Where My Heart First Set Down
Updated: Aug 26
Monrovia, Liberia
Our green-and-white house in Gaye Town—"way inside, behind Joe's Bar," we told the taxi drivers—was where my mind began collecting my earliest memories.
Where my heart first set down.
You know, that place where you run freely, wander without worry, and live somewhere between innocence and discovery.
Back then, this little corner of Gaye Town, set between a Bassa community and a swamp, was home. I can still see my six-year-old self, barefoot, balancing on top of the whitewashed fence surrounding our house and playing “Blade” in the sand with brothers Benjamin and Saturday. Their world was only a hop over that fence—though hopping the fence was very much forbidden.
Thirty-three years later, on a visit to Liberia, I found my way back to Gaye Town, eager to see if the house was still standing.
It was. The porch remained green, and the whitewashed fence still held its ground. My two older sisters and I stood there, quietly taking it in.
Suddenly, I was a child again. I hadn't realized how much of that little corner of Gaye Town I still carried within me.
I asked the woman who lived there if we could go inside. The tenant was gracious.
I stood in the living room, looking first to the corner where our Christmas tree once stood, then down the long hallway that led to our childhood bedrooms. I left happy knowing the old house was still being cared for.
Fourteen years later, I returned to Gaye Town. This time, I brought my son, who was eager to see the childhood playground he’d heard so much about.
I sighed as we pulled up beside the house. It looked weathered and broken, the green and white paint chipped and faded. What remained of the old fence leaned wearily. Clothes hung drying on a blue line stretched between the porch and a section of stone still standing. Squatters now called it home.
My son walked beside me along the familiar path outside the gate. I found the old well, still in its usual place. As a child, I used to lean over its edge and lower a metal bucket on a rope, trying my best to draw water. Most times, after all that work, the bucket returned with only a few inches sloshing around in the bottom.
Of course, I couldn't just stand there. I peered down into the well, feeling like the girl I used to be.
Then I turned to my son and pointed toward the swamp. That had been forbidden, too.
On Saturdays, when Mom and Dad ran errands in town, I followed the brothers into the swamp. Sometimes I rode on their backs, my feet dangling inches above the mud as we crossed from one dry patch to another.
The boys collected “kissmees”—long snails—in the murky water while I waited on a sandy patch nearby. Later, we cooked them in a rusted vegetable can over a small fire, sucking the meat from the shells with a sharp kissing sound. Then we would throw back our heads and laugh, shouting, "Kiss me, kiss me!"
Those days felt as though they would go on forever. Today, they live only in my memory—though I would gladly step back into that world, if only for a single day.
That longing to return to the way things once were isn't mine alone. I've heard it in the voices of others who, like me, were raised in a culture different from their parents'—only to have life carry them back to the country their parents once called home.
But truly, anyone who has ever longed to step back into the world they knew as a child understands this ache.
You can return to the town you left, the city, or even the country. You can walk the old paths. You can even stand in front of the house. But you cannot return to the way it felt to live there. The people have changed. We have changed. Only in our minds can we find home exactly as we left it.
Perhaps memory itself is a gift—God's way of keeping those experiences alive within us. I can never go back to the childhood I remember, but how fortunate I was to have lived it. Those years became a permanent part of who I am: the way I see people, the way I understand differences, and the ease I feel connecting across cultures. For that, I am deeply grateful.
If you are lucky enough to have grown up somewhere that became a part of who you are, you know the quiet pull that still reaches for that beginning—where your mind first collected its earliest memories. Where your heart first set down. Maybe, like me, you would love one more moment inside that world.
Where is that place for you? The one you would give almost anything to step back into, and find exactly as you left it?
—Georgie
This line expresses perfectly the gratitude I feel for having grown up a White girl in Navajo Country: "I can never go back to the childhood I remember, but how fortunate I was to have lived it." Thank you, Georgie.