Day three..Moving and Understanding the folks

Leaving one’s friends behind is one of the hardest things any boy my age should have to go through. It was one of the most jarring times in my life … I was only eleven at the time and back in the late seventies, it seemed as though someone had just pulled the rug from beneath me and by extension my mother and sister. We were moving from Carenage to Diego Martin..And even though the move was sudden , the hurtful part was not being able to say goodbye in the shorterm and the long lasting resentment of our friends and neighbors. But try as we did to explain to no avail that we didn’t know we were moving, fell harder  on deaf ears. .

Where was my moms mouth in all of this you ask? Well her personality didn’t allow her to act out in the presence of my rigid father. A petite woman in stature, a trait that was more often than not overshadowed by her big heart and generous nature, leading her into the role of matriarch of our family and extended family. But with that came a price as she and my father were like fire and ice.

As a couple and in retrospect like all relationships, where in this case my father would falter my mom would always be there to pick up the slack. One thing gained from that experience apart from what not to do in a marriage, was the strong work ethics they both showed, as well as the emphasis on education, moral and spiritual values.

Laughter came and healed all wounds in my house, so when we laughed we laughed! We learned to laugh at one another’s misfortune. My mom at one time had this Chinese hairdresser in downtown Port of Spain, and on this particular day when she went by him he told her ” Miss Cookie ah have a new ting ah wanna try….. you mind?” I remember it like it was yesterday as i had just come from school and was sitting in the waiting room when he addressed her. Knowing fully well the ease at which my mom trusted people it was just amatter of time before that trust came back to haunt her.

By the time she came home she was bald! I mean bald-bald, not a grain on ‘D woman head’….Zero Hair os, nada! And my father had a field day with that one, going so far as to buy a wig and place it on a water melon…That was one of the many funny episodes…She was also accident prone; Looking back now I realize how lucky I am to be alive.

She was one of those drivers like my father that made your heart race even faster when you were in the car. I believe now that they both needed a license to have a license to drive. Mother was always late for everything all because (as most of you parents know), kids are always the keep back. Just remember folks, we lived in an era of no cell phones back then yet as most I recall the talking, plus lipstick going on, plus everytime a car came close the pulling to the left, everytime. Laughable now, but back then I guess as kids we had no other choice but to see it for what it was and trust that we would all make it home alive, which of course we obviously did. My father’s problem was that he was a road hord/hog. you stay in your lane but don’t ever try to squeeze down the sides in the hope that you’ll get an ‘in’.