HYACINTH

CHILDHOOD

"I wanted so much to touch the snow"

I was about six or seven when I started hearing about England, Canada, and the United States. Is like everybody in the Caribbean talking about foreign. I remember sometimes my uncle, which is my grandmother son, use to send us old newspaper from the States and we use to read them from back to cover, what we couldn't read we ask somebody bigger to read, or just look at the pictures. I remember the first year when he was away, he would send and tell us how wonderful America was, and how you could get everything to buy. We as children use to be praying for the time when we would be big enough to travel abroad. It seem that everybody in my family lived abroad.

My own mother was in England and marry over there and had a new family. I lived in St. Lucia with my grandmother. One aunt, my mother's sister, was in Canada and my uncle and another aunt in America. Whenever they use to come home Christmas time it was always a big event to us. Is like they carry home all of America and Canada in their suitcase. The amount of pretty clothes and shoes. Boy, and the pictures, I use to look forward to those postcards of the Statue of Liberty, City Hall, and those big building and cars and the snow. I remember I just wanted so much to touch the snow.

From I was around nine, I know I was going to leave St. Lucia. I came from a large family, three brothers and myself, and lots of cousins. It was good, because you always had somebody to play with and talk secrets with, but then you know, sometimes the house was crowded. Sometimes we had to eat the same thing every day, depending on whether we got money from my mother or uncles in America. Sometimes things was a bit rough, but we was happy most of the times.

I did a little high school but I drop out, it was hard to go when the parcels from my mother stopped coming. . . sometimes I didn't have shoes to wear, and I was too proud to go to school without shoes. Sometimes I wouldn't go to school, and other time I would borrow my cousin's shoes to wear and she would stay home from school. She would go one or two days and then I would go the other two days. But that way you miss a lot of the school, so eventually I just stop and stay home and look after my younger cousins and sometimes wash clothes for a family that live nearby.