So I just smoked a joint with my best friend and finished a bottle of champagne and I’m feeling nostalgic. My childhood was a typical one, it was one where my innocence was protected by my family till the last moment. I had three best friends who I did everything with, each living only a street away. I remember three distinct landmark in my childhood, the first being a tamarind tree that stood in my yard. It was massive and tall and when it bore its bitter fruit, it did so in abundance. So much so that my parents traditionally sold the entire trees harvest to one person. Better to make a couple hundred than let it waste. It made the bitterest fruit which in the skillful hands of my mother and on a smaller scale myself became the most delicious sweets, tamarind sauce for polourie or tamarind balls. I remember this tree was so tall that those who made it to the top would say they could see the entire of my home town. I was only ever brave enough to climb to the first few branches. But i would always admire my younger brother and his best friend who would climb straight to the top. We use to play pirates between those branches. When the wind blew, it swayed the branches like a ship, and there was a branch which had formed like a ship wheel, which made it even better. This game became a favourite of ours. I always remember that I, my best friends and my younger brother and his best friend would be up between the branches laughing and acting like pirates and not once did anyone fall.
Another landmark lay behind my house. Where I grew up the house was rented and there was a lot of yard space, enough maybe for five or six more houses (i kid you not). When you got to the boundary of the property we lived on there were tall razor grass, and short water grass, the ones you feed to rabbits. If you go through there , you came upon a small forest and being the children we were, full of adventure we would venture into that forest almost every weekend. It wasn’t a dark dreary forest, it was full of teak and ‘banga’ trees, (the only term i know it by) and these trees on its entire bark was covered by pine needles, we all got our fair share of pricks. But the trees were tall and the sun shone through, there were no grass only dried fallen leaves on the ground hat crunched beneath our feet. We would go explore this forest, finding hidden spots us girls finding a place to have our picnic and make mud pies, the boys bringing bugs and scaring us, splashing in the little river we found. Then one day we went into a direction we had never explored before and ventured onto a farmers property. Now it was mango season and right where we emerged from the forest was a julie mago tree. Now, if you were born in Trinidad you know this is one of the most delicious mangoes you could ever eat. So, being the kids we were we climbed the tree, not wondering whether it belonged to anyone. We had been exploring that forest for a long time and never met anyone. While picking the mangoes and filling our bags some of us already peeling with our teeth we hear someone yell out to us, it was the farmer. He was yelling that he had caught us and was running toward us with two dogs in tow. My younger brother and his best friend jumped off the tree and we all laughed and ran back into the forest. We visited that farmers farm many times, whenever anything was season from citrus fruits to cucumbers and he and his two dogs always chased us but we were never caught. I suppose because he never got a proper look at us and because we always came through the forest he had no idea who were. So he could launch no complaints to our parents, which made us brave.
The third landmark of my childhood was a drain, well more like a canal and a bridge. I mentioned that I and my three best friends lived a street away from each other. Well when we were on vacation and couldn’t see each other as much as in school we would each run along the side of the canal and meet at a bridge and sit and exchange secrets, gossip or just share piece of cake or some sweet one of our parent had made. We’d just sit on that bridge all four of us and talk. I heard about my cousins first crush while there, one of us broke the news that she wouldn’t be going to the same high school as us. Another informed us that she had met her mother for the first time after 13 years and her siblings there. When someone spread the word that we needed to meet at the bridge, we knew something important had occurred. Well as important as our adolescent problems were, they were huge to us. It was a safe place for all of us, i got my first valentines at that bridge.
I passed that way the other day, passed the house that held the majority of my childhood memories. The tamarind tree i never got to the top of was gone, there was a huge concrete wall surrounding the land the house is on as well, there is no longer a way to get to the forest. I wonder if the farmer is still alive? and if the mango tree is still baring its delicious fruit? As for the canal and the bridge, well they are still there. Though I’m sure now no parent feels safe enough to have there adolescent daughters run along the sides of the canal, crime has come to even my home town and the canal has always been surrounded by dense trees and grass. But there would be no one to run along it anymore, we have all grown up and now live in such different places that we can no longer get to the bridge by running along the canal. One lives in Tobago, one Canada, I live in the central part of Trinidad and the fourth, the fourth we mourned for years long after Lupus took her life at the age of 20. I don’t think we ever went back to the bridge when she died now that I think about it.
My childhood was full of such typical days, the days of playing in the dirt, climbing trees, having picnics and outside cooks during vacation. I’ll tell you all about it, so drop by my blog again okay.
Ceramic Island 
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