Parting Ways

I watched recently as my eldest went through the whole realization that she is growing up. The trigger for that insight came to her I believe, through the knowledge that she would be leaving a teacher that she had come to really highly regard behind. This teacher was phenomenal, truly inspired, the kind of educator that we all wish would nurture our children’s psyches. For days my daughter would come to me and express her worry about leaving her teacher behind. Then we would discuss the fact that moving on in school means that she was growing up and although her teacher would always hold a special place in her heart she worked hard to move on and so she should.

When I went to pick her up at school, there was the teacher with her class huddled around her interlocking embraces moving around the little cluster via a wave of obvious emotion uniting the little group one last time. The teacher’s eyes were blotchy with tears and the children were also overcome. They were exchanging telephone numbers like big people and promising to keep in touch every day. The teacher through her tears told me, “we’ve been crying all morning” and I could see it.

But with all this sadness I was happy for my child. Happy that she had gotten the opportunity to glean at the feet of inspiration and through that experience had gained a love for learning that is irreplaceable. Now I want to encourage her new found appreciation of knowledge and hopefully see it grow and evolve as she does. I remember speaking with a librarian recently, who was wondering aloud who her children would get as teachers next school year. She said “I wonder who I am going to get next year?” At first I thought she misspoke but now in retrospect I realize that is exactly what she meant as essentially you get who your kids get…the symbiotic relationship is inextricable.

Well now our summer begins and to you Mrs. V., the beginning was bumpy but your way was golden. Thank you for everything. I hope my youngest will also be prepped by you and that on our way to a well rounded education we meet upon more dedicated educators as yourself. Your pupil has blossomed in your care. What more can I say except...Selah.

Bicycles and Donkeys

So I was on my daily trek home with the children in the company of my bredrin the expert on everything that is rural Jamaican, when just up ahead of us a child who had being doing bicycle acrobatics comes tumbling down in a hurt heap. The sidewalk becomes alit with laughter and I’m the only one who runs to see if the boy is alright. Before I can reach to him, the spilt boy races to his feet brushes, himself off and makes a hasty retreat in one tremendous face saving effort. I turn to the expert and after curbing his unconscionable guffaw he says “Lissen nuh mistress, nuttin like bicycle and donkey fi embarrass yu inna public!”

He immediately caught my attention with that one. Was there some perpetual power of those two modes of transportation to humiliate that I was not aware of? I had to investigate. My companion went on to clarify, “Mi say everytime yu inna crowd an yu decide sey yu ah mek di donkey gallop, ah den it ah go throw yu.” I was flummoxed, for once again my expert bredrin had pointed out my ignorance regarding certain Jamaican lifestyles. Once again I who thought myself the quintessential Jamaican, had been out-Jamaicaned. Sure I knew of how embarrassing a public fall from a bicycle could be but regarding the shame of being unseated by a donkey, I knew nothing.

I quickly tried to find a way to look at this as an opportunity to gain some metaphoric understanding of life but all I could come to was the word overthink!! There were just some things that me with my “town girl” upbringing would never be able to understand as well as there were some things that a rural expert wouldn’t cotton to. Just like Bicycles and Donkeys. Selah.

Paraskavedekatriaphobia

I don’t know about you but I don’t often come across a five syllable word, so I had to share. Appropriately enough for today being Friday the thirteenth, this wonderful word paraskavedekatriaphobia, means a fear of Friday the thirteenth. I remember when I was younger I had a great amount of fear and trepidation regarding this day. All my friends would talk about in the days leading up to that Friday, there would be discussions on the radio and TV about it, leading to general climate that anticipated the worst in imaginative young minds.

Today decades later, my daughter mentions that she is…” happy that she is wearing her lucky clothes on a day like today.” Where is she getting this stuff from? We don’t even pay attention to this rampant superstition in our home. After all, there are other far more pressing issues in day to day living to deal with. But she is probably getting it from the same place I got my information when I was a child, the playground.

Yup that font of childhood activity is where the junior grapevine grows and flourishes. I can’t tell how many times I’ve had to debunk some “truism” that my eldest came home with after learning it first hand from someone who really knows, on the playground. But if you can’t beat them join them, maybe I’ll let her tell everyone that Saturday the fourteenth is really the luckiest day in the world and that’s what should be so highly anticipated. Meanwhile, the news reports say that Friday the thirteenth is really the safest day because many people avoid leaving home fearing the worst. Sigh, I’ll start with my child first and then take on the rest of the world. Selah.

Not So Sir.

Yesterday I read an article on one of those multimedia websites that really got my goat! It seemed to me that like everything that is black and phenomenal someone attempted to make history more palatable as he pronounced Presidential Candidate Barack Obama multi-racial. I mean as a child I did not know that Egypt was in Africa, or that the missing nose on the Sphinx (also in Africa) could have shown clues to the Pharaoh’s African heritage. Egypt in the text books of my childhood had been successfully extricated from its place of rest on the “Dark Continent” and just seemed to be floating out there as an entity all on its own. Similarly, it has been said that when Napoleon saw this obviously Afrocentric nariz on the glorious structure that is the sphinx he had his troops remove it because it offended. Well did this blogwriter, in my opinion tried to take the black out of an African American…yes he did.

Mr. Obama has defined himself as an African American from always and has had experiences, allegiances and offspring that are black. True he has a multicultural identity but I ask you if he was still perhaps less vaingloriously the Senator from Illinois would he be anything else except an African American Senator? I think not. Now he is a Presidential candidate and it seems to me that in order to vote for a black man some folk have to go to any lengths to soothe their consciousness. Well whatever Mr Blogwriter sir, just as long as you exercise your right to universal adult suffrage on Election Day. Selah.

Guava Jelly...Leave Me Alone...Don't Cha!

I would love scientists to do a study on why of all the lyrics of songs children hear on the radio, they pick up the one with the most questionable words and then learn it by heart. I can think of several occasions when I have shuddered to hear bright-eyed innocent children singing melodiously with some of the ugliest songs imaginable.

So imagine my shock when my two got a game recently with this song “Don’t Cha” embedded on it? For all who are unacquainted with same, the hook of this song says “Don’t wish your girlfriend was hot like me? Don’t you wish your girlfriend was a freak like me…Don’t ya?” WHAT? What are my babies singing? I was beside myself not knowing how to react! Do I forbid the singing of the song? Do I stop them playing the game? Do I ignore all of it knowing they will soon grow out of it? The questions ran through my head at warp speed.

Then it struck me, OVEREACTION!! My Godmother has stories that she recently reprised without urging, featuring me at about their age singing a song all day, everyday called “Guava Jelly.” Talk about suggestive, the lyrics which I still remember, go like this, “Ooh baby here I am, come rub it on my belly like Guava Jelly….” Eeek!! My mother had the foresight to let my obsession with that song peter out on its own so likewise I guess I have to patiently wait for this to pass, no matter how hard it may seem.

After all, I remember years ago after leaving the hospital from a particularly distressing visit with a very significant person in my niece’s life. The mood in the car was very somber. Between my between my sister, myself and the baby, everyone was contemplative, lost in thought if you will. Then Micheal Jackson’s song, "Leave Me Alone" came wafting off the radio into the car and from the two year old in the car seat on the backseat we heard…

”Neave me anone oh, oh, oh just stop dogging me around!!”

The mood in the car lifted immediately, laughter filled the air as we marveled at the baby’s ability to repeat a song like that from recall. We were really grateful for the comic relief.

Therefore I guess children singing the most inappropriate stuff, has been around since forever and it’s not a reflection on parenting skills. Sure now there is such a broad spectrum of offerings where channels are concerned that wholesome lyrics really need not be an issue. If one predetermines listening tastes, the problem need not occur. But I ask you, where’s the fun and opportunity to laugh in that? Selah.

Cow Itch

Thinking back to garden based dangers one could run afoul of in Jamaica, all I could recall was Cow Itch. It is a small golden orange, fuzzy looking pod that grew in the wilds of the hillsides of my childhood and when the breeze blew off the hillside the pollen from that pod would be lobbed per the gusts onto innocent bystanders afflicting them with an incomparable itch only to be soothed by a good bath. Cow Itch was not something that was found in domestic gardens so it is possible that maybe some of my friends who lived on the flats could not even identify with its trouble. My more knowledgeable cohort on things rural Jamaica, speaks of getting soaked by rain while carrying Yam aloft the head to or from market, as being another fantastic itch provider…could be, but believe me folks all that is child’s play when compared to a rogue bush found throughout most of the North America called Poison Ivy.

You see its gardening season here in the north east and after being cooped up in the house for six months watching the land transitioning from barren dryness of winter to the moist blossoming greenery of spring, most are inspired to get outside and become one with the soil. Yup and that’s where my tail of woe begins. Two weeks ago I decided with my newly stimulated seasonal earthiness to trim an eyesore of a bush that was growing approximately four feet from my house. In retrospect I wonder what made me even think of that? I got out there and really went to town decapitating that vermin shrub…or so I thought. I used my hedge trimmers and snipped and shaped and when that proved too short to reach the inner branches of the hedge I got my husband’s power saw with length extension and happily hacked away thus, everything was good, right? WRONG!!

While I was trimming the bush let out a peculiar green odor which I thought was akin to anything one would smell in the Jamaican thickets and never gave it another consideration. Shucks, Cow Itch smelled like this didn’t it? Well two days later I got a wake up call that essentially said, “you’re not in Kansas (or Jamaica) anymore Dorothy (a little Wizard of Oz humor).” I woke up with my arms and legs afire from an itch that nothing could soothe…I had run amok in Poison Ivy!!

My walking partner, rural Jamaica officiando and bush doctor quickly assessed my symptoms and diagnosed that I needed to seek the help of someone with an MD because it would get worse and I would need medication. What was he saying? I had been to Jamaican bush and lived to talk about it! He had to be joking! I laughed it off and continued about my merry business. By the following day I was at the doctor’s office red and swollen itching like none other and begging for relief. In a moment of clarity, I began to figure out how much trouble I was in when the doctor just looked at me and did not touch my arms. Not only was I itching, I was contagious. How would I take care of my family, household and self?

Well, I have never taken so many baths in a 96 hour period!! I can now say without hesitation as a result, that I am an authority on Poison Ivy, Poison Oak and its cousin Sumac (which is what I got into.) I researched the matter thoroughly on the net, I poured over every website, posting and blog regarding same. The only thing that soothed me over the sleepless nights which followed was knowing what I was up against.

Today even as I resurface on the other side of the affliction itching getting less intense as the days pass, I am scarred but greatful that I did not infect my household even though I reinfected myself by wearing my shoes again without putting them in detoxification isolation!! I have learned that like Texas; everything is bigger and better in the US even their toxins additionally, Cow Itch in no way compares; wearing long sleeves and layers while gardening is imperative for you know not from whence the itch cometh; no home should be without Calamine Lotion, Dettol soap and Benedryl finally; watching Oprah reruns of the 4:00pm episode at 2:00am on channel six is a good way to pass time while itching in the early morning hours . Selah!!