Thanksgiving

This year I am very thankful. 

Top of my list is finally hearing about our daughter.  For years I have been trying to reach out to her to establish some sort of contact. This summer we finally heard from one of her children and through him about the others. Through our son’s persistence we finally made contact.  It’s been 19 years since we left Syracuse and maybe two years before that when our relationship with our daughter became really strained.  We knew Sterling, her first child, but nothing of the others.  I have been sending birthday cards and Christmas cards but there has never been any acknowledgement so I never knew how life fared for her.  It has been a constant tug at my conscience.  Then this summer through Facebook my son was able to establish contact with her second child, Denzel.  I have not seen him yet but he was able to make a trip to New York and meet some of his relatives there that he had never met. I hope to meet him one day and I hope to establish a more meaningful relationship with Nicole and get to know all her children and grandchild (my great grandchild).

Yes I am also thankful for my health.  I am blessed there.  I can still bike 100 miles in a day and earn 1^st. place in my age group in a 10K race. Most of my former competitors can no longer walk a 10K much less run one. This makes me feel super thankful. 

By far my greatest thankfulness is for the growth, depth and richness of the relationship between my wife and myself.  We have gotten to a place that just makes life and living wonderful. It’s not because we have the means to travel now (we did the Las Vegas/ Grand Canyon this year), nor is it because we have more leisure time for TV or going out to dinner or a show.  Yes, the means and the time helps, but it’s much more than that.  My thankfulness is for the place we have reached in our relationship where we truly care for each other, depend on each other and live for each other.  It’s a place where we talk without reservation; we are each other sounding boards and support system.  In today’s lingo it’s deeper than a BFF. It’s a special place and a special bond.  I hope all my children and grandchildren gets to enjoy this feeling of closeness in their lifetime too.

 I am thankful also for all my children.  Nicole I am still working on re-establishing contact.  Chevol, you will always be my BFF even when we get mad at each other.  You make me happy. Aaron, you are so much better than I was. I admire you.  I am thankful that my grandchildren are happy, healthy and loving.  They are the joys in my life.  I am thankful for each little moment that they each of them chose to spend with me.

Then there are my siblings, my support system.  I am thankful that they are still alive, happy and wonderful.  They make me proud. 

 Yes, this thanksgiving day I have a lot to be thankful for.

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Nicole

After a long hiatus today I am back to log another session. And I am going to leapfrog a whole lot of years. It’s just an occasion that I have to document.

I got married in 1977 and my wife had already had a child, Nicole.  To make our family feel like a family I thought it only right to adopt Nicole. So Nicole is really my first child.  Throughout her childhood I really tried to make Nicole not feel any different or was treated differently than her siblings.  Growing up we were close, she was the only daughter, but somewhere in her teenage years I at times felt uncertain in how to treat Nicole.  There was no overt distancing, just sometimes I was unsure how she felt about me and I was tepid about how to treat her. How I regret those instances.  

But that might not have been the issue. I just remember that exactly on her 18^th birthday Nicole changed.  I think she felt that at that exact age she was a woman.  I remember agonizing about why she felt that at that exact age life has to change.  This behavior eventually caused a rift in the family and Nicole moved out to live with her boyfriend parents.  That was some 35 years ago. 

At the start we kept in touch a little.  It was not a happy relationship but we did see each other occasionally.  Yes I blamed the boyfriend parents.  I could never understand how they would condone such an arrangement.  But I never voiced it to her or him.  I remember when her first child Sterling was born. She brought him to he house and I had a chance to hold him and of course loved him. But rather than bringing us together we grew further apart.

Then my life changed. I had to leave Syracuse and the family moved to North Carolina.  Nicole knew of the move but elected to stay in Syracuse with her new family. Somewhere in the transition, either before or after  the move we lost her phone number and exact address.

Over the years I tried several times to reach out to her. I sent birthday cards every year to one or all the addresses I could find for her. But I never had a response.  I searched the Internet regularly but found nothing. 

There were nights that I would lie awake wondering what could I have done differently? What could I do to mend the relationship?  My name is all over the Internet and her children were older so I am sure they are just as curious as I am so how come they never reached out to us. Why has she never tried to contact us?  How did her children feel about us? 

My eldest son shared some of these feelings and he was digging too. Today he hit a milestone. He found some of Nicole’s children on Facebook

Nicole still lives in Syracuse and now has five children and at least two grandchildren.

·      Children:

o   Sterling IV. Is in the US Airforce and is currently stationed in Virginia

o   Denzel.  Is a student at Le Moyne College studying Communication and Media (2017

o   A Girl. No name yet and that girl also have a daughter

o   Sterling Jr.

o   Another boy, very young

·      Gran Children

o   Sterling IV has a son

o   The daughter now has a daughter.

The picture of this last daughter is what makes me turn to mush.  Such innocence.  Why does she have to grow up in a life of exclusion when there is a whole other family waiting to embrace her?  I hope I get to do just that one-day.

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This Summer I Took My Grand Daughter to Jamaica

This summer I took out eldest grad daughter to Jamaica for two weeks.  It’s a part of our bucket list; to take each of our grand children on an individual trip to Jamaica.  So Desiree as the eldest was the first to make this venture.  It was fought with a lot of apprehension and trepidations on my part.  It has been a long time that I have had to deal with a teenager for any length of time.  Further I had boys and never really had to deal with girls especially teenage girls.  So I had worked myself into a frenzy of what ifs: What if she don’t like the food….  What if she wants to go home after the first day….  What is we can’t get along…. What is she wants to sleep all day….   These were the thoughts going through my head constantly for the weeks and days before the trip.

But there was the other side pushing me. I wanted her to experience the Jamaica that I grew up in, feel the love of the people, experience driving through the country roads and seeing the variety of scenery, enjoying the fruits and yes enjoying the beach too.  The opportunity to show her Jamaica, not the hotels but the true Jamaica was a legacy I just wanted to leave her with.

So we ventured from Charlotte NC in middle June. Flew to Montego Bay then drove to Ocho Rios.  We stayed on Ocho Rios a couple days doing mostly beach and visiting a couple of relatives.  Then we did an island tour; Headed to Montego Bay, stayed in Negril two days, then on to Mandeville where I got lost, can’t believe I could get lost in Jamaica. We stayed in Mandeville only one night but was able to see some relatives I have not seen since I was a child and some new ones I did not know I had.  From Mandeville we drove to Kingston via a toll road, a first for me in Jamaica. We spent about two days in Kingston and was able to see both uptown and down town as well as enjoy lunch a Port Royal. We were able to see my favorite aunt as well. Then it was back to Ocho Rios for a week of low level relaxation and enjoying each other.

Throughout the entire experience her performance was super sensational.  I did not hear a complaint from her.  She started out the first few days not eating as much as we thought she should but once she started it was like ‘where does she put it?’ We ate local every day and she was right there with us hitting that rice and peas with curry or jerk and she was into the fruits and the pastries just like us.  It was a joy to see how acclimated she made herself.  By the end it was like she true Jamaican, born and bred there.

I just hope she enjoyed the experience as much as I enjoyed the experience of sharing it with her.  One down, two more to go.

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In Milford My Sister Joined Us

It was here in Milford that I first met my sister. I don’t remember anything leading up to her birth. It was like one day the world revolved around me, at least from the way I saw it and next day there was this thing with everyone ooh-ing and aah-ing around her. I cannot remember exactly when she was born or even if she was born at home or in a hospital; in fact I don’t remember my mother being pregnant or if the pregnancy was difficult. But I do remember distinctly the joy, happiness and pride that exuded from the family with my sister’s arrival.

We had been living in Milford for some time then and our family had become close friends with many families, especially the Swaurez who lived in the house behind us and the Brown’s (I think) who lived further up the road. So we were very much a part of the community. But with my sister’s birth it seemed like we gained new prominence, there was constant activity in the house. She became the center of the activity with everyone talking about her or doing something with her. I think her coming brought some of the happiest times in my mother’s life.

But I remembered it as turning my world upside down. For eleven years I was like an only child; yes I had to share sometimes with Bill, but that was different, or was it? In any case it felt like all of a sudden my prominence was usurped. I now had to share and compete. I remember feeling like an outcast as my sister became the sudden pride and joy of the family. I do not think it was jealousy it was just new. She was still a joy to be around for by association some of the attention would also fall to me. Know something! Not much has changed, today she is still the center of the family and she is still my pride and joy.

My father had started working at Shaw Park Dairy by then. He was the manager. It was just up the road, about a mile or so from where we lived. I think that was the reason why we moved to Milford in the first place. The dairy itself had not been built as yet and it was more like a milking station then with stalls for about eight or ten ‘milk men’ who did the actual milking (no automation then). I remember spending many afternoon there, just helping ( more likely a nuisance), like feeding the cows to keep them quiet while they were being milked and as I got older being trusted with bigger tasks such as measuring out the amount of milk from each cow and later still recording each cows production in a big record book.

The purpose of the dairy was to supply the hotel with milk but they produced much more than the hotel could use. The extra milk had to be trucked to a main dairy in Bog Walk and my father often made these daily deliveries himself. Also I guess as the manager, he had the privilege of using the vehicles during down time for personal use. And so began the most endearing period of my relationship with my father. I was his constant companion, whenever and wherever he was driving; weather it was over to Bog Walk to deliver milk, or to some impenetrable backwoods and bush just to check up on a distant relative that he has not seen in a while, or my favorite, after a hurricane driving around the island to see the damage. The most fascinating thing about these journeys though was that we could go all day without exchanging a single word! A grunt here, a point of his index finger there or a nod of his head (as only a Jamaican would) or my glance in his direction was about the only exchange we did. But the journey was not strained; far from that, it was entertaining, exciting and special in its closeness. It was something I looked forward to and will always remember as a special time. We communicated, it was just not verbal; it was at a higher level.

It was also about this time that I started realizing the remarkable talent for math that my father had. A part of his job was to keep a tally of how many quarts of milk that each cow gave. So there was this huge record book with a cows name on each line and the date in the column and each day you record how many quarts and fraction of a quart of milk that cow gave. Then at the end of each month you had to add up both those rows and columns and make sure they cross foot. My father could do this in one try, all in his head; with no calculator, computer or even an adding machine, and with only an elementary education, no high school. Later on, when the dairy had sent him back to school ( a school down in the Bay that specialize in accounting) I remember him commenting on finding errors in the class textbook. He was that good!

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We move fron Ochie to Milford

From Ochie we moved up to Milford. It was to one of those ‘row’ houses, that is three rooms stuck to each other in a row. I can remember the exact location. It was about four houses up from the intersection of where the road to Shaw Park/Parry Town intersects with the road from Ocho Rios to Fern Gully. The house was just before where the Shaw Park/Parry Town road splits with the left going on to Parry Town and the right going up to Shaw Park.

The property was not particularly big or interesting. I remember a big bread fruit tree by the gate which I would climb whenever I had to miss school so that I could greet everybody on their way home from school. One of the drawbacks of the house was its close proximity to school. I now had to go home for lunch and gone were the more preferred lunch treats like snow cone, drops, fudge, bullah cake, totoe, gizada, etc. Compared to when we lived in Ochie I now had to save real hard to get some simple treats like icy mints or 'lick and fall back'. A snow cone was now almost out of reach.

Thinking back now though, the house itself was quite remarkable. It was what we would call today an apartment complex. But each 'apartment' was just one room! Ours was the middle. But that one room was sectioned off by curtains and temporary dividers that you felt like it was a whole house in itself. In the very back was the bed room area and even that was sectioned off into my parents area to the left with their big bed and on the right a small area for my cot. In the front on the right was the kitchen and dining area. There was a communal kitchen outside but I don’t think my mother was agreeable to that so my father had rigged up a kerosine stove so that she could cook sometimes inside. To the left of the kitchen area was the living or guest area which became the nursery with a crib when my sister was born. And I can remember Bill being with us sometimes so there was room for him too. All that in one room, and I never thought of it as cluttered, dirty or crowded.

The other ‘apartments’ were just like that. Mr. Brown lived in the first apartment and I don’t remember who lived in the last. He had two daughters, the oldest one’s name I can’t remember for she was older than I. The second one’s name I think was Thibs. She was more my age and we were great buddies. She taught me how to jump rope and double dutch and I taught her how to shoot 'glassy' marbles. Seems like we were almost inseparable for a very long time.

It was not that there were not other kids around. A little further up on the opposite side of the road was another row house/apartment with many kids but for some reason I was hardly ever allowed to go over there. Then further up on the road to Parry Town there was a bunch of kids but these too I do not remember much about them. The only other friend I can remember was Orville (‘ville) Harrison (wow! I have been trying for weeks to remember his name and now it just came to me, just like that, in a flash! I guess by writing it all out the synapses made the linkage). ‘ville was my kite man. With his knack for the construction and my meticulous attention to details I think we made some of the best kites in Ocho Rios.

Kite season for me was special. First you had to start saving deligently for this was an expensive undertaking, it required hard cash and delicate negotiations. When I think I had saved up enough I could then negotiate with ‘ville to build you the kite frame out of bamboo and twine. Depending on the kite size, the season and his costs you negotiated a price. Only when he was done and you had your taunt frame securely hanging from a nail above your bed then you could proceed to your next step, selecting and buying the colored paper. So you would measure carefully and from listening to all the talk from the other kids you would learn which store had the best colors and at what price. Armed with that information you would make your purchase, but with limited funds you wanted to make sue you bought just enough to do the job; with the least left over and more importantly you did not come up short. I think that was my forte. Having bought your colored parchment paper and cut it meticulously to the kite dimensions then it was time to mix the glue from starch and water, making sure it was thick enough to hold but not lumpy to weigh the kite down or unbalance it. Then you go to work at crafting your kite.

Flying kite in Jamaica was something special. None of the kids I knew had enough money to buy a kite. I don't think they even sold them in the stores then, at least not in the ones we frequented. You crafted it from scratch. Each child was expected to have some hand in the creation of his or her own kite. If you were like me and not good at construction you had better develop skills in design to make it look appealing, crafting to glue the many patches of paper together neatly, aerodynamics to tie the perfect knot to balance the kite for elevation, or just the simple skill of flying it to keep it out of trees and your competitors flight path. I think my skill was in the design and measurement. I could figure out how much paper to get with the least left over. That’s probably where my love for math came from.

Then once the kite was made you would wait for that perfect day and that perfect opportunity. My chance would come by making sure I get all my chores done on time and done well so that I could entice my parents to letting me go to Kellington for a day. Kellington was quite a long ways off but it was worth the trip, for it was like the kite flying capital of the area. There was no better way to spend a day than to have your kite out there on a windy afternoon among the other many kites of all sizes, colors and designs just watching them soar, ebb, dive, spiral down and at the last moment rise again; and you hanging onto that taunt line as you maneuver yours to stay afloat all day and out of harms way. But inevitably the end comes; somebody cuts your line and you can only watch helplessly as your kite drifts off into never-never-land, or a down draft comes up and forces your kite into one of those sickening death spirals that shreds your kite into the top of some unreachable tree. Then it’s back to square one.

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Our Second House Part #2

I have been racking my brain to come up with some sort of time post so that I could establish a time line of when we started living in Ochie and how long we lived there. But I am still not very clear on these dates. My first recollection of a real school was a sort of kindergarten school held in the Seven Day Adventist church in Milford. The trip from Grove to Milford would have been too long for a young child so I have to rationalize that we must have been living in Ochie when I started going there. I do remember walking up to Milford in the mornings as part of a procession of kids walking to school. You would walk down Main Street all the way to the center of town then hang a right at the stop sign (the only stop sign in the entire town) then up the road to Milford. I was too young to attend primary school when I started so my parents first sent me to this sort of pre-school that was held by the Seven Day Adventist church that was located almost directly across from what is now Ocho Rios Cemetery. I am not sure how long I stayed there but they must have thought me well for my first day at Primary turned out to be a remarkable day. It might have been a part of the evaluation process but I remember the first grade teacher asking me to read and when I did she took me by the hand and walked me over to the second grade teacher who then asked me to read again and when I did they walked me right over to the third grade teacher. So in one day I went from first to third grade. It gained me lots of kudos and admiration for being ‘smart’ but it also ensured that I would always be younger, weaker and not as physically developed as most of my class mates. This was not so good.

Moving to Bay introduced me to a lot of new stuff. I remember it as the first time seeing Junkuno dancing and the other traditions of Christmas. Being Jehovah’s Witnesses we did not celebrate Christmas so I was not exposed to most of it. In our family New Years was our special holiday. My father would get up early in the morning and mix his special concoction of milk, cream and port wine, a concoction I have tried so hard to duplicate without success; funny thing, recently I hard my brother Harry, whose culinary skills are renowned, lamenting at his similar failure. People have often asked me if while growing up as a Jehovah Witness I did not feel cheated out of Christmas. The answer is no. First, while we did not get presents or did anything special we still enjoyed many of the traditions other families did, like going to market on Christmas Eve night (maybe not staying as late), watching the bands and Junkuno dancing all week and experiencing all the firecrackers and excitement that would be going on in the Bay. Secondly, because my birthday was a few weeks after Christmas; just about when everybody else’s Christmas toys would be breaking up, out I would come with my brand new birthday toy. Being the only one with a new toy made mine feel special and memorable. How can I ever forget my green and yellow plastic guitar or the red fire truck that you could crank up and it goes by itself.

It was also while we lived here that my mother became that independent person she yearned to be. It was then that she first started working out of the house. Her first job was at Brown’s Emporium, a brand new store that had opened up in a new building located right across from where the clock tower now stands. The building is still there but there is so much congestion at that intersection that I can never get a good look at what it looks like today. Back then it was the most modern store in Ocho Rios selling general merchandise from clothing to kitchen appliances. I remember the store well, its newness, clean and open; and her happy face whenever I had a chance to visit here there. It was a happy time for her, she was in her element, meeting people and interacting with them all day. I felt like she worked there a long time but now I am not as sure as I was reminded recently (thanks Ilene) that she also worked iat another store, Lindo’s (I think the name was) that was very close by. It was located on the other side of the road and closer to the Bay area. This one I only remember vaguely.

Living in Bay was a happy time. Besides my bout with mumps (in a previous blogg) I can remember two other distinct experiences. The first was a mishap from riding my bike too close to a pedestrian. The pedal caught his pants and ripped it. It turns out that he was the town’s tailor and his clothes were special, and worst, the news of the incident got back to my father even before I even got home to give my version. I think I got a whipping for that one. The second was probably just as costly. My parents had sent me down to the Bay to go to the barber. But I snucked and went to the beach to play with my friends first. Sand got in my hair which I did not wash out carefully. Exactly half way into the hair cut the sand grains in my hair caused the barber’s only clipper to break (it was only one of those hand cranked clippers but it was high-tech then). He was mad which he let me know in no uncertain terms and in addition he was payment from my father for the repairs or replacement. My predicament was two fold; one, I had to go home walking through the town with exactly one half of my head freshly shorn while the other side still bushy and the second, and even more daunting task was having to explain to my parents that I disobeyed them.

Still Bay was a happy time. The house might have been only two rooms but it was a house of love and sharing. I remember Bill being there and recently I also learned that both Bernice as well as Aunt Little (more on her later) stayed with us there while they attended additional schooling.

Living in Bay was a happy time.

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A Visit to Lucky Hill

While in Jamaica for the funeral (Uncle Bullion) I took the opportunity to make one last trip up to Lucky Hill. This trip was extra special because I had the company of my sister. Since we have grown up I think this is the first time I have had her to myself for almost a whole day alone!

Also special was that I had the chance to see Bernice (Sue) who I have not seen since I was a teenager I think.

Here are some pictures from
Lucky Hill:

Lucky Hill has not changed, if anything it has gotten smaller it seems. Areas that I thought was miles away turns out to be not so far after all, and houses that I thought were so big were really tiny. It was revelation to me how a child’s eye view and that of a grown up cold be so different. Take for example walking to school in the morning. I remember this as a grueling huge distance with corners and turns and the road going on forever. It turns out that the actual distance was about a mile, if so long!

Jeffery Town school (My First Fight) was still there but it looked so small and not at all like I remembered it. Besides the bright yellow and green colors, the building is half as big as I remembered it and the playground was almost nonexistent. The same play ground I remembered at recess you would full games of cricket, football, chevy-chase, jump-rope, gig and marbles going on all at the same time.

My visit to Luck Hill was an eye-opening experience of how a child’s view of spatial things and a grown-up’s view is so much different!

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