This essay isn’t about the ethical and legal issues that Trump and his entourage have created in America. We are living in extremely troubling times in America due to our TACO president. However, for the moment, this isn’t about Trump or his equally illiterate staff.

What personally troubles me is my inability to recall events. In my twilight years, my body and mind age with me. I used to run cross country in high school and college. I would look apathetic if I tried to hobble several miles today. I exercise on an elliptical trainer to stay in shape.

As for my mind, it is forgetful. If I’m watching a movie, it will take me some time to recall the names of some of the actors. As with running, my memory hobbles sometimes. I write three essays weekly and can still make logical sense related to the topic of my articles.

However, this essay is about what I can’t recall from my childhood. We all forget things from our childhood to the present day. That is a given. I can live with that...kind of. What bothers me is my inability to remember my very early years. This is one of the earliest photos of me. I’m the one with my mouth wide open when I was just a few weeks old. My maternal grandfather stood on one side of my mother, and I was between my mother and my great-grandfather, who wore a black derby hat on the other side.

This cute photo is of me and Green Eyes, who lived on my cousins’ farm.

This is a photo of me ready to bale hay.

While I have pictures of me down on the farm, I don’t remember the scene at all.

I have some vague memories of being with my mother and her two sisters in the attic of my maternal grandparents' home. I recall only half a minute of that time together. I remember my mother and her youngest sister told me to say something to their middle sister. At the time, I didn’t know what one of the words meant, but it was their way of teasing their sister. I was under 3 years old at the time. My father wasn’t around due to World War II.

I recall being in my grandparents' backyard. I know my grandfather was there with me, but I can’t remember seeing him. What I do remember was a fishpond with large goldfish.

The only other thing that I recall from my early childhood occurred sometime in late 1945 or early 1946. My grandfather drove over to my parents’ home just after the war. It was dark out. All that I can remember is that I saw lights flashing in front of my home. It was a fire truck. Apparently, my grandfather drove less than a mile from his house to ours with his brakes on. By the time he arrived, someone had called the fire department due to the smoke. Again, I don’t recall my grandfather; I remember only the lights of the fire engine.

This is a photo of my paternal grandfather and me at the Jersey Shore. I was probably three or four years old. What haunts me is that while my grandfather loved his first grandchild, I don’t remember him. He died soon after that photo.

Some of my vague memories have been distorted over time. I recall, prior to 4 or 5, running down the street where I lived, attempting to grab the mooring rope from a blimp passing over the neighborhood. Blimps were a common sight for people living in South Jersey. The blimps were stationed at the nearby Lakehurst Naval Air Station.

Those early years, from birth to around age 5, are marked by a lack of clear and accurate memories. All that I have are a handful of vague memories and incomplete moments in time. Take the time to think about the earliest memory that you have.

All children recall some small and vague memories at various times in their early childhood. I asked my brother, Ken, what one of his early memories was. He remembers climbing through our milk box door on the side of our home on Norwood Ave. Back in the 1940s, most houses had a milk box located in the back of homes for milk delivery. Many had milk boxes built into the wall at the back of the house. The milkman delivered the milk and placed the milk bottles into an insulated foot-and-a-half box, which had a door on the outside. Both of us used the milk box to get into our home when our parents weren’t there. Those were early memories that we still possess. But what about those that we don’t recall?

Psychologists call our lack of early memory childhood amnesia. Childhood amnesia typically occurs during the period from birth to approximately 4 or 5 years of age. Nevertheless, there are often vague and fragmented memories of our early childhood. Memories, such as being with my grandfather at the pond with the goldfish, are the rare exceptions. Sadly, the vast majority of events are totally lost. I would love to recall the happy times of my forgotten life growing up in Merchantville and Pennsauken, NJ, or going to the shore or farm.

That is not all that haunts me about memories. Several years ago, my family and I went on a family tour together in Myanmar. We went to many places that Western tourists rarely visit. Set Set Yo is such a place. While visiting this tiny town, I spent my time flipping the young children. If I’m around kid here or overseas, I will either perform my only magic trick of taking money out of their ears or flipping them.

All the children enjoyed being flipped. But the last child that I flipped just stood there after being flipped. She wanted to be flipped again.

I often think about that small child. She wasn’t afraid of being flipped; she wanted me to do it again. I ended our time together, telling her to take care of herself. She won’t remember that exchange between an old American and one of the youngest children in Set Set Yo. Yet, I want her and the rest of the children to know that I cared about them. I merely wanted them to know they were important.

The other child that affected me was a child not even a year old. I don’t recall how I picked her up. Someone must have given her to me to hold.

For an event that had such a profound emotional impact on me, I don’t recall whether the video was taken first or whether this still photo was first. Regardless, this little one and I connected. When I played Scrabble with Ti Ti, my oldest granddaughter, she was 9. Ti Ti was aware that some old guy from the other side of the world saw value in her. When we chat on WhatsApp, we laugh about playing Scrabble. We both have a clear memory of the time we first met.

My great-granddaughter, A Ngal Lay, doesn’t have such a remembrance.

That photo is on my desk in the office, and I wonder what was happening in her brain. A Ngal Lay isn’t her given name. It is my name for her. I kept calling her the little one while I was at Set Set Yo. Finally, I asked Moh Moh, my daughter and mother of Ti Ti, what the Burmese translation was for the little one.

A Ngal Lay haunts me. At one level, she doesn’t have any memory of me. Nonetheless, she is my great-granddaughter. I asked my friend Than to paint the photo.

The little one is standing next to the painting, and the other photo is of it in her home. I wonder what A Ngal Lay thinks when her family and friends talk about her when we met at Set Set Yo.

Several weeks ago, I wrote another article about The Little One, who is getting older. It deals with two mentors of mine: Bobby Kennedy and Robert Neville. Kennedy said, “Every generation inherits a world it never made; and, as it does so, it automatically becomes the trustee of that world for those who come after. In due course, each generation makes its own accounting to its children.”

Neville took Kennedy’s quote a step further. Watch this video from I Am Legend.

Neville wants us to reach out to one another by helping each other.