Oh My Papa!

MAMA always told me, “Speak softly, tidy your room and always behave like a lady.” My papa was the opposite. He taught me to puff Broadway, pack a jack and sip rum when I was a wee five-year-old. He took my mama, a good Catholic schoolteacher and introduced her to the world of a whe whe bank and beer garden in his city abode. But she was the one who chose him. After all, he had journeyed to her country home and sang “Golden Earrings” while she danced the cocoa. She could have chosen the school’s young headmaster, but he had a hole in his sock and most probably couldn’t sing. Furthermore, papa acted as a pirate in “Swiss Family Robinson” and even though I have to put the video on slow motion and watch frame by frame to see if I can find him, my mama was always proud of the pictures of him on the ship in Tobago. Hansome was his name, and handsome he was. And next to causing hearts to flutter was his love for the outdoors. Betting on horses was his favourite pastime and while Mama would dress me up to the nines to see the queen, my papa would take me to the races, all decked in my straw hat, matching straw bag and pretty frock. On a Sunday morning, papa would be up and turning the pot, for very soon he would be packing the car trunk with food and grog and we would be off on our trip to Granville beach, where his cousins resided. Mama would be hesitant but for us the children, it was always exciting.

Hunting was another of my papa’s pastime and after a hunting spree with his partners, he would again turn that pot into a wicked curry and wake us up for some delicious wild meat. I often wondered how my mama felt about my papa’s free-spirited ways, but not for long. They always say, “The good die young but the wicked live to a ripe old age” and so, I was only nine when my six-foot, strong papa fell face forwards to the ground with a massive heart attack. I was told that while others screamed and bawled, I grieved, and that my handkerchief had to be wrung again and again for the tears that kept flowing. For years I must have lived my father’s life; that free-spirited, untamed, lovely existence spurning a mother who was strong and strict. And, even though my mama was religious, the only picture of my papa kneeling, which was during an earthquake, struck me as an action that was real and sincere. His interactions with people as people with nothing attached to them was also credible.

MY IMAGINARY DAD
It was only in my adult years that I tried to re-create the father I would have liked to have in my teenaged years.
 Of course I would have to do some dressing up to the one I actually knew but it was important for me to have my dad back, even if it was only in my imagination. This is what I envisioned:

Read meh mind

He was trying his best 
to shut me out
reading his newspaper
I wanted to talk to him
about the news
but I was too small
for his big shoes
I didn’t want to make
no set ah noise
while he was reading
I wanted to sneak out
and lime wid de boyz
but he caught me red-
handed by the door

“I was only going to see
how de weather was...”
bold and brass-face was I
“I jus’  didn’t want tuh
worry yuh,
cause yuh work hard all day”
I was sure praying for me
 
He took me up and put me
on a stool, and he
look meh straight in de eye
I sure was important
he was taking me on
Is time he do dat
I was waiting so long

Well, it didn’t take a day
dis journey wid him
neither a month or a year
Man I feel like a boss
for the joy which we shared
He really was impressed
by the mind dat I bared

Gone now, but not forgotten, my papa has left a legacy of a “sun child, fun child, strong child of the West Indies”  I would like to think, but deep down I know it would take a lifetime of constantly creating images of him to take me through the storms of life.