Finding Chika: A Little Girl, an Earthquake, and the Making of a Family

At the orphanage, Albom often sang lullabies to the children at bedtime, and he continued this for Chika in Michigan. Once, while Chika was staying with a family friend of Albom and Janine’s, she insisted on sending him a video message in which she sang his own lullaby back to him, slightly altered to her own unique take. Albom admits that watching the video still makes him cry.

Albom tells Chika’s ghost about his ideas of fatherhood and where they originated. Albom’s own father was a strong, compassionate man who only spoke as much as he needed to. Albom remembers his father as being a source of protection and safety—someone he could always rely on. Albom took Chika to meet his father shortly before the latter died, and Chika referred to him as “Pop Pop.” Albom talked to his father about the effort parenthood requires, and his father simply responded, “That’s what having children is” (114). Albom hopes that he grew into some of his father’s traits and that he was able to pass on to Chika and the other children at the orphanage the sense of safety he felt with his own father. Albom recalls Chika’s vibrant clothing and the headbands she wore to cover the bald patch she discovered one night in the mirror.