The Loved and Wanted One

 

Some stories are too universal to remain confined within the memory of a single individual. The following though short is one such story.

A few years before my father died in 2000, he told me about the Saturday morning on which I was born. My mother always remembered the time as being 7am, as that was the hour the clarion, known, as "The Kacee" sounded calling the workers to their duties. You see there was no personal clocks to the average Jamaican in 1944 the year in which I was born. Papa's memory was much less precise, but poignant and equally as important to my sense of self.

He claimed 'the women' kept him out of the single room he shared with my mother and my older brother. The women included the midwife, Miss Hutchinson and my God mother Aunt Kathleen. This upset him and made him angry, because he wanted to see the baby, me. He said he never wanted so badly to see a baby before, nor since.

Never in my life had I felt so loved and wanted.  I just finished sharing this treasured memory with a friend on the phone. Thank you, Angela, for allowing me the space to ramble and warming my heart all over again.

Photo is of Mama