Chronicles of a Chronic Caribbean Chronicler
By Earl Bousquet
Last Sunday was Mother’s Day, but it was also the first one I awoke to without mine, who passed away at 91 last year.
I bore the new ill-feeling all-day and made-up with my daughter and granddaughter, who I called by WhatsApp to help me navigate “a meal without oil” through an air frier, while navigating her through the imagined taste of the latest distilled product from valuable vats in the Roseau Valley.
Playing Best Mum to myself, I went in and out of joy and sorrow.
However, this is also an important month in an important year in my life, which will only come once.
On April 1, I observed the 50th anniversary of my first signed contract as a journalist.
May 1st (May Day) marked my only daughter Charlene’s birthday.
And then came May 9 – the part I enjoy best…
On that day every year I get ‘Happy Birthday’ calls and congratulations from all-over-the-world – but it’s not my birthday.
Why?
Because, more-than-a-decade-ago, my first-gran, Dhezi, felt that as a journalist I should have a Facebook account.
I lightly told her I was “not interested, because I don’t have face for book…”
She obviously disregarded me and proceeded to set it up – and (also obviously) made a mistake with the date.
She offered several times to fix it, but I insisted on leaving it like that because apart from the kicks I get, it’s an annual reminder of why I never bothered to establish a FB account in the first place.
Every year I enjoy reminding colleagues who call me on May 9 that it’s not my birthday; and when I tell them their date is wrong, the immediate response is usually ‘But Facebook says so…’
In other words, who is me to tell them FB is wrong?
This year, it was Charlie’s turn on HTS-Radio 100 with my early-morning call ‘Live on Air’, as ‘Double C’ and Steve Annius together wished me a ‘Happy Birthday’ that wasn’t.
Charlie reminded me that he still has his ‘Seaman’s Passport’ earned after my dad (Pilot Charles Bousquet), landed him his first job at sea (eons ago).
My dad’s only request was that from time to time, those he got jobs for should ‘send me a post card’ so he could trace where they’ve been.
In Charlie’s case, however, my dad asked only that whenever he went to Brazil, he should bring him ‘some Brazilian Nuts’ – which Charlie reminded me “is very good for men…”
I reminded Charlie that “We are the new old men” and recalled decades ago when Steve hosted a Sunday show dedicated to persons ‘Over 60’ – when I thought it would be forever before I qualified for mention.
But I’ve lived to see the light of that day…
Back in time, when we had ‘Pen Pals’ and wrote ‘Love letters’ to girls whose names we wrote inside the back covers of our exercise books, we could never forget their birthdays – and if abroad, we’d send them ‘Registered Letters’ with our special greetings – and our best handwriting.
Back then too, we used to mark dates on the calendars our parents got for free at groceries, bakeries, bookshops, pharmacies and hardware stores every Christmas (before supermarkets ‘came in style’).
Today, our public utilities want to contribute to an eventual ‘paperless society’ so the Now Generation shuns people like us who still keep our utility bills after paring.
However, with the luck of having spanned the last two centuries – born in the middle of one and approaching the middle of the next – I still preserve my sanity in this fast-changing world by holding-on to some old habits from the past: like my weekly therapy of
‘Going to The Market’ every Saturday, no matter where in the world I may be.
Because I’ve been working from home long before COVID-19 arrived, I’m often called ‘antisocial’.
But earlier this week I read a headline that said ‘People who prefer solitude over constant socializing may not be antisocial because they process the world more deeply…’
Another article said, ‘Highly Intelligent People have two frustrating habits: ‘Changing their minds in mid-argument’ and ‘giving too much unnecessary context…’
And yet another said: ‘Psychologists Say People Who Still Use Paper Calendars Aren’t Stubborn or Old-Fashioned. Their Brains Are Wired to Process Information in a Richer Way.’
Maybe (just maybe) that’s why I still collect and share Chinese calendars every year — and even buy yearly diaries that I simply use as notebooks to chronicle my weekly chronicles of a chronic Caribbean chronicler.
But back to my birthday – and the real date….
It’s actually May 19, but my grand-pickney explained that when she filled-in the section with my birthdate ‘The ONE fell out and the NINE stayed’ – and she forgot where she wrote the password.
So, as my life goes, every May 9, I start a 10-day gap to simply collect supposedly late birthday greetings, thanks to an unintended Fakebook claim (pun intended).
And then, when the real day actually comes, I’ve been told ‘Happy Birthday’ so-many times that I simply sit back and enjoy the fact that I secretly share the same birth date as Malcolm X – and Vietnam’s legendary Ho Chi Minh.
But it’s future Mother’s Days I will have to quickly find ways of handling, without being able to call my ‘Aya’ to wish her ‘Another Happy Mother’s Day’ – to which she’d always reply by referring me to The Mighty Sparrow’s lullaby that reminds us that ‘Every day should be Mother’s Day!’
All of that to say that the day after my birthday is my first grand-daughter’s birthday – a secret the people with only ‘face for book’ will never, ever discover…
And oh!
I also saw this week a quote from William Shakespeare that says, ‘The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool’.
And so, I refuse to rest my pen…
Amen!