I never had a granny. Well, like everyone else, I actually had two, my father's mother and my mother's mother. My father's mother died when I was still a child, before I could get to known her as anything other than Nan Nan. My mother's mother lived across the Atlantic Ocean, in Ireland so, here too, I never got to know her before she also passed away.
The only "granny" I knew was actually an in-law, my ex-wife's grandmother. Grace Taylor and she was all of what a classical "headstrong" granny should be. In an age which expected women to be subservient to men (in general) and their husbands needs, Granny Grace was anything but,she left her well-to-do home in Trinidad and flew to Barbados to build and run her own apartment hotel, in a swamp no less!
Granny always had her own way of doing everything. When she made up her mind on how things would happen, then that was that, no need to confuse her with actual facts.
One of the things she believed in, was the health benefits of a sea bath, as opposed to a fresh water bath (shower) or mud bath (Granny was a trained beautician). Every day at 10:00 she would drop whatever she was doing, even if it meant leaving the servants to check-in new arrivals to her apartment/hotel, and head to the Barbados Yacht club for her daily swim.
When I met granny Grace she had already decided (read this to mean forced to by her doctor and family) to stop driving. So she had "Trotman", her handyman and general all round go-to guy for the apartment/hotel, drive her for the institutional daily swim. The one problem with this arrangement was that Trotman had Sunday’s off, so, as the newest member to the family, it fell to me to take her to the Yacht Club on Sunday’s.
We’d go early, like about 9:15. this suited my ex-wife perfectly as she preferred to sleep in on Sunday’s, so I’d pick Granny Grace up from her cottage at about 9:00 and we’d be on the beach by 9:15. Now when I say she went for a swim, I mean just that, her routine was rigorous. 9:15 on the beach, ten minutes later we’d start our trek towards the sea. It took Granny that much time to take off her house dress, under which she already had her whole piece bathing suit on (thank god – the thought of helping her change still gives me nightmares) and put on her swimming cap (the aquamarine rubber skull cap with the stuck-on plastic blue and yellow daffodils).
The walk to the sea took another ten minutes of one jerky baby step after another with me in front of her (walking backwards) and her leaning onto my two supporting outstretched arms, with Granny constantly complaining that I was either not supporting her enough or taking the bumpiest route to the water or walking too fast. I swear we were moving so slow that on the days when the tide was going out it would take us twice as long to reach the water.
Finally we would enter the water with sighs of delight from us both, her for the feeling of the water supporting her not unsubstantial mass and me for the cooling effects the Caribbean sea would have on my now sweat drenched over worked muscles from the tedious ten minute walk to cover 50 feet of Carlisle Bay’s soft white sand.
Floating, free of gravity, in the aqua-green of the Caribbean sea, early on a Sunday morning, looking up into the never ending blue of a clear tropical sky made it all worth while, until I hear granny’s voice, still, even after more than twenty years in Barbados, easily identified by her Trinidadian lithe, say, “Tony, see that man there, her cheated on his wife with his secretary, who he eventually married, but later divorced to live with his maid. Image that!”
Now you would image that a statement like that would be said in a hushed, conspired whisper, with heads leaned close together, not Granny. She was floating a few feet from me, but she must have though we were at opposite ends of the three mile natural harbour that is Carlisle Bay, from the volume of her comment. Combine this with the natural affinity water has to amplify sound and I would not be surprised if seas bathers in Antigua, at the Northern end of the Caribbean Chain, could not have heard her comment.
And she had a comment about everybody that was enjoying a Sunday soak. Thank god it was early in the morning and there were only a few people out enjoying, or at least trying to, the peace and quite of the seas before the screaming, energetic sun-fuelled kids hit the beach later in the day.
After twenty minutes or so of floating (for relaxation) and swimming (for exercise), a very slow modification of the dog paddle, Granny was ready to come out of the water. reverse the trek in, only this time it took shorter since we were not chasing the receding water. And once back to our seats, thankfully proper seats provided by BYC, I could not imagine having to lower and raise Granny from a prone position on a towel laid out in the sand,we ended the routine with a Peña Colada, “To warm me up from my soak.” Granny would explain.Though if you would believe this, then Granny must have been the coldest person in Barbados, based on her alcohol intake. Thank god she lived in a tropical climate.
Granny is gone now, and I hope that the angels who now take her for her sea bath have as much fun as I had getting to know and understand a remarkable woman who lived in a world so far removed from the one I grew up in.
I truly believe that to move forward we not only need to know about our past but to also understand it, only with this understanding can we truly achieve the proper perspective to better help us move into a better and brighter future.
And the best way to achieve understanding is through the actual lived-it experience of those who were there. Our elders are an untapped resource that we all need to not only acknowledge, but to tap into as often as we can to gain the understanding urgently needed to help move us forward as a society.
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