PART III: From the forthcoming book which chronicles the lives and experiences of Jamaicans in the diaspora, Jamaican Hands Across The Atlantic, by Elaine Bauer and Paul Thompson. The book will be published by Ian Randle Publishers in June 2006. www.ianrandlepublishers.com.
AS A whole the gentler and more communicative approaches to child rearing favoured in Britain and North America, and now a strong influence in Jamaica too, contrast sharply with the strict severity and lack of discussion which marked so many Jamaican childhoods in the past. This could provoke reflection, and sometimes an outright rejection of the parental model, when these children grew up to be parents themselves. Equally important, there were many exceptions to the severe stereotype: most notably from grandmothers, but less expectedly, equally often from fathers.
Grandfathers appear least often as significant figures, usually at the margin. None of them played a disciplinary role, leaving that to the women, and there was one remembered because he 'would shield us' from chastisement.
Rose Lyle remembers how her mother's father, a large farmer, would now and then ride up to their house, and 'we used to rush out, and there he sit on his horse, and he'd got something for everyone'.
Spurgeon White grew up with a grandfather, another farmer, whom he admired for his generosity to neighbours, but found hard to talk to: 'My grandfather never really have no communication ... I couldn't see all his emotions.'
But there were also four grandfathers who were remembered as easy to talk to, including one who was a storyteller, a farm worker, for Robert Austin 'my favourite granddad': 'we just look forward to especially night time, because he would tell us many stories.'
Nevertheless, only three seem to have been central figures for their grandchildren's young lives.
Leonard Selkirk lived close to his mother's parents, and then with them briefly as a boy after his parents had migrated to England. For him his small farmer grandfather, tall, white-haired and dark-skinned, was a 'powerful' influence.
Descended from the Maroons, he had traditional knowledge from living close to nature. 'He had this remarkable skill to detect poisonous and non-poisonous mushrooms. He had the ability to walk into a nest of bees, extract from them the honeycomb, and they wouldn't trouble him at all.'
He had equally striking social skills, which for Leonard made him an important model: a person who could stand up to anything, who would always be able to relate to anyone young, old, anyone at all.
'For me, he was a great hero, a great figure.' Leonard was with his grandfather when he was dying, and he remembers weeping: 'the last great pain of my childhood.'
Jack Constable, retired London engineer, grew up with an unusually influential grandfather, a powerful model for both his son and grandson.
He was a successful farmer and beekeeper, and a local agricultural leader, with a large old house close to the town of Black River. Jack grew up with his parents and grandparents together, and he describes his grandfather as a 'lovely personality', who was against harshness to children. He said, 'The best thing is to sit the child down, and tell the child what the child is doing wrong, and give it some form of punishment, and make sure that you mean what you say, and don't go back on it.' This approach has been transmitted down the generations in the Constable family. 'He had a lot of influence regarding discipline, mannerism, one's attitude. It spilt over to our parents as well ... I was only once hit by my dad. Once in my life.'
Jack has followed the same model with his own children, and he also shared caring for them when young. His white English wife Sophie describes how Jack always got up for them at night, bottle-fed, changed nappies, and looked after them on weekends to give her a break: 'He was much better at it than me! Jack's got much more patience.' It is, nevertheless, most of all with Sean Ismay, now a Toronto truck
loader, that we sense the most intense emotional bonding to a grandfather.
He tells of how he was a love-child, chosen by his farming grandfather at birth. His teenage mother had gone to Kingston and returned home to the country concealing her pregnancy. But Sean's grandfather, emerging from the rum shop, heard a child's cries and realized it was his child.
So he picked me up, and he left his food, and took me right over to the bush, and I've been living with them ever since ... I guess the look in his eyes, when he was holding me.... They knew he was in love with me.... He know there was no way that my mum could raise me, right?... He fell in love, and he took me.
So Sean spent his first ten years, until rejoining his mother in Canada, with his grandparents as 'the apple of their eye': and 'I used to follow my grandfather everywhere.'
Loved and admired
With grandmothers, by contrast, there was quite often a very special relationship: they are recalled as an 'angel' or a 'saint', 'wonderful', 'sweet old grandma', 'caring, warm', 'giving', 'really there for me'. Rickie Constable, now a professional in New York and London, vividly recalls his feeling of physical closeness with his Jamaican grandmother: 'Oh God, I remember her eyes, you know how some people get the blue ring around their eyes when they get old? I liked her voice, and I loved, always loved her smell!
She used to smell sweet, like corn.' Some children called their grandmother simply as 'momma': 'my mother never got "mother" title from me.' But all these grandmothers were the disciplinarians in their households. Many were also hard-worked, and although some would talk, most had little time to talk with a child: 'You were put in your place.' Nevertheless they were usually gentler than younger parents, 'never with a heavy hand', 'can be strict at times, but was a nice balance': some striking or whipping, but nearly half of them not hitting the child at all. Gene Trelissick, now a New York social worker, remembers how her Port Antonio great-grandmother would whip her: 'She would! Yeah, and she'd finish whipping you, and she'd tell you, "Oh, I love you, and that's the reason why I whip you!"'
These grandmothers were loved and admired partly because they had taken care of the child, but also because most of them were still working in the fields and the bush, often taking the child with them, and because of the values which they instilled. 'She teach us things': above all, tolerance and generosity to others. Robert Austin's grandmother, a village higgler, would take in people and give them food, 'even considered mad and crazy, from the street. She would give everything away, and have nothing. That's how she is. It was really great to be around her, because of her personality'.
For Connie Dixon too, her grandmother, a field and road labourer, was her biggest influence: 'In her generosity, her kindness, her non-judgemental attitude, her humbleness.... Basic survival mentality, you don't need much to survive. I learnt that from her.... She never complained, she never envied anybody.'
For all these reasons, even if strict and not very communicative, a grandmother was often a child's closest adult. Additionally, quite often, even though they were still working, these older women were not well, 'very sick', suffering from fits, or going blind, and their very frailty tugged at the child's heart. Connie remembered, 'I always thought somebody needed to take care of her, so I didn't want to leave her.' Charlene Summers, a hotel cleaner, vowed not to travel while her grandmother was alive: 'I made a promise, I made a pledge in my heart, I won't leave her. I get the opportunity of leaving here to foreign, to be in England, to America, even to Germany, and I said, "No".' Jacob Richards grew up in a farm family where he was known as a child as 'Miss Annie's lantern'. He used to share a bedroom with his grandmother, Miss Annie: 'She'd get up, and the minute she stirred, I'd be stirred, because I just slept in her room.' They would go out early together to work in the fields, and 'wherever she goes, I was in front of her ... I don't know if it's the fact that I was there and she relied on me, or I relied on her, but I looked after her that way, yeah'. He felt very close to her, 'almost as one'. There were of course many more grandparents who were unremembered, whether due to death, distance, or family breaches, but nobody spoke of this as an issue. When we turn to parents it was likely to matter much more. In chapter seven, we shall consider the fathers who left their children without supporting them, and also substitute parents, aunts and stepparents, who are remembered both positively and negatively. Here we look just at the parents who in one way or another were present in their children's lives, beginning with the fathers.
Soft parental role
Jamaican fathers have been heavily criticized for a long time. Our life stories give us clear enough depictions of some 30 fathers, and show how many of them gave crucial emotional and communicative support to their children. Typically they played the soft parental role while the mother was
the disciplinarian: for while most mothers are portrayed as strict, spankers or hitters, half of these fathers never hit their child at all, and only three were severe punishers. The recurrent image of a father is of a man who was 'easy-going', 'mild', 'kind-hearted' and 'quiet'. 'A loving and kind and gentle
man', Joyce Leroy recalls of her father, a Kingston tailor: 'My father would talk to you until you can't take any more. He would not spank you'.
Certainly there were some fathers who were not talkers, described as 'very reserved', 'not one much for emotions and feelings'. Winnie Busfield, who would go to visit her father in the country, regretted that 'you didn't really know wouldn't sit you down and have a conversation, so you don't really know
them. They'll just provide for the home'. But despite this negative stereotype, fathers were in fact more often remembered as 'easier to talk to' than mothers: 'we talk a lot', 'any problem I could discuss with him', 'my father was the person we all go to'. With a few fathers there was deeper debate:
one was a farmer who was also a mathematician; Selassie Jordan's father, a technician and -- like his son -- a rasta, enjoyed discussions, so that 'he would, if you come up wid a question, like to reason about it'; while Celia Mackay, recalled how her father, an estate chauffeur, 'used to read a lot, sit, and he'd tell us bedtime stories at night'.
There were some other daughters who loved their fathers to the point of idealization, with almost -- as one put it -- 'a romantic notion about him': describing him as 'a very special man', 'a sweet man, very kind, loving, adorable', 'the greatest father there is'. Altogether almost a third of our migrants describe relationships with their fathers which were 'very close', 'we bonded'. Hyacinth Campbell and her brother 'loved him more than our mother, because of the quiet-natured person that he was'. Such closeness can be summed up in Sandrine Porto's relationship with her hardworking father, who was a fisherman by night in a dug-out canoe, and a carpenter by day. 'He would go to sea at 4:30, and he would come back to get ready by eight o'clock, ready to go off to work.' At weekends he was making furniture in his workshop. But when he did come home, he was affectionate and easygoing. He left discipline to his sterner wife: 'he was never the dad who would hit. And if she's mad about something, we would ... stay away and just hope for dadda to come through the gate, "Please come home now!"' Similarly, when the children wanted a treat they went to him. 'Oh, very easy. My father was the person we all go to.... For example, like school trips ... we wouldn't tell mum, it's dad'. For Sandrine, 'he was the greatest, he is the greatest person ever. He was the best father.'
Not all relationships with fathers were of this kind. Interestingly, in some middle class families parental roles were reversed, so that the father was the disciplinarian, and the mother gentler, even 'huggy, smoothy'. But provided the discipline was no more than spanking, such middle class fathers could be equally admired. Harry Davidson was struck regularly by his father, a Kingston warehouse manager, but Harry felt they were 'close', 'I look up to him all my life', partly because his father was also communicative: 'He was the one I always spoke to when I had a question about anything.'
Lastly, in two working-class families, by contrast, the punishing was much more harsh, to the point which would now be considered abuse.
Patsy Clark felt ambivalent about her butcher and bus-driver father. 'He was a really hard worker, and I think that was a good influence.' But he had a short temper, and a savage streak too. 'He beat, he loved to beat people, and throw things at you, and then he ask questions at you.' Winston Lloyd, however, describes his father, a Kingston labourer, as 'a rough man to me' but 'a good dad', although certainly in his household 'life was hard....
He used like that wire you use for the light, straighten me up, give me some whipping, yeah'. There was also constant friction with a stepmother.
At the age of 13 Winston sought refuge with his uncle in Mobay: 'I ran away.' Such tough disciplinarian fathers were, however, very much the exception among those remembered in these Jamaican families: much more often the fathers were recalled as gentle, communicative, and close to their children.
Hard disciplinarians
With mothers by contrast the whole range tends much more towards harshness. A quarter of all the mothers were described as hard disciplinarians, 'crazy strict', 'a prison guard', regularly flogging and beating with a belt or strap. 'She beat first and ask questions later.' Such mothers were often -- but not always -- struggling to run large families with five or more children, and they believed that 'if you'll whip them over the head, they'll listen to you'. One daughter of a teacher, 'an awful disciplinarian,' confided, 'I hated my mother for years.' One son, belted
regularly, still finds it hard to kiss his mother. They also resented their mothers failure to talk with them. For example, daughters were not warned of the onset of menstruation. 'My mum, probably, would be the last person that I would confide anything,' a son declared: 'It's like talking to a wall.'
Stuart and Hyacinth Campbell, son and daughter of a village building worker, reflect on their harsh and uncommunicative mother:
She loved to beat.... If we forgot one chore, it would be a whopping, you would never escape it. If we had to fill the drum with water, and she comes home and it's half of it, we would get a whopping for it.... She doesn't talk to us ... I grew up with everything bottled up inside ... I didn't like my mother, to be honest.... We didn't know a mother's love.... Today, you'll probably call it child abuse.
On the other hand, at the opposite extreme, another quarter of mothers who are portrayed as 'gentle', 'quiet', 'always smiling', 'tender and loving'.
Occasionally this is linked with material generosity and giving to others:
'she will have the last and give it to you, and then she'll do without.'
Occasionally these were families with few children, and in some homes the mother's role was also easier because the father was responsible for discipline. These mothers were also communicative: 'we could talk to her', 'we talk', 'I ain't scared to say anything to her.' In contrast to the more controversial harsh memories, descriptions of gentler mothers tend to be brief. Sometimes they seem to have become idealized, as 'a very special lady, the greatest mum there is', or with the mother's role as moral teacher linked to an almost perfect character: 'a blessed lady'; 'an angel, a saint, a woman with enormous strength of character'; 'she was a saint, she taught me everything I know.'
Nevertheless, most memories of mothers are more complex, lying in a variety of ways between these extremes; of disciplinarians, yet who did convey a strong sense of caring -- 'old-fashioned, strict. Yeah, she's loving.'
Some mothers did express this caring through talking and listening to their children -- 'easy to talk to', 'if you're having problems, she'll listen'; but most through practical caring, cooking and baking and sewing -- 'She would sew clothes for us, she would make our uniforms for school.' They are typically described as strict, even a few as 'a little bit rough sometimes', but also as 'very dedicated' mothers, 'there as a mother', 'very close', 'very very caring. She cares about all of us'. Thus memories of punishment by these mothers are often qualified by a justifying phrase -- 'It's not anything like child abuse, just a tap with the hands', or 'She would beat, but of course, the Bible says, "Spare the rod and spoil the child"'; or linked to a note of praise -- 'She's strong, a disciplinarian, she's a loving mother.'
With several children, the strictness itself is described as a manifestation of their mother's caring. For Selvin Green as a child, 'There was always a set time for everything: ... a certain time to go to play, a certain time to go and sweep the yard, and a certain time to go to bed.' With Sandrine Porto's mother, a fisherman's wife, 'the house must be spotless. We have to move all the furniture where we're cleaning, and clean under everything and everything.' Owen Callaghan's mother, a Kingston waiter's wife, on seeing her son had failed to wash up the supper, resorted to direct action. 'She saw the dishes in the sink, the next minute -- the dishes were in my bed! ... The old people, the way they choose to do things is very effective!'
In retrospect, controlling and caring can be seen as two sides of the same coin, and with some of these mothers it was also linked to a leading role in the family as a whole: 'the leader', 'strong-willed, strong-headed', 'bossy', 'the backbone of the family'. We must be careful not to assume such exceptionally powerful mothers as typical, but nevertheless they do bring home the complexity which typifies so many of these portraits of Jamaican mothers. For even when resented for some of their sternness, these strong mothers usually became close and admired parents. Thus Rickie Constable's mother was a teacher during his early childhood in Jamaica, although when she came to the United States her qualifications were not recognized and initially she had to work as a cleaner. She is 'a community person', interested in politics, a deacon and Sunday School teacher in her church, concerned about manners, clothes, respect and public service.
Rickie, after saying 'my mum did not spare the rod', and also that she is 'not easy to talk to, my mum talks at me, she doesn't talk with me', equally emphasizes how 'she's very dedicated to her children, very very involved in our lives, very very caring', that her influence on him has been 'huge'. He sums up, 'My mother's still my hero.'
