Home sweet home :)

On the real I miss home. I need to see my mom, my room, my friends…..the beach. Damn! I think my childhood love of the beach is almost faded living in this concrete jungle for the past 5 years. Ok it’s not that long but still. Last time I was at home I had a weird vibe, I acted like it would be the last time I was there. Basically at night coming home from somewhere, a party, a friend’s house I would drive by places I frequented when I was young like our first house. It was at a busy junction (aka a crossroads) with a pub across the street. My best memory was chilling on the front porch lip-synching to Whitney Houston and Lean on me. The family bakery was right next door, the restaurant and boutique on the other side, the barber shop upstairs from the “pub” and down the street a sometimes club where calypsonians would perform on select weekends. The bakery was where I was made to perform recitations of stuff I learnt in school with the requisite eyebrow raises, timed breaths, singsong intonation and clasped hands. It was priceless, ‘til this day I can’t believe that my uncle had me as such a willing puppet. It was in the bakery parking lot I learnt to ride my BMX bike sans training wheels with my mom giving instructions from the upstairs window. It was enough input for her to be a concerned parent, yet enough for me to feel like I taught myself. Lots of other stuff happened like when my older cousin allowed me to watch an expletive laden Beverly Hills Cop with her (haha), when my friend killed my twin turtles and the funeral that I had for them, when I tried to make popcorn and burnt everything (this was the 80s before microwave popcorn) and so much more.
Onto Gleneagles, this was my mom’s friend’s house, Lynn. This was especially creepy since they haven’t live there since 1989 thereabouts. They had to move to a smaller house sans swimming pool because her husband got killed during a robbery at their gas station (about 2 blocks up from our 2nd house). He was a cool guy, intimidating, but he would give me his old cigar boxes to put my knickknacks in. I still have a few to this day. Gleneagles was my home away from home. I had a borrowed pool, a borrowed sister (8 yrs older), tons of books at my fingertips, a creepy basement with mannequins, crazy guard dogs who I never fed, a talking parrot Trixie and Jeffery. I was the running joke here I was constantly begging to go in the pool, but no one wanted to sit in the sun to watch me so I would have to rent myself out like a modern day slave to gain this favor. There were also the times I couldn’t wait and as soon as I glimpsed someone’s figure in the corridor I would cannonball in thinking they were close enough if I really needed some help. I never needed help that was the most frustrating thing I could swim I was a waterbaby in a previous life but they would not let me in that damn pool unsupervised.
Talking about swimming I also remember my friend’s house she lived with her grandparents because her mother was/is a drug addict. This is where I had my certified swimming classes with Jay and some other friends of mine. It was here I stopped being a MexiCANT and became a MexiCAN (sorry ppl watch Once Upon a Time in Mexico) and learned to tread water for 9 mins at the age of 7. It was also here that I met Folasade Adu, Sade. She came to our island often to vacation at my friend’s grandparents “Inn”. She was gorgeous, sweet with lots of hugs and stuff, although she never got in the water she never seemed to mind if we jumped in and she got soaked. My guess is she preferred the beach. More to come partying calls. Mwah.