There's a Haitian saying, "Pitit moun se lave you bo, kite youm bo." When you bathe other people's children, it says, you should was one side and leave the other side dirty. I suppose this saying cautions those who care for other people's children not to give over their whole hearts, because they will never get a whole heart back.
Danticat was raised by her uncle from the age of four to the age of twelve,and this quote relates directly to him and the way in which he loved her as his own for eight years, only to see her return to her parents in another country, barely seeing her again. In fact, the only way in which he was able to find out what happened to her in later life was through her father, and after he became too sick to converse, through the memoir she penned.
Although her uncle gave her his whole heart, he was never able to get her whole heart in return because she was always waiting, and waiting....and waiting....for her parents to let her know that they would be reunited.
What I learned from my father and uncle, I learned out of sequence and in fragments. This is an attempt at cohesiveness, and at recreating a few wondrous and terrible months when their lives and mine intersected in startling ways, forcing me to look forward and back at the same time. I am writing this only because they can't.
Danticat decided to write her memoir in an attempt to keep her father and her uncle connected when her father's health prevented him from doing so. Like most of us, she was told family anecdotes, stories, fishing stories that were grossly exaggerated, but she had never heard the story of her family's life, or the part with her in it, Perhaps to try to find her place in the world and in the family she grew up in but never really understood, she writes a memoir to make sense of everything to herself. She also looks forward in time to see where her life might lead her as a result of where she has come from.
She also looks at her uncle and her father as people who existed before her life began, trying to find a common thread during the period of time in which they all co-existed. Their stories to her are all individual, but they intersect at certain stages, and it is this intersection of one generation and another that inspires her to write the memoir.
