened at some point.

The nurse I talked to was positive that I picked it up in my crazy traveling, from Edinburgh, to Oxford, to London, to New York, to Washington, to Towson, and then to Mountain View and back, a few days later. I slept little for a couple of weeks and was in closed spaces with a lot of strangers; a bad combination. I was now going to be trapped in the house, during the hottest, most humid days, Towson had seen in a long time; with a one-room air conditioning unit that was used to attempt to cool down an entire floor (it brought the 100F+ temperatures outside to 90F inside - not the kind of relief I was really hoping for).

Trapped in the house, I decided to do something productive.

I had started putting together a DVD of my mother's memorial and burial services several months ago. I recorded everything that happened, got Lauren to interview people to talk about my mother; it was good, but it was missing something. The whole thing seemed a little depressing, so I wanted to put together a slideshow of pictures of my mother, covering as much of her life as I could. I thought this would be a good time, sitting in the house, with my mother's presence everywhere, to look through the many photos in a gigantic tupperware bin in the basement.

I was taken back to my childhood.

As expected, I found a lot of pictures of my mother. Pictures of a woman who looked almost unrecognizable to me, taken when she was very young, to the woman I saw last year, goofing around with my niece. What I didn't expect, was to see pictures of me, from times I barely remember, had forgotten entirely, or was too young to possibly remember.

Pictures of me as a college student, the first time I grew out my dreadlocks, pictures of a trip to California with my family, when Emily got pooped on, twice, by seagulls, in a matter of minutes; pictures of my chubby 13-year-old self, who was a stranger in this country; a picture of me holding my teeth in my palm, waiting (I guess) for the tooth fairy. Pictures of me and my mother; her cutting my hair, which I still think of as the safest feeling I've ever had; my mother and I playing in some body of water. Pictures of my father and me; me standing with my dad when I was four; my dad holding me as a baby. Pictures of my sisters and I; Affie, my older sister, playing with me when I was in diapers; Emily and I, when she was in diapers.

Affie and I

The picture that struck me most, that I came across, was one of all five of us, in Arizona, the only year all five of us went from Zaria to Arizona. What struck me about this picture, and all of them, to some degree, is just how normal our family looks in it. I always think of this multicultural life I've lived, and how different my family is from most families in the world, but in the end, we're pretty normal. We all laughed (except Emily) when the seagull pooped on her twice, and we all cried when my mother died.

I'm now getting over the chickenpox, my body covered with hundreds of scabs, but I can now go out into the world; the adult world, maybe now leaving that part of my childhood behind. It's rare for someone to say they were glad they got sick, but I'm glad I got the chickenpox, and I kind of wish I have some permanent scars, to remind me of those two weeks, when I was taken back to my childhood.

my mother, Affie, and my father, look on, while Emily and I play in the water