Jamaica Mon

I have an Italian friend who had the perfect mother, still alive at 97, who she adores and takes care of.  Her son and daughter are happy and working and she has great relationships with them and their spouses. She is a new and doting grandmother.  Her husband is loyal and funny and intelligent and a great guy.  She is a giving and loving friend.  When I tell her about my seventy-three year old sister who gives all her money away to a catfisher, willingly, she listens and sighs with kindness.  Sometimes I wish I was her.  No doubt I have a husband I adore and am grateful for and a loving brother who I have been bonded to forever in another life time and always will be, and a nephew who I love deeply but the rest of the family feels adrift in a sea of loss, misunderstanding, mental illness.  My father, seen here sporting giant blue-blockers and a wide-brimmed hat to shade him from the Jamaican sun, was mostly introverted and calming, cerebral and even spiritual.  My mother, gripping her over-sized straw bag for dear life, barely squeezing out a smile and looking like she's bearing down for a bowel movement, was like a wild storm, unpredictable and nerve-wracking.  Frightening, really.  In this reflective phase of my life, it's easy to try to make sense of it all and who I am by focusing on that which I wish never was.  But my brother is writing a book entitled Mother's Day and asked that I dig up old photos of our mom and it made me think again.  The good news is that I didn't get a headache, stomach cramps or feel light headed going through old photos.  In this photo that I sent him my parents and I were on a rare family trip.  I have no memory why my brother and sister didn't come. My winged turquoise sunglasses and friendly smile bely how I know I must have felt because I always felt edgy, unsure, ungrounded.  We had flown to Montego Bay in Jamaica to visit one of my childhood friends, a beautiful blonde airline stewardess (who I am friends with today), who had married a Mo Bay local. They owned a hotel with barred windows surrounded by doberman pinchers she controlled by whistling at them.  I have vague memories of meeting a local guy and navigating Dunns River Falls, drinking too much one night and being hungover the next morning, sunning myself so much I looked native, and bringing in the new year with my parents and friend.  I am sure I avoided my mother, despite how hysterically funny she could be.  She was intelligent and quick-witted but an emotional force that could scoop you in and twirl you around and then fling you aside.  I eventually saved my life by moving at the age of 34, half my life-time ago, from the west to the east coast, with my beloved brother.  The 21st of September, three days ago, marked the 15th year anniversary of my mon's death.  I know so many still-buried wounds, frights and experiences will never be remembered, dealt with, even allowed to surface for air.  And yet I am grateful for the this lunatic woman, who I never really knew and who never knew me, and her mild-mannered husband.  She and my blue-eyed dad gave me life.