In trying to make it on your own, you will face all kinds of struggles, including insults, especially when you’re not making it as quickly as anticipated.
Do not give up.
Let’s talk. Let’s discuss ways we can overcome the struggles, deal with the insults.
Home was once a busy place. Ma baked on Saturdays. The kitchen would be filled with the heavenly smell of fresh bread, and the sound of young people, siblings, cousins and friends, sneaking in one by one, two by two, to eat hot buttered bread.
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| Soda bread baked by my Irish auntie. |
Sad to say, the house was empty when I returned from my vibrant Island days. Only me and Ma now. Grieving. Adjusting. Struggling with heavy emotions. Dealing with power issues. (Let me tell you, parents are Extremely Stubborn People to train. Joke, man, joke).
Bit by bit though, we ended up having many a glorious gyaff...conversation...and delicious lunches with visitors, local and foreign. When the cleaning lady, gardener, and tradesman came to work, they shared hearty chats with my mother and me.
At nights, if the electricity went off, Ma and I sat in the verandah and waited for comets. In the days, we listened to music.
Slowly, I rediscovered the essence of home.
It is where we learn to compromise, to adjust, adapt to changes in each other. It is where we play, are our most foolish, most vulnerable selves. We make mistakes, we forgive, we learn again.
I swear, when I have my own home, and I want it to have a happy feeling, I’d bake bread. The smell of freshly baked bread is heavenly!
I’m not much of a kitchen-gal though. My friend Annie is. She loves to cook. Maybe I should convince her to convince someone to give her a bread-making machine and she can bake all kinds of bread. She can come up with a recipe that doesn’t call for a lot of sugar. And she can bake delicious, healthy bread with different types of grain. I would be her best friend, ahem, I mean, customer!
Anyway, that’s all for now. If you want to read more about home life, check out my book, Big Old Home By De Sea. This book will have you rolling with laughter. There will be tears too. And dreams, and songs, and silliness that will make you want to be a child again. Go on…here it is: Big Ole Home By De Sea.
Question: how do you find your happy self in a situation that’s breaking your heart?
After my father died, I returned home because my mother would be alone. All our family - siblings, cousins, aunties , uncles, had migrated to the lands of hope and glory, maple syrup, deer and antelope. I felt as though I were rewinding my life.
Scenes flashed by in my mind as the plane flew away from the jewel of the Caribbean, bye-bye blue ocean, beaches, cafés, breathtaking views from restaurants on cool, mist-draped mountainsides, friends, a job in the creative field.
Hello broke-up, mash-up, peel-up country, the second poorest in the Caribbean. I’ve heard it was The Poorest at one time.
I was returning just after elections. The second election after almost 30 years of no democracy. Over the phone, my mother had told me what to expect. Political turmoil, burning, looting. I was terrified of the drive home from the airport. It was a long, dark, lonely drive. Every type of “what if” spiraled within me.
Yet, I learned to love home again.
(You can read more stories here: neena maiya emails
Now to answer my question about finding my happy self...one way I coped with my grief: I went on a massive cleaning spree (not that our home was dirty).
I used good ol' fashioned elbow grease, soap and bleach. Yes. Gasp. (Show shocked blue face here.) It took me a few years to discover Mr. Clean.
Anyway, back to the question again... how do we find our happy selves? More to come later...
