daddy lessons

There's no hiding away from this. My Dad was a strict dad.

A 'you better get your tail back home on time' kinda Dad.

A sit down and listen to me lecture if you know what's good for you type of Dad.

A jokes that will make you groan Dad.

A never got my mates names right Dad.

There was the time he took to riding his motorbike during my athletic training runs because he couldn't keep up.

There were the times he told me to take down my Adam Ant / Madness / Duran Duran posters so often that when I left home, I blue-tacked wall-to-wall posters that it seemed I had a heaven of popstars watching over me like Greek Gods - Britpop style.

There were the Christmas Eves where he baked bread loaves in the shape of plaits and bread buns with our initials on, then left the kitchen looking like a flour hurricane had swept through. His work was done.

There were the nights I would sit on the stairs listening to him talk with his custom officer colleagues on their way to / back from a drug raid. For those tiny moments I was an extra on Juliet Bravo.

There was the year he turned 40 and I was the cassette DJ forced to play The Clash's 'I fought the Law' over and over again.

He was the Dad my mates' mums (and my PE teacher) fancied.

He was the Dad who tried so very hard to instill a sense of my ancestry in me.

He was the Dad who drove us the length and breadth of Britain so we would know our home country.

He was the Dad who  caught me reading my football magazine instead of revising for my Biology GCSE.

He was the Dad who bought me baby dummies for my 30th birthday as a gentle reminder of what he was waiting for.

He's the Dad who would make me tea and toast and sit for hours watching box sets of 24 when I was on my first maternity leave.

He's the Dad that will discuss politics, race, racism, parenting, aging, football and Doctor Who in just one phone call.

He's the Dad who climbs mountains, swims in oceans and still insists on jumping over walls even though he's passed the Beatles age-related hit song.

He's the Dad who is greeted by his grand-daughters, like Norm from Cheers, with a 'Grandpa!'

He's the Dad who isn't strict anymore.

He's the Dad who became the Grandpa who still tells jokes that make you groan.

This post was inspired by The Photographer's Gallery: familyphotographynow.net:My Dad

miss you like crazy

grinding cocoa before shaking the pineapple tree

We were never one of those families who had grandparents and aunties and uncles regularly popping by. In my infant days I spent time with my Grenada grandparents, who were in London when I was born but I was too young for these memories to remain. Into my toddler years I certainly remember hazy, lazy days with a wonderful great-aunt who's daughters became my surrogate sisters; but that too came to an abrupt end.

We became a nucleus. A fortress of four that occasionally journeyed from suburbia into the city walls of London to visit our Caribbean extended families; as the years passed, the gaps between visits grew wider.

The GeordieLad's experience is not the same. He comes from a family that were used to each other's living rooms, Sunday dinners and Christmases. The love, laughs, support and birthday money that he had taken for granted was extended to me well before our wedding bells; his family circle widened to include me from day one. So when we became parents I planned to ensure that our girls saw all extensions of our family more often than at the obligatory weddings, christenings and funerals. And they do. We all do the best we can.

However, my Grenada grandparents cannot be part of this, returning back to their homeland in the 70s we exist in each other's lives through faded photos and fortunately, the rare visit. Now great-grandparents, we took the opportunity to take our babies during my maternity leaves but they were so very young that it was unlikely they would remember them at all.

So last year's summer holiday at my Dad's Grenada home was invaluable. They were now of an age where they could interact with their Great-Grandparents - it was an opportunity we could not afford to waste. Despite my Grandfather being invalid and quite poorly, the girls were respectful of his unpredictable behaviour and made sure they chatted to him about their adventures, even though he would often not respond. They knew he was listening and the morning we spent manoeuvring him down to the beach will be a lasting moment for us all. 

And as for my Grandma. Well, depending on which branch you sit on the family tree denotes the relationship you have with her. I do pretty well, thanks very much. The girls, do even better.  We'll not mention how my Dad gets on. She might have talked in riddles and roundabouts that made them look to me for interpretations (which I  would respond to with a 'yes Grandma' until they got the idea) but she taught them how to roll grind cocoa and churn ice-cream on her birthday. She showed them how anything can be stored in a freezer and took them on a photographic journey of her life in 1960s London. She also made them laugh with her sayings and gave them nicknames that would have prompted tears had I thought of them.

Saying goodbye to my Grenada grandparents was one of the hardest things my girls have ever seen me do. They don't like to see me cry. It's unlikely we'll be back there anytime soon. Yet I'm certain the girls understood that just because you don't see someone everyday or even every year, it doesn't make your love for them any less. 

This post was inspired by The Photographer's Gallery: familyphotographynow.net: familylivingfaraway

the way we were

The older I get, the more I throw a rose-coloured spectacled glance back to my childhood. The 3G are always having a shared chuckle when I regale them of 'the good old days'. 

"Do you mean in the olden days?" they ask behind youth and cheek.

Well, maybe they are, since they are also the days before the internet, mobile phones, electric cars and a gazillion TV channels. But these are also the days from whence tradition comes.

When I initially considered a tradition I'd like to see carried on I contemplated my childhood Christmas - the day of the Long Road To Opening Presents. Christmas in my house would actually start with the soaking of Christmas Cake Fruits in March before the baking of said fruits at the crack of a December dawn.  The kitchen would swell with the baking of Christmas Eve bread, including the special plaited bread (!) and a bun with our initials on. No amount of protest would move the Christmas morning any faster as the ritual of opening presents did not begin until we had finished every scrap of saltfish and bakes, fried plantain and cocoa tea and then washed every speckle of every plate. It would seriously feel like Christmas Day had disappeared before even the first shred of wrapping paper came off.

And whilst I try and keep as much of those traditions as I can with my own family, it gets a little harder when you are also part of someone else's family therefore sharing in someone else's family traditions. Throw in a little cultural diversity and things can get a little busy. We cope by amalgamating and creating new rituals which can sometimes result in customs getting lost or feelings being hurt.

So I thought of a tradition transcending all the branches of my family tree which, by its very nature, will grow and blossom with each generation and it cannot be remain the same or cast in stone.

I bring you the family 'do'.

Sitting free of seatbelts in our orange Vauxhall Viva, I would excitedly watch the 1980s London - in all its greyness - cascade around me until the our arrival at one of three West London estates would thrust my parents back into the warmth of who they once were and us into this strange yet pleasurable temporary existence.  Enveloped in the beat of Lovers Rock, any attempt to conceal my lanky presence in the kitchen would fail miserably as West Indian fingers, fresh from cooking pig trotter sous, would pinch my cheeks forcing me to extrapolate myself and disappear into the melee of cousins.  The rumble and explosion of  West Indian laughs above tales of 'he and she' or the thumps of dominoes on the tiniest table ever made linger in my veins and the strains of the reggae forever remain.

My girls may not be submerged into the sounds and smells of my yesterday but  they have experienced what will be their versions of  family do's across the country; from the rolling hills of the North East to Midland dales to coastal towns to Caribbean villages to city dwellings and one thing is constant; the welcome.

Other constants follow swiftly: the hugs, the food, the laughter. And still more: the new recruits (babies or lovers), the music, the little ones getting taller, the older ones getting greyer. We exchange seats at the table as our generation mourns the loss of those ahead and welcome those who follow behind.

There was a time in my teens when it seemed family dos didn't happen or maybe they did and we just weren't there. The splinters from this time have healed in some branches, not so in others, so I am thankful of the dos that remain and those that we are welcomed to join. And I relish those moments when aging fingers pinch the cheeks of my girls making them scurry for the safety of cousins across the country.

This post is in response to a Post40Bloggers: Writing Prompt No.103 : a tradition you would like to see carried on 

evergreen

Growing up my perception of the family union was via Black American sitcoms, hip hop and soul songs or dramas and it was committed with utter perfection. Leaves of a family tree gravitating to a matriarch's kitchen table laden with food that would sustain ten armies. Generational branches momentarily re-twigging so aunts and uncles become brothers and sisters again, distant cousins break through the initial i-don't-know-you-but-i-know-we're-related ice to collectively roll their eyes at disco parents, and the elders get to reign supreme with a view of all that they have created and nurtured. 

My childhood experience amidst my Caribbean family certainly echoed with strains of what I was seeing on TV; add a little curry goat and lovers rock and you're there. I cherish memories of a beloved St Lucian aunt who would play the same reggae song about ten times in the course of a visit and would sing with glorious energy every single time and pull my awkward self to dance with her softness. Or another Grenadian aunt-cum-grandmother who would cook the Sunday dinners of all Sunday dinners then hold our mouth-watering attention whilst she prayed with us over the good part of an hour; but the food and the love of her was always worth the wait.

Two women who I wish my daughters could have known, two women who, through the prism of my young eyes, encapsulated warmth, love, joy, family. 

Life's demands can often fracture the ties that bind so I am now grateful that part of my clan have reclaimed and reconstructed our family union for nearly 8 years. Where I once stood as the child, cuddled and chided by grown ups, I now see the children of then having children of their own, the parents change their status to grandparents, the teenagers blossom into adulthood.

Our annual reunions which began as a necessary replanting of relationships, after a passing, have flourished into a happening that raises up the achievements and rites of passage amongst us, sustains the growth and collective need of an evolving family and cradles the sorrows within us. Our boughs reach from the newborn to the newcomers to the never-to-return; all life is within our roots.

And settling here on my branch, I will take time to cherish the view from here.

legal alien (things i have learnt about holiday-me part3)

Identity, something we all seem to crave and understand throughout our lives. Some are clear about theirs and probably don't even consider it too much whilst others are on a perpetual quest for what theirs might be.

As a kid I just was who I was. When I started to venture into other lives and other families, only then did I discover what made me different from others.

Apparently not everyone listened to reggae with their Sunday lunch. Amongst my friends, I was clearly the only child having my washed hair pulled in every which way to create the perfect plaits that would last me until the next weekend.

Over time I grew to appreciate the journey my family had taken that resulted in my English birth. Heading out of my teens and into young adulthood I found camaraderie with other British born/Caribbean heritage about our hair issues, the way our parents would slip in and out of West Indian accents depending on who they were talking to, how we never left the house creaming our skin. We shared the sorrows of other people's negativity thrust into our life paths and the joys of coming together at family do's.

This was...is my identity.

Yet this has been a strange summer. In a year where my Britishness has been called into question, I spent some time in the Caribbean island my father calls home and began to re-consider where did I really belong?

You see I grew up with kids and strangers on the street telling me to go home. Comedians of my ethnicity and generation will now joke about responding to 'home' as round the corner, just off the high street...but we all knew what they really meant. Back to where we 'should' have been from, to where our parents were born. But you know if your parents are born in two different Caribbean islands or your feet have only ever holidayed outside your birth place, the conundrum remains...where exactly do you go?

On the occasions I have visited I think I'll blend in. I am no longer a minority so until I speak how would you know I'm not a local, right? Wrong. Dad says it's easy to spot. I'm gutted; is there nowhere that I can just fit in, disappear, be inconspicuous?

What gives me away? Is it the sweat pool I've filled with my body weight whilst just strolling down the road - I say 'strolling'...

Is it the British walking pace I still subconsciously maintain in this heat?

Is it the way I've had to learn to smile with my teeth and offer a pleasant greeting at closed inquisitive faces which then break into a kind welcome? I'm a Londoner, I don't do smiling at strangers so this is a massive learning curve.

Is it the way I bathe myself in factor 50 sun cream as soon as the morning sun rises in the mountains then shower myself in insect repellent as it sets into the evening sea.

Is it the way I bounce from one hot foot to another tetchy one if the wait in the shop or restaurant is a little long whilst those around me wait patiently?

Is it in the way my 3G dare to answer me back in the local supermarket (summer hols seem to have vanquished the power of the mum stare at the moment)?

Is it the way in which I can't seem to let my tense London shoulders sink to bask in the warmth of my surroundings.

One half of my ancestors may have planted, nurtured and grown roots here but from my view on this branch of the family tree, this beautiful island is not my home. And whilst it welcomes me, I simply do not belong; in spite of my recently fruitful and exciting family research my feet have walked in similarly green yet contrasting colder pastures.

Which, methinks, is one darn shame.

I wish I was being welcomed home by immigration staff like my travelling aunt passing through before me. I'd love to feel the spirit of the strong women of my patriarchal line as I discover more about them. How marvellous it would be to walk up the road to my house to find it adorned with colourfully painted stones, walls and roofs.

And I'd relish the scene of my neighbours sitting on their walls to lime and jig a foot or jump up 'til the early hours...at weekends anyway, I still find it hard to jig my foot midweek.

So for now I will embrace my foreigness and go full tourist.

never-ending story

Before I tell you all about our visit to the 60untold exhibition at Goldsmiths University - the most important thing after reading this is that you go and witness it if you can, if you can't listen to the stories of the people in profile on the website.

The 60untold exhibition shares the memoirs of 60 black men and women who were the first generation of Caribbean children to experience the British education system on British shores. This event leapt out from twitter trails as I immediately thought of my Dad and his peers, who are part of that generation. I was raised on the stories of 1960's Shepherd's Bush and how my Dad found himself ripped from his home in Grenada to be submerged and survive in the 'mother country'. Often when hearing the anecdotes or reading novels set at this time we can become accustomed to the weary tales of brutal, daily racism in the education system and the workplace. But what we don't hear is what else happened next? When children and grandchildren have been raised, when careers have been chosen, when (most) struggles have passed this generation still have their stories to share.

Surrounded by monochrome images of sixty people who have positively contributed to our society in a plethora of ways, we walked the small basement of Professor Stuart Hall, Goldsmiths University reading names and discussing the range of employment amongst the names. Luckily for us, curator and teacher Beverley Campbell was on hand to embellish the photographs with some back in the day tales and also to share her views about education then and now. 

I fully believe that if you want to know where you are going you have to know where you come from, and this exhibition opens us the discussion about what came before the generations who were born here in the 1970s onward. It is very easy to gripe and theorize about our situation in society today but it's imperative that younger generations hear and learn from their predecessors. In my attempts to piece together my Grenadian family tree whilst researching for a novel I am constantly getting stuck, struggling to find the documentation or evidence that will reveal the paths my ancestors took. It would be a travesty if this trait continues - if future generations don't have the opportunity to understand where their families have been before them.

The exhibition elevated Dad's past tales to the fore which is always precious time and  I was pleasantly surprised to see names that were authors I had come across during  my Caribbean Studies course. I was eager to hear more from the people we had 'met' on canvas and since visiting I have listened to the documentary of some of the noted faces in the exhibition: women who were incredibly successful in the education sector; Tulse Hill Boys School alumni; and the creators of the TWJ soundsystem. Alongside this there are short soundscapes of each person who relive their journey through the education system and into their professions. I often get frustrated with students who have complained to me about how there is nothing for them to do; to achieve because school or society is against them - and whilst I will not renounce their anxieties I wish they would hear the tales I have heard from this project. I trust that it will give them perspective and drive on what has been accomplished before them in order to grasp the mantle of Black British achievement.

A poignant comment from Trevor Russell (of TWJ) regarding the question of legacy which for me, sums up the importance of this exhibition:

"A legacy has to be recorded and passed on... (it is) only beneficial to those who are coming up... (to) use it as a guidance"

Researching for the novel I'm writing set in the Caribbean I find I am struggling at times to find the historical references that I need because as Russell also noted, there is so little recorded out there. I am thankful to Beverley for this wonderful archive which will exist for our childrens' children's generation.

This post first appeared on post40bloggers.com : Education