DOWN MEMORY LANE

Yesterday I spoke to someone about my parents, and after our conversation I relaxed on my bed and began thinking about them. All my life I had known these two people and never in my life, not even on the television, had I ever seen love like theirs. They were never the lovey dovey kind of parents, as a matter of fact I have never seen them kiss. If I were to be honest, I wouldn’t want to. There is something about seeing your parents being intimate (and by this I mean kissing) other than holding hands, that you just do not want to see. When I was a young child I used to leave my room and sleep between them, and to this day I am still trying to figure out how my mother got pregnant with my younger sister. I played dolly house with older children, I knew how people got pregnant. I was a light sleeper, always afraid, so I would suck my thumb and curl up next to my mother and for years I was vexed with her and very upset with my dad for knocking up my mom. In my child’s mind they should not be doing such things.

Yesterday I smiled to myself as I remembered him, my father; a tall dark handsome man who himself would talk of his own mother and his love for her. She had eleven children and had given him away twice, but he had found his way back home never to leave her side again until he left to make his own family, but the love he clearly had for his mother touched my heart as a little girl whenever he spoke of her. She was the bastard daughter of a Sephardic Jew, whose family had migrated to Jamaica from Spain. Her mother worked for the man and his family and ended up getting pregnant for him, which of course he could not claim. His family were wealthy, but my grandmother grew up in poverty; she had no contact as far as I know with the father, only his looks. Growing up in Jamaica we were okay. My mom had a very good job at the University Hospital of the West Indies, she worked there as a theater room technician. My father was a carpenter/construction worker, and so he worked whenever work came, so my mother carried the household most of the time, and she seemed quite fine with it. Whenever daddy worked, often times he would go out of town and be away for several weeks. When he came back, he would buy new furniture, give us money, buy his records which he would play loudly every Sunday on our veranda on his ex-changer and we, the children, would gather around him and dance. He even bought a huge television once, probably a 65 inch standing television, which made us proud because we were the only ones in our neighbourhood to have such a large television, and everybody in our neighborhood came to watch it.

My mom was well respected throughout our community as well as my dad. He was the one who made the chilum pipe for the gambling yard commonly called a bong nowadays, used for smoking ganja which my father loved to do, and we loved the smell, don’t judge, this is Jamaica where even the police commissioner when he gets home probably roll a big head and blaze it up!  My mom, she cooked for all the dances held on the weekends in the gambling yard, which was next door to us, a better curried goat you have never had. To bring in more money, my mom would bake on the weekends and sell to the men and women in the community and in the gambling yard. She sold baked goods like sweet potato pudding, corn meal pudding wid de sud pon top, (had a soft buttery setting on top), greater cakes and cut cakes, the former was grated coconuts  formed together with a sweet sugary glaze and the latter a sweet brittle made from cut up coconuts. Both were sweet and delicious, and also some delicious toto, a coconut cake which looks like a huge biscuit. Whenever she baked them people would flock to our house to buy and in a short time, they were all finished.

I have had my ups and down with these two people who I  have loved ever since I can remember, and for the most part while growing up in America. I never had these feelings in Jamaica, I wondered if they loved me. It bothered me that we were not the closest. I took the “Honor thy mother and father” thing seriously. These two people were my idols, I loved them like crazy. When I got pregnant young and she drove me out, I went and I tried not to fault her or him, because I knew it was me who screwed up, literally. I was ashamed of myself then, and I prayed for their forgiveness. When I got with a Ganja man, the children’s father (try as I might to keep him out of every post this bad penny keeps popping up) I made sure to always have my fathers weed wrapped away for him, he smoked ganja hard, the race track and weed were his thing. Wow! here I am writing this and the last sentence about my father loving weed and the race track made me look back to Mr. Low grade and realized that he was my father, so the saying is true, girls DO look for their father when picking a man. Oh my God, I am having an Aha moment! read this post to know who Mr. Low grade is. My father would come to my shop and I would give him his money for track and his kushung peng (ganja) wrapped up for him to enjoy.

Our relationship was still rocky and I never felt comfortably around them whenever I visited or when there was some family function. The feeling of them not wanting me around was always present with me, and I have it still to this day. Whenever I am in their presence I end up crying, the feeling of rejection is always with me when they are around. It is very possible that these are things that I have to deal with emotionally, but I will one day, I am sure of it. I think, however, it is the sadness deep within that I have with how our relationship turned out. The undying love and affection that I have for them and I feel very awkward to even tell them this. I have since gotten over our past rifts and have moved on beyond that, the tears are regret of not having the closeness with them that I wanted. I thank God for my spirituality, because it was through learning things beyond  what we know here on this earth plane that I learned that I chose to be born through them and really that was it. I learned that we place too much time and emotions on blood and family ties when that bond really is not for everyone. I know what I am saying right now is very hard for some to understand and I am not saying that you must not love and be close with your family.

What I am saying is that we all are different and as you know, everyone here has their reason for being. I had often wondered why I loved these two people so much but whenever we are around each other sparks fly. It bothered me for a long time and I yearned for the closeness of family but it was never to be. Then after my first initiation, I realized that we all owed a karmic debt to each other and the only way for all of us to clear it was to be born within the same family, bonded by blood, we had to live with each other while it worked it self out. You pay your karmic debt at times through blood or contract. Blood meaning family, contract meaning first marriage. From you can say you were married (past tense), then that person was a karmic debt either of you had to pay. So often times when we do not have a family connection, like with me and my Jezebel sisters or my parents there is a greater spiritual meaning attached to it. Although my parents are alive and well, the only family I have are my children, no one else, blood family that is. So as I have stated before, it is very sad not to be able to have that family bond for some, but realize that something greater is at work and you have to pay attention to find the lesson there. If you trust, in time you will know.

This post came about this morning while I tried to gather my thoughts as to what topic to write on today. I am very honest and I share my emotions, whether happy or sad, take me as I am. I have not spoken to any of my sisters for sometime now, one of them (the senior one), it has been for years and I am not sad about it. There is another living in Jamaica which senior this one, I think she is nice but we have not contact, and the junior one, same mother and father, for quite a while now. The junior sister had always been the closest to me, and I tried to hold on to her because I remembered when I was going through my first initiation she was there with me, holding me up when I could not manage to walk by myself. I am an Aries and we have a very special trait which is loyalty, it can be a good trait and it can also be an obstacle. I have since stepped away from all of them with no regrets, but my mother and father, although I do not visit them often or even call for that matter they.  I will always hold close to my heart. How could I release them? I did not know how to do it. The only thing I could do to protect my feelings was stay away, but I saw them everyday, through meditation and in my dreams and while I prayed, they are always on my mind.

I love them. Pure and simple, I love them and regardless of what I went through, if I could, I would choose them all over again, the sisters are another case. On Friday  night, I received an email from the junior sister, which I was shocked to see, we had not spoken for a while and it seemed to me that it would remain so. The email told me to call her if I could right away since they had no way of contacting me otherwise. The time was late for me where I was, but early for her and so I called. She asked me when was the last time I spoke to our dad, and I told her some weeks ago. She went on to tell me that she just left his house and he discussed with her buying funeral plots, he wanted to ensure that he and our mother were beside each other or on top of each other, she said she asked him why was he talking like that and assured him that they both had plenty of time to do all those things, my father began to cry she said, and told her that this was what he wanted to do. He expressed to her that he wanted her and I to go along with him, when I got back home (my mother would not go) to pick out the plots and pay for them. I listened to her while she spoke, and of course my eyes grew misty. I sat up in my bed, in my darkened room with only the phones illumination and I could see my father and hear his somber voice. Something deep within me rejected what she was saying but something else spoke to me and said, “You have been getting these messages for a while now, and it seems as if your father is also preparing,” but I shook this daunting voice off, offended at its imposition.

I sat up in the bed and interjected her speech. I told her that I had been having dreams which suggested what he was saying, I could not bring myself to say the words, remember Word, Sound, Power. Me saying this to her produced tears from her, but I assured her that they will both be fine, she must not worry. I explained to her that what he said made sense and it was best to prepare from now for in the future. After we hung up, I went to my shrine and prayed very hard for them both. I am praying for them even as I write, I know they will be around for a long time, they are both healthy and they both live a simple and for the most part stress free lives. I wrote this post because I wanted to share some of my feelings here with you and to honor them both in my own way. They are alive and will remain so for a long time, but what she said to me of the plans that my father made, took me back to my childhood days in my beautiful Jamaica. It had me reading some of my old posts, when I saw how many times I wrote about them. I looked deep within me for the loving memories, of when mama would eat ice mints and I as a child would ask her for a piece from her mouth which she gave to me, or when Daddy would eat his dinner with me sitting on his lap eating with him, I was his NUNU, that was my nickname and I loved it. I would sit on the veranda sucking my thumb and looking in each bus and vans as they passed, looking for my mama to come home and when we, the children saw her in the bus we would shout and scream and jump up and down shouting “Mama Come”. My own daughters have told me the same, they told me that when I travel and am away from home for months, how they yearn for me and often times get sad wanting me to come home. How joyful they are whenever I call, how they love me so. I love my parents, and I will love them always and  forever!

Ọgbọ́n kìí tán láyé kí a wa lọ ọ̀run. /
Wisdom can’t be so exhausted in the world that one will go looking for it in heaven…..Yoruba Proverb!

[No impossibility; there is always a way out!]

All religions are valid as long as it teaches peace and love…Obara Meji