God Save My ‘Queen’

I woke-up early last Thursday morning with something on my mind. I could not quite place it, but it was important enough for me to remember I forgot.

It couldn’t have been about the ongoing unpredictability of world events — nothing to do with my strong feeling that Tuesdays New York vote was not the end of the road for Bernie Sanders, or that the world is one step closer to Donald Trump becoming the next US President, or because the European Union is quickly caving-in and breaking-up under refugee pressure, or because Saudi Arabia is holding the rest of the world to ransom over oil.

It wasn’t about the ongoing institutional coup against democracy in Brazil, or the ongoing US-backed onslaught against the Chavez legacy in Venezuela, or the rising death count in Ecuador following its worst series of natural disasters in memory.

It wasn’t about any of the above. But, for some reason, a woman was silhouetted like a screen saver on my mental hard drive. It was no simple woman. It was a woman of substance. I couldn’t quite make her out, but it was definitely a big “her”.

I scraped to the deepest bottom of my memory barrel. It wasn’t about whether Hillary Clinton has a good chance of trumping The Donald to become the first woman to be elected US President, or my gaiety over the Obama decision to put the face of Harriet Tubman on the US $20 bill, or my greater joy about the appointment of Ambassador Dr June Soomer as the next Secretary General of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), or that former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clarke wants to be the first woman Secretary General of the United Nations, or because German Chancellor Angela Merkel was this week awarded yet another global award, or because incoming Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen had exactly one month left before taking office, or because the long-lasting Aung Sang Su Ki has all but consolidated her full power as the most powerful unofficial head of state and government in the world .

It was approaching dawn and still none of the above helped save me from the somewhat haunting lady of substance demanding my attention from the blurred screen saver in the back of my mind.

Still feeling somewhat uncomfortable that I may have forgotten something I should have remembered I joy-sticked myself into full Memory Mode. I set some Chinese tea, communed with my pets and plants, with nature and the new day, then plugged into my own inner sanctum — my outer universe of global TV and Internet news.

Between my favourite all-news TV channels and related computer websites, I get to know, from early morning and all day through my various touchy devices, all that I need to know about who is doing what, where and when. As I flicked the world over from Moscow to Doha to New York and Beijing, I eventually got to BBC World News.

The BBC headline Thursday morning was about Her Majesty The Queen celebrating her 90th birthday, becoming the longest-lasting English monarch.

As I watched, my memory went back in time to when we had an annual Queen Birthday holiday here. The Queen’s also gave awards on that day. We eventually gave it up to get one for Independence Day on February 22.

I remembered getting strap-lashed by our Head Mistress at the Castries Methodist Primary School for asking why I had to sing God Save The Queen and I couldn’t sing Happy Birthday Mummy to my mother.

That’s when it hit me! The hovering silhouette on my mental screen saver was my mother. She shares the same birthday with Queen Elizabeth.

Fortunately, my mum knows I can innocently forget to remember not to forget to remember her birthday, so she kindly takes time out to remind me in advance.

As fate would have it too, one of my sons — or maybe my grand-daughter — had found a way to plant that same reminder into my i-Phone and in my i-Pad, both of which alarmed, together, at 6:30 a.m.

By that time I had already parceled and packed all those birthday things I had been collecting for my mum throughout the year.

And when I landed in her balcony like a late Santa Claus on the afternoon of her 82nd birthday, there she was, as always, Her Majesty My Queen, in all her simple splendour and lasting glory. There she was, Her Majesty My Mom, telling me I was now doing for her the same things she used to do for me as a child each birthday – collecting all year for the big day.

She didn’t partake in the bottle of red wine I shared with visiting neighbours, insisting that even though it is believed that wine gets better with age, as a faithful Wesleyan, she will still never drink the Blood of Christ – not even after celebrating 12 years over her God-given quota.

She hasn’t changed. And she will not. Ina Mondesir remains her. She is still “she”. And every time I celebrate another of her birthdays, I just keep on singing God Save My Queen!