Memory Keeper: Annie, LitClub Member
Storyteller: Ms. Simon
Site: Children of Haiti Project
THE HAPPIEST MOMENT OF MY LIFE
My childhood was the best time of my life because until the age of 16, I lived in the comfort of my home and under the protective shadow of my parents and grandparents.
I lived in Torbeck in a family of eight children in a large courtyard where nothing was lacking: sugar cane fields, numerous coconut trees, mango trees, soursop trees, corn and potato plantations, oxen, goats, turkeys, chickens, and more.
At the time, despite all this, I didn't think I was so happy.
This is because I had to obey demands and perform a few small household chores, but for the rest of the time, I was free to play with my friends. There was no electricity, no screens, no televisions, no telephones, but we could jump rope, ride bikes, ride horses, play jacks, dominoes, cards, football, swim in the river, organize picnics, do theater, go for walks, or tell each other sometimes scary stories at nightfall during the full moon. At the end of each day, I could hear our mother's voice calling us: so-and-so, come to bed. And my grandfather, "It's getting late, you laugh too loudly. Especially you, Eyonie."
When there was class, we would gather in the evenings around a table with a kerosene lamp in the middle to study. It was a family of eight children born to a very young mother. But she would go through two years of difficult times and suffering before passing away at 42.
So, the children would be separated. I was supposed to meet my father in town, and a year later, he died in an accident.
So, I returned to my mother's house a week after the funeral with a novel by Marie-Louise Fisher titled The Veil of Love. This captivating story absorbed me, and I spent days and nights reading and re-reading it.
It was like a kind of refuge, it took me away from my sadness. I was swept along with the author in her adventures.
Reading embraced me; it had become like a vehicle to move me.
A few days later, I was reading Martin Gray's In the Name of All Mine. He lost his entire family in a fire, and through this story, I gathered my courage and got back on my feet. I was able to understand that reading was like a kind of therapy for my anxieties. It gave me a layer of maturity and built a bridge between my teenage and adult lives.