My father’s straw-bag for ladies.

26.5.24.

Hello my friend, how’s the year tripsing along so far?

Shees, last Sunday was rough with emergency. But the oddest things came swingin’ in the next day, nuff niceness with dollops of kindness. Gratitude poured over me like Mr. Joe’s sno-cone surrup. Call me Sugary, ah don’t care.

I think the goodness began on Monday when I was rumbling ‘round the kitchen mumbling to me, Listen, you got to look for things to celebrate everyday. If you can’t find t’ree, look for two. If you can’t see two, you better had find at least one bit o’ good vibe.

Soon after, synchronicity went into fifth gear. I was gyaffing…chatting…with a cousin about a blog I needed to build for a li’l business, and that self-same afternoon, you won’t believe! An abandoned blog of mine popped up on my laptop. Yayyy, wuk done, I ain’t have to build from scratch. Couple of hours after, a box arrived from Auntie Amna and  Cousin Lis. It was packed with goodies for me and ma, but hear this, nah! One of the goodies was a pouch for me, made from cork, a souvenir from Portugal.

M’dear, you can call me Fanciful Fool, call me The Exaggerator, gimme any name you got, I don’t ca’e, I just don’t care; I’m convinced, actually better than convinced, I feel it in my O positive, there’s a link between the pouch, my recovered blog, the old-old-old book I was reading about a man trekking into the British Guiana jungle with a troop of men-servants to fetch his belongings, my thoughts a-spinning and a-weaving-rainforest-luggage-bags-my father’s straw-bag.

My father’s straw-bag grew on the Ité- (pronounce it eetay) palm, way-way-way-oh-down the tea-coloured Mahaicony creek, into the hinterland. What I mean is, the bag began as green fronds swaying on the ité-palms in the immense savannah-space and sky. First, there was the cutting down of fronds, next was the washing by hand, and the boiling and the drying and the hand-making of the tibisiri straw. Then the Amerindians took their produce to their coast-land mission near the Mahaicony market.

Mama, travelling one day through Mahaicony, saw the straw and, Oh, she thought, that go make a nice handbag fo’ me.

Well, according to her, she who can stretch a tale from wherever she is to the heart of earth, she wove plain straw, and she dyed some of it then she stitched coloured straw-flowers; she lined the inside with cotton, and added handles.

“Watch me bag wha’ me make, you like am?” she asked my father. Look at my bag that I’ve made, do you like it?

Ow Lawd, big mistake. My father said, “Oh gosh, man, this bag nice fo’ me walk with me thing-them when me-ah go town.” This bag is nice for me to carry my things when I go to town.

“What kinda thing you mean?”

“Me food and so, nah? Extra kerchief.”

“Noooo,” Ma protested. “This ah wan bag for ladies! All body go laugh you.” This is a bag for ladies. Everyone will laugh at you.

My father didn’t care a straw. Off he went, brown man from the rice-planting village to the city of Georgetown, with his flask of hot tea, his bowls of food prepared by his wife, packed in her pretty straw-bag for ladies. In town, he placed his orders for fabric to sew men’s clothes, nuts and bolts, tiles and zinc sheets and other construction hardware for the shop he ran with ma, where they sold rain-boots and fashionable items from Prague; necessities and frivolities from other countries, for the kitchen and the home, for beauty and the beast, bathroom, toilet, batty and po’…bum and potty…and goodness knows what was trendy in the Sixties.

And, according to her, she who can stretch a tale to fit the occasion, my father was proud of her bag, creating a stir on busy Water Street, and whilst she described the scene to me, I imagined pedestrians longing-out they necks, oogling they eyes.

“How you know that’s wha’ happen?” I’ve asked her recently.

“When me go to town with he, other times, to buy ladies’ things for the store, I offer to fetch the bag, he say nah. He swinging the bag, everybody turn ‘round to watch he,” she said.

“So how you know about the first day if you weren’t there?” I asked.

“He self tell me,” she said.

“All body like am,” he reported. “Ladies ask where me buy am, and plenty man ask where they can get one for they wife, they want buy this one.”

Maybe they were mocking him, countryside man. He was from a village where children left school very young, he himself had worked skinny-barefoot, from the age of nine in rice fields, to help his widowed ma. Later, as an older, successful man living in town, he got fancy shoes in which a monkey left two eggs. But that’s a story for another time.

Time flipped forward, my father was gone from this world. I returned home, after living in The Island, to help my mother and to keep her company. I couldn’t find well-paying writing work so for a while I turn me hand, make fashion…used my hands to make something. I sewed and sold girly hand bags, but that too is another story for another day, now it’s time to dip into this ol’ second-hand Victoria’s Secret bag with my notebooks and pens to wake up an ol’ dream.

So, dear friend, away I go until the Sunday after next. Remember to take good care of you, eat nice food and dance-up a li’l bit. Plenty luuuve, neena m.