Remembrance
An attempt to imagine losing memory.
It often comes in phases,
Sometimes, at the end of the day is,
'How yuh doin son
Yuh eat anything for the day yet?'
It eh play it hot outside eh? That blasted sun
Other days, she can’t be bothered to say a word before the sun done set
She started forgetting things when I was about fourteen years old
Little things at first;
Grocery lists, phone numbers, stories she was told.
But as the years went by,
So, did my mother’s memories
They would return in bursts and sparks
Like little candles lighting up the dark
She would sometimes run her fingers over her feet
Calloused, from long walks at night in the park
She would caress the blisters on her skin
From days long past from places, she might as well had never been
It was a cold morning in December
She looked at the snow as it fell slowly but her eyes were seeing something else
I often imagine what tropical landscapes full her mind
In her fondest dreams
She probably finds herself down by the streams
With a cookout happening on the shore,
Calypso music dancing on the air connecting her to her core.
Her body may exist over here,
But her soul is in the heart of Trinidad playing in the fields.
“Ma, do you know who I am?”
What kinda stupid question is that boy?
Like I eh go know my own son
Lord Jesus, put a hand on this child, please
I breathe a sigh of relief.
Today seems to be a good day for her
‘Ma, how old am I?”
‘Eh? How old? Must be bout sixteen now, not so?’
Not too good of a day then
She was about four years off, but I was still glad she remembered who I was.
‘Ma, what’s my name?’
She gets a troubled look on her face
She begins to fall back in time at a dramatic pace
Grasping desperately for information she just can’t place
Silhouette bodies that she needs to match to a face
Her eyebrows furrow as she contemplates the case
Her composure begins to crack from the inside, like an already broken vase
‘I’m Anthony’ I say to her
“Yuh eh need to tell me that child, I know meh own child name”
She pauses for a moment as if to regain herself
“It have Julie mango, starch mango, rose mango, calabash mango
Some ah dem big, some ah dem small
Some ah dem so sweet, it go make ur bawl.
Mind when yuh go to pick, yuh don’t fall…
Cause some of dem mango trees over 12 feet tall.”
She sometimes remembers childhood songs so vividly
That they come running out of her mouth
Forcing her to shout
An amalgamation of things that nobody knows what she really talking about
In these moments though, her mind seems clear of all doubt
Her words are sure of themselves
There is life in her eyes again
It inspires me to take up the pen
Every now and then
When those bullets of historical experiences come shooting out
I am prepared to absorb each shot to my chest
To compromise for my lack of understanding, I use my poetry as the bulletproof vest
It softens the blow
For the older, I grow
And the colder side of the world that begins to show
But with each day that passes, a step towards better understanding
How to ask for something and receive it without demanding
How to better learn myself, by better leaning my mother’s mind.
“Mosquito one, Mosquito 2
Mosquito jump in the old man shoe
The shoe too hot, it jump in the pot
The pot too cold, it jump in the hole
The hole too deep, it jump in the jeep.”
Before I even realize it, I’m singing along myself
A silly childhood song from a time when curfew was when the street lights came on
“The jeep too fass, it jump in the grass
The grass too high-
She stops herself midsentence
Is she forgetting this song too?
Out of worry, I jump up and out of the blue I ask
“Ma, where yuh from?”
‘Moruga’ she calmly replies
The animation returns to her eyes and she takes off
“Long time, we used to get red mango and sugar plum for twenty-five cents a bag
Now? They wanna charge yuh a pound and a crown.”
It makes me think of why my mother came here in the first place
Hopping on that plane in the sixty’s hungry to get her first taste
Of first world living and a brand-new base
Except she was met with discrimination in all manner of forms
Be it her gender, her class, and even her race
From the blackness of her skin to the definition of being feminine
Her new identity as a black woman was born
Having had moved to a country where these things mattered.
I often think of the movement of bodies
Across lands and across waters,
We carry our cultures wherever we choose to go
The Caribbean is the first truly diasporic place in the world
Can only reproduce itself wherever it finds its roots planted.
I may never have touched the Trinidadian soil,
But I feel the roots of my mother’s hands reaching towards me
I recoil,
I retreat,
It feels like too much at times,
I can hear the whiplash of a hundred year
I can feel the whip lash for a hundred years
I can feel the earth, damp with the water of all those tears
Of poor mothers and brothers and fathers and sisters
Who suffered being removed from their homes
Where is home?
I, like my mother before I am forced to ask that question.
To the Caribbean individual, where is home really?
My mother forgets more than she can care to remember now
But, the memories that do find their way to the surface
They are so full of life that I only need them to know
That my mother is still fighting for her life, even if she will forget again tomorrow.
About the Creator
Stephen Chan Wah
Trinidadian Writer, currently residing in Toronto. The art of writing means many things to me. It is currently changing and I am always finding myself revisiting my passion for writing in new ways. Thanks for any time spent reading my work.
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