He Doesn’t Remember. I Do.

The four months my son may have forgotten, and the experience that changed the way I trust people with him.

I was sitting on the bed in a hotel room on Naval Station Norfolk when my brother called me losing his mind.

I was quarantining before deployment. My three-year-old son was five and a half hours away in Charlotte, staying with my brother and his family because I was about to spend the next four months at sea.

My sister-in-law wasn’t home. It was just my brother and Cristian.

And Cristian had shit on a comforter.

My brother was irate.

He was yelling about how Cristian had gotten shit everywhere, how he didn’t understand why he wouldn’t just say he had to use the bathroom, why he would go hide instead. He was yelling about the comforter and whether he’d even be able to get it clean.

And somewhere on the other end of that phone, my child was there.

Probably crying. Probably hiding. Definitely hearing it.

And me?

I apologized.

That’s the part that still bothers me.

Because every instinct in me wanted to defend my child. I wanted to tell my brother not to yell at him. I wanted to remind him that Cristian was still so little. I wanted to be his mother in the way I knew how to be his mother.

But I couldn’t.

All I could do was shrink.

“I can’t believe he did that. I’m so sorry.”

Because what else was I supposed to do?

I was sitting in a hotel room in another state. I couldn’t leave because I was quarantining for deployment. Cristian’s father was also preparing to deploy. My parents were both dead. I didn’t have another family member standing by waiting to take my child for four months.

My brother had my son.

So I couldn’t afford to piss off the person who had my son.

And that is a kind of helplessness I don’t ever want to feel again.

I Had a Plan

The messed-up part is, I had done everything I could think of to prevent exactly this kind of situation.

Before I left, we were living in Virginia Beach, and Cristian attended a daycare that I absolutely adored.

After a terrible experience we’d had at a previous childcare center, finding this place felt like a godsend.

They loved Cristian.

And I don’t mean the generic “Oh, we love all our kids!” kind of love.

They knew him.

They had patience with him. They worked with him. They poured into my child. I trusted them, which was not something that came easily to me by then.

So when I found out there was a location from the same childcare company in Charlotte, I thought, Perfect.

If I couldn’t be with him, at least I could give him some consistency.

I contacted the school.

I talked to the directors.

I had his teachers in Virginia speak with the teachers in Charlotte so they could basically give them the full download on all things Cristian.

What worked.

What didn’t.

What he needed.

Who he was.

I wasn’t just dropping my baby off in another state and hoping everybody figured it out.

I had a plan.

My brother knew the plan. My sister-in-law knew the plan. Everybody was on board.

Cristian’s dad and I packed his things, drove him to Charlotte and got him settled.

And then I left my baby.

I cried.

Of course I cried.

But underneath the sadness, I kept telling myself that I had done everything I could do. He was with family. His school was arranged. The people taking care of him knew what to expect.

He was going to be okay.

Then I got to my hotel.

My brother called.

The school I had arranged was thirty minutes away from his house, and he didn’t want to make that drive every day.

So Cristian wasn’t going.

Just like that.

The plan I had spent all that time putting together was gone.

And what could I say?

Again:

He had my child.

Then Everything Started Unraveling

They enrolled Cristian somewhere else.

That lasted maybe two weeks.

The school said they didn’t have the staff to support him.

Cristian hadn’t been diagnosed with autism yet. At the time, I didn’t have a name for some of the things that seemed harder for him than they were for other kids his age. I just knew my child, and I knew he needed patience.

One of the issues was nap time. Cristian wouldn’t stay lying down on his cot.

When the school called to tell me my son could no longer attend, I remember the laughing and snickering on the phone while they told me he wasn’t welcome back.

I was in another state listening to adults laugh while telling me they couldn’t handle my child.

Then came another daycare.

And there always seemed to be something wrong with Cristian.

A bad report at pickup.

He wasn’t fully potty trained.

He could pee in the toilet, but bowel movements took us longer.

And instead of that being treated like something a little kid was still learning, the way it was communicated made it feel like one more thing that was wrong with my child.

Then one day, Cristian hit one of his teachers.

And this grown woman hit my child back.

The daycare ultimately fired her.

But firing her didn’t change the fact that while I was out in the middle of the ocean, an adult had put her hands on my son.

I couldn’t go get him.

I couldn’t hug him.

I couldn’t walk into the building demanding answers.

I couldn’t put him in my car and say, You’re never coming back here again.

I was his mother.

And I couldn’t protect him.

The Part He Doesn’t Remember

That entire deployment was one of the darkest periods of my life.

I put on a happy face.

I did my job.

But mentally and emotionally, I suffered tremendously.

I am attached to my child. There is nobody on this earth I love more than Cristian.

And knowing that I had put him in a situation where I didn’t believe he was being given the best, afforded the best or treated the best ate at me.

There were moments when I questioned whether I could stay in the Navy.

That’s complicated, because the Navy has also given me the tools and financial stability to provide for my son. It has allowed me to give him opportunities, security and the life I believe he deserves.

But what good did any of that feel like when my job had taken me somewhere I couldn’t get to him?

I carried an enormous amount of guilt.

And family didn’t make that easier.

I’ve never had the cookie-cutter, movie-screen family where everybody is close and Grandma has a key to the house and somebody is always available to pick up the kids.

That’s not my family.

My father died when I was young. My mother died when I was a young adult. I’m not particularly close to my siblings.

So when both Cristian’s father and I had military obligations that took us away at the same time, I had to rely on people I already wasn’t completely comfortable relying on.

I didn’t have some giant village.

I had the options I had.

And when I left Cristian in Charlotte, I remember hoping and praying for one thing:

Please treat him better than you treat me.

That’s hard to admit.

But it’s the truth.

And instead of those four months proving my fears wrong, they solidified reservations that were already there.

Later, my sister-in-law told me that during the comforter incident, my brother had called her so angry that she stopped what she was doing and came home.

She was worried enough about the situation that she felt like she needed to be there.

I don’t know exactly what would have happened if she hadn’t gone home.

And I don’t need to know.

The fact that the question even exists is enough for me.

Something shifted permanently in the way I saw my brother after that.

Because I came away from that experience believing he hadn’t taken Cristian for four months because he genuinely wanted his nephew there.

I believe he did it because I was his little sister, I needed help, and he thought helping me was something an older brother was supposed to do.

Maybe someone else would say that should be enough.

For me, it wasn’t.

Because my child isn’t an obligation.

He Forgot. I Didn’t.

Here’s the crazy part.

I don’t think Cristian remembers any of this.

He’s nine now.

I could probably ask him about those months in Charlotte and get a blank stare.

The daycare.

The comforter.

The teacher.

The screaming.

The constant transitions.

Maybe there are pieces somewhere in his brain. Maybe there aren’t.

But I remember.

Cristian may not have been traumatized by those four months. His mother was.

And it changed me.

To this day, I don’t like leaving him somewhere for extended periods of time unless he’s with his father.

One night? Maybe.

Beyond that, I’m uncomfortable.

Cristian will never spend another night at my brother’s house.

My relationship with my brother is almost nonexistent now. I don’t have a relationship with his wife. They see Cristian when they see him.

And I know somebody could look at that and say:

Crystal, that happened years ago.

Your brother kept your child when you needed him.

The teacher got fired.

Cristian doesn’t even remember.

Everybody survived.

Why are you still holding onto it?

Fuck that.

Because when it comes to my child, you only have to show me once.

Show me once that you don’t care for him in the way I believe you should.

Show me once that his needs are an inconvenience.

Show me once that when things get difficult, patience disappears.

Show me once that my child feels like a burden to you.

And you don’t have to worry about him anymore.

I chose to bring Cristian into this world.

Protecting him is my responsibility.

And during one of the most vulnerable periods of my life, I handed someone the most precious thing I have and trusted them to take care of him.

I came away feeling like that precious thing had been treated like a burden.

I don’t need anybody to agree with the boundary that created in me.

I don’t need anyone to tell me it happened a long time ago.

And I don’t need Cristian to remember it for my experience of it to matter.

Because sometimes our children move on from things they were too young to remember.

And the parent remembers enough for both of them.