Just Keep Going

As a kid my mother would work what seemed like forever, but it was, just almost all the time. And I don’t know how she was able to get extra hours on top of the twenty-four in a day but she did. My mother migrated to America with her parents back in the 1960s with hopes of a glorious life. And in my childish innocence I honestly thought money grew here on tress in a city with golden paved streets. That picture got lodged in my mind leading up to the months before we left the island. I overheard some relatives talk to my father about what sounded like a magical place this America, that would transform us from the simplicity of living in a strong family and community knitted together by a sense of being one people to wealthy household that would be able to help so many others. My father was given an opportunity and although he was reluctant he couldn’t pass up the offer to go and work with his uncle in the ‘New York City’ and make a better life for his family. But the reality we woke up to after two weeks of long work days, racism and a different kind of social injustice, and disillusionment of a better quality of life planted themselves like the coconut trees back home in Jamaica that withstood category five hurricanes and times of drought.

No matter how hard my parents worked, which was too damn hard, they never seemed to be able to do anything but just barely get by. And my mom who didn’t have to work now did so out of love and willingness to support her husband and family. She did it with a silent pain because she had encourage a reluctant husband to take up the offer and used her excitement to come to paradise as the persuader to get the family to emigrate. Why didn’t anyone say how horrible it really was? Why would anyone leave their homeland for this life? But America’s campaign about its greatness bursting at the seams with staged truths lured us in like it did many and being trapped in shame many died in anguish. Giving up simplicity of living with dignity and hope to a cycle of long work hours and less and less family time or even meaningful conversation was the tradeoff.

My hours after school for over a decade were spent tucked away in the corner booth of the Hardrock Café and Diner opened 24/7 off exit 68 in Brooklyn. Sometimes I wondered if my mom stayed at work because the drive was so long but I knew it was for the money. My mom kept going after my Dad died and she barely spoke. I wondered if it was the guilt of it all or just the weariness that seem to soak down to her bones now. But I loved her and didn’t grumble about missing back home but suffered silently like her and father did. I made the best of it and tried to do my best so she didn’t have any added sorrows. I watched the characters in the diner come in and out and while I was never allowed to speak I listened and learned so much about the hardships and small joys faced by a population of working class drowning in the hope of making a better life through work; truck drivers, salesmen and even prostitutes all seem to come to the diner like it was some type of river that you came to wash your burdens away in the luke warm less than great coffee and apple pie that was too good for the place it was sold.

So now I’m sitting here with mama’s ashes in the place where she spent most of her time sharing with customers the beauty of her home island Jamaica. She was a majestic mental tour guide and many dreamed as she walked them through the streets of Kingston and along the river banks of the Rio Cobre. Her love for home dripped off her lips and was like honey to restless weary souls looking for paradise. I think the heart attack was just heart failure from the hopeless helplessness in the failure to experience anything remotely like the American dream. She felt she failed Daddy and I, but maybe in my own disbelief I still never had anything but respect and love for a woman and a man that tried. All you can do sometimes is just trying. Hardrock was the meeting place for those trying and ever so often they got a small encouragement from a fellow weary traveler to keep going. It lived up to its name while a source of strength it was still a sore point reminding you of your reality. Hardrock was no different from the small town I’m from back home where everyone gives a smile and an encouraging word, which says just keep going. Why? Because all you can do in this life is just keep trying. My parents died trying like the many millions of migrants that don’t get their stories told against the blinding light of the few that get a big bite in the big Apple and experience this ever eluding American dream. But I’m going to keep going to honor them and as Granma reminded me every Sunday in our long telephone calls, ‘just do your best baby and keep trying”. Bye mama and papa I’m not going to pursue the fleeting American dream but I am going to enjoy the process of life over the ultimate product.