There are times when my father sits down in my memory and refuses to budge, way beyond June 21. In fact, it is mainly because of his love for his children. I don’t ever recall crying for my two boys, but I have seen my father do that for us when he had to run off for months abroad on a long work assignment on a tugboat to some foreign country.
With eight children constantly eating, my mother’s domain was the kitchen. I can remember taking a coconut frond, stripping it down and making a trap to amuse myself and my brothers with a lizard. It matters little to me how much the creepy-crawly thing felt pain or if it did. In my time as a child, Daddy did not teach me that. I etched that out of purely me.
Without them knowing it, our parents were pointing: see, right thing there; see, wrong thing there. And, of course, the spankings, unpleasant though they were, most of us never did pass down.
Because we grew up with caring, we care. We see the unpleasantness of our neighbour, we crane our necks. When we hear the name Donald Trump, we think of a bloodthirsty man, a war, a man divested of a workable childhood and no one to love him, a psychopath, and we blink. We grow deathly scared.
Back in the country, I can remember my father working with Reynolds and the frightful Moneague Lake, how it claimed a life each season. I can recall fresh milk in huge stainless-steel vats by the wayside headed for the condensary, half-ripe bunches of bananas waiting for pick-up, headed to England. And the huge, noisy steamroller crushing the granite left by the poor old women on the rise for miles.
I remember a huge brick oven and barefoot Mass Oswald singing under a thatched-roof church. Miss Vie baked sweet, shiny buns and plait breads. Our teeth were good then. It was impossible for us to know Mass Oswald and the Epstein class at the same time in the same folders.
As an adolescent in Kingston, I studied art. It would be nearly impossible for me to see Donald Trump in a gallery or small art room gazing towards Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise. Or trying to figure out what the hell was the useful violence of Picasso’s huge Guernica. But those things would not twist him. He was empty where it mattered.
I was an ardent reader of the American Mafia of the 1930s and the German Third Reich of the same period. Looking back now, I did not suddenly become Al Capone, Frank Nitti, or Adolf Hitler. There was a boyishness about reading them. I can recall one teacher at KC admonishing us and urging us to spend more time with the Apostles’ Creed.
When I bought a magnifying glass from Sangster’s Book Store, it was specifically to burn bugs. It was evil, and my father never taught us these things. We learned them in the back of the schoolyards from each other.
EVENING GRANDMA LEFT
My father’s mother lived close to us on Waltham Park Road, but she hardly left the house. The little I remember about her is sparse. She had long “white-people” hair, very brown skin, and she spoke little. In our household, Grandma coming to the house was special.
It was close to Christmas, and there was a Grand Marnier-shaped bottle of cider in the house. Yours truly was sent for the bottle. I felt it slipping and I couldn’t stop it. It fell, broke, and today, at 75, the scar on my right leg is still there.
For many years, it would be the talk: the day Grandma left, and the day Mark cut his leg.
As long as the tugboat was in the harbour at Christmas time, we would have dinner there. Heaps of roast beef, mountains of vegetables and a seasoned, sweetened, coloured rice that was to die for. And sorrel, where we children would get silently and beautifully plastered.
When my mother became pregnant with me, it is my understanding that it didn’t go down well with her parents. Because of that, I ended up living with my 180 lb. godmother for a while. Fact is, the lady loved me, but the feeling of aloneness was deep for a long time. The sad song that constantly came to me as I stood on a bridge in Rockfort watching the ships in Kingston Harbour slowly spin at anchor was:
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley.
Poor boy, you’re going to die.
Sunday was a scary day. Church, early. Back home, swimming lessons. Then cooking. I must confess my godmother was an excellent cook. Then the praying, using her hand on my neck to physically exhort God to bless little Mark. I hated each moment of it. From the standpoint of my parents, I was far from happy, and I was missed, but when I eventually came home, I was chubby and super happy.
My first girlfriend was Lorna, who went to St Joseph’s, and I was snowed in by love, whatever that was. Then there was Adassa, Judith, and Carmen. My mother was always close to the kitchen. I never spoken to my father about my girlfriends. Daddy would have had a good laugh about it. There were more serious things in life to be concerned about for an electrician like rewinding a 10-kW motor and getting me to help him.
My elder sister, Rosie, was a bit of a prodigy. At quite a young age, she was going to the market with a list to handle the shopping. I would tag along to carry the load. Shirley always did want to get married.
For my father, his interest would always go back to locking himself in the bedroom with my mother. They must have had a lot to talk about. For a crudity like Donald Trump, such simplicity would always escape him.
GUARD AND THE LYING GUIDE
The thing I remembered about my older sisters is that I was made into their guardian. It was the rule for me to be at every party, and I had to learn how to skilfully prevaricate.
“Mark, did Rosie dance with Michael?”
They did. For long.
“No, Daddy.”
As long as Rosie gave me an adventurous book and parked me on a chair.
I have two younger brothers, one shy and the other quite open. In their time, the younger one swore that all the girls adored him. At this moment, I cannot remember who was the nerd and who was the silent patty-eater, but one ran his mouth freely while the other grabbed the smiles and the favours.
My younger brothers had a regular habit of tracking me whenever I went off scouting for a girlfriend. They would be the first to run back home with the news. My mother would give a, “Hmm, Mark. Be careful. Leave yu troubles outside.”
One of my brothers, Ernesto, was fiscally conservative from childhood and eventually became a banker. I can remember how he refused to lend me funds to throw on a three-card man at Maxfield Park Christmas Fair. I still look back on that with fun, and today, we remain quite close.
My father, who had a lovely tenor, would be in his workshop singing. When there was any complaint to my father, the sound from him was like Mario Lanza.
Mark Wignall is a political and public affairs analyst. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com
