There was a time, very briefly, in my childhood, when we looked like a happy family.
There was a time when Mom, Dad, Imsety, Satis, AJ and I lived together in peace and joy.
Somehow, that peace and joy was broken, and we became the fractured clan that we are today. A clan that bears little resemblance to the one with which I grew up.
I think it started with the birth of my little sister Sierra. Mom and Dad were not expecting her, and Mom just seemed overwhelmed with it all. And by that time, our nanny Halima had already left, so mom and dad were on their own with her.
The other big bombshell that dropped for us was when my brothers, AJ and Imsety, were sent to Fort Starch. I think that, even more than Sierra's birth, was the straw that broke the camel's back.
At the time it happened, I was still a child, so I couldn't understand why my brothers had to go away, or what they had done that was so bad that they had to go away. It made me depressed. My sister Satis tried to make me understand, but her gentle explanations still didn't help me feel better.
It wasn't Sierra's fault that our family started tearing apart when she was born. Nor was it AJ or Imsety's faults. I just think it was the stress that combined to just tear us loose, to the point where none of us have real relationships anymore.
Dad, he tried to duct-tape us together, eating dinners with us and doing what he could to hold us together, but mom just seemed, you know, checked out. It was like, she got so caught up in her career and its successes that she lost sight of what was really important.
By the time my youngest sister and brother were born, Mom had really checked out, and our butler Max made it really easy for her to do it. Poor Max was so overwhelmed with my little sister Skylar when she was born that he almost quit.
Whatever happened, somewhere along the way, we forgot how to be a family. We forgot the basics.
