My Italian daughter-in-law, Sabrina

It would surprise most men to know how easily women size each other up , as most of them have no idea how to choose a woman especially in the most important area of all, for marriage. So the moment when your only son brings a woman to meet you is a moment of high tension nervously disguised under a patina of careful politeness but full of trepidation for both women.

It was Christmas at Rockfield and significantly, his father was visiting from America when Sabrina was brought to join us for the weekend. She was quiet, calm and pleasant without being over friendly, what we called in the sixties,”cool “ and this attractive manner was matched by a unique beauty; an hour glass figure and long tangled, honey-coloured hair. She was as easy on the eyes as she was pleasant to be with, a very feminine combination. When they were leaving she said “Thank you Judy, its a long time I have not been in a family.” We both, his father and I, liked her very much.

I did not see her again until about a year later when Alexei invited me to join them for lunch and said “Mom. I’ve asked Sabrina to marry me.” I got up from my chair and embraced him moved by his trust in life,which is really courage, at twenty -seven years old. Afterwards I said to him, “Darling, most men have no idea how to choose a woman, this is a very intelligent choice. We women know each other and this is a clean woman, she looks you right in the eye, no sneakiness, she will never be negative, never pull you down. Best of all, she laughs, and that laughter will lighten life when it gets heavy; this is one for the long haul.”
Very soon after that I had my first woman to woman conversation with my potential daughter -in- law as we drove around Kingston looking for fabric to make a wedding dress.
Its one of my treasured memories that she started the conversation in that soft Italian accent with “Judy, I don’t want any trouble with you”. “ Me neither darling, me neither. We are two intelligent women, so let us decide to love each other right now. I am sorry, but I have to ask you a few questions, just this once I promise.”

She acquiesced and I went on. I had heard a rather alarming story about her to do with her first marriage which needed some explanation but is not for this blog.She reassured me with. “ The last one was for my mother, Judy. This one is for me.” Very quickly into the story of her first marriage I had heard enough and stopped her. “That’s enough my dear, you were right to leave that man, we will never talk about it again, but I understand. And I also understand why you want to marry my son.”

So it began and I stayed away for five years, although often, I was dying to see the baby. I only went to their house when asked. I know full well how difficult the early years are, my own marriage did not survive that terror of losing ones own life in the blend with anothers.

Every time a woman has a problem with her man she blames his mother! I hovered from a distance and offered no advice except on one occasion when I saw a shadow on his usually sunny face. I said, “Alexei, there is only one piece of advice that I can offer a man about women and I’m going to tell you now. You must, as the man of the house always do your duty and be a stand up guy, as you are, but every now and then you must leave the house alone for a little, unexplained, time. Don’t do anything wrong, a beer with a buddy, a walk by the sea but the trick is,when you leave, don’t leave in a rumpled T-shirt …put on your best shirt. You must look gorgeous when you leave.She will be very glad when you walk back in through the door. You never have to do anything else with a woman to stop her taking you for granted.”

It wasn’t easy for Sabrina, our Caribbean culture is not geared towards successful marriages. Ours is a party culture and it delights in mocking and destabilizing the foreigners in our midst, attacking with the persistence of mosquitoes their most dearly held beliefs about fidelity, respect for the nest, the family and for the in-home Madonna, the wife and mother. I would see her at parties on the north coast looking absolutely beautiful and being cold shouldered by the crowd. This treatment is classic in our culture which, feeling inadequate before the foreigner, and anticipating rejection, rejects first.  Trying to ingratiate yourself in the face of this attitude is a recipe for disaster. She avoided this trap and stuck to Italian friends. Wherever one goes with Sabrina, even driving quickly on the road there will soon be cries of “Sabri ! Bella! Ciao….come stai?…bella, bella ” and delighted peals of laughter as a hither to unsuspected network of fellow Italians recognize her.

Her Italians ways were very welcome in our family, especially in the kitchen.
‘Judy, do not cook the salad”. Gosh I wonder what she means by that I would think, but I learned that it meant too much vinegar in my salad dressing or on another occasion seeing her with a really cheap brand of olive oil , I asked “Sabrina do you use that one?”
“Oh just get the cheapest Judy, because they are ALL terrible.” She would bring virgin olive oil from Italy for the children’s meals, to pour on pasta finer than rice, and when she opened the bottle the fragrance would hit you from across the room. She missed home and her own family desperately; she missed her language, the thimble-sized cups of coffee with cream, the balls of mozzarella to pop into the mouth, pasta vongole, artichokes, but through all the missing she laughed. If the roof fell in, Sabrina would throw back her head toss that mane of hair and see the humor in most things. Watching her gaggle of friends in my garden of weeds was a revelation…squeals of delight at pumpkin blossoms, to be transformed into light, airy, morsels. What we call “Spanish needle’, they call “Camomilla”, and prize fennel , which I was having weeded out in clumps. She would arrive with a bag of tomatoes and a tiny packet of yeast and in no time we would be eating pizza thin as paper, pure, delicious and not drowned with too much cheese.

Twelve years, three children, thirty-five or so birthday parties, and now I have her first two daughters living with me during the week to go to high school in Kingston. In their reflection of her, if I had never known Sabrina,I know her now. They are, its an old-fashioned word I know, one my mother would use,“unspoiled.”
Francesca said recently when her mother was in town during the week which is cause for a celebration; “I can’t believe it Nonna. Japanese food for lunch and for dinner, Indian. I feel bad.”

“Why do you feel badly dear?”

“I haven’t done anything to deserve it”

All this time I hoped Sabrina would love me one day as much as I loved her right from the start.We started as very different women with only one thing in common. Her presents to me were always the best ones I got at Christmas, crystal wine glasses, designer scarves, never anything cheap. I could see her affection growing but she is much more comfortable giving than receiving and rarely asked me for anything, while thanking me profusely for every little thing that I did for her.
Recently she threw her first Jamaican party, for Alexei of course and used Rockfield as the venue. I worked as I have done so many times to hone the house and garden for the party knowing that she was very nervous as the party is at the heart of north coast culture where they are now happily integrated with a nice group of Jamaican friends. This was something that I prayed hard for and a mother’s prayers are very powerful, but Jamaicans judge inadequacy in the area of parties very harshly , even prayers can’t help you and nowhere is this judgment harsher than in St Ann, where parties are very serious business. She was to my mind strangely worried about the mess.

“Listen Rockfield has survived parties that more resembled hurricanes than anything the word “party” suggests.Have it first and we’ll worry about cleaning up afterwards.”
“No Judy. Its not my style.”
I primped and honed and got out of there as the guests started to arrive.
The next morning early, I drove up to the house.

Not a crushed blade of grass on the lawn, the verandah immaculate. I continued with my eyes bulging through the house, there was no trace of the party. I have made more of a mess up there when I am alone in the house! There was a chunk of exquisite birthday cake decorated with orchids, the remains of what seemed very exotic food in the kitchen some plastic bags with rubbish to be disposed of. a few bits and pieces. As I walked through and saw the respect with which she had treated my house and my life, I knew that I had earned Sabrina’s love. She cherished me as I did her.

What Barry meant to me

I’m not going to Barry’s funereal on Sunday. I need every precious Sunday now to paint.The days grow short as you reach September and I know he would understand.
When I was young, still at high school at Wolmers and before starting art school in Scotland at the age of sixteen, Barry Watson was Art in Jamaica.
I was sent to him for classes in a big wooden studio on the second floor of an old building on Constant Spring Rd.
In those days I painted with pure colour straight from the tube. Yellow was yellow, it was raw, I placed it next to red, I was an expressionist.Barry painted in tones of grey and the subtle colors of English art schools of the period. That huge painting of his wife lying on the bed with the little boy on the potty beside her was classic trained painting at its peak, a great example of what the post diploma art school in Britain was aiming to turn out.It was also brilliant and till today unsurpassed as an example, regardless of subject matter, of European painting. It was As good as Them, it joined the line and I was deeply affected by it and very proud that it had been done by one of us.It was a flag of what was possible.
At class I aped his slick, sophisticated line drawings like the little parrot that I was and got very good at it. So good that a portfolio of these drawings alone, when sent to the art school I was trying to get into, was enough to get me admitted me at a glance.
In painting though, awed as I was by him, I was stung when he criticized my violent colors and my wild brushstrokes. I loved my colors and thought his were muddy and ugly and untrue.
One day he mixed a dab of colour and placed on a blank area of my canvas as an example of what he wanted me to learn.
“What do you think of that?” he said.
“I think its mud.”
He mixed another
“And that?”
“Mud “ I said. The tears were welling up but no one was going to ridicule me out of my Van Gogh colour straight from the tube. A third time
“This?”
“MUD “ I said like a little donkey.
He shouted and waved his arms to encompass all the paintings in the room,
“So ALL my paintings are MUD!”
“YES! “ I said and left the room.
I am sure he was very amused.
Of course at art school, the line drawings not withstanding, I was so ridiculed for my “Jungle colour” by the other students that I tempered them soon enough.
I didn’t want to paint like Barry, but in my own way. I did want to be as good as him. When you are young you don’t even imagine that that is going to be difficult.
As the years passed and I returned to start my own career in Jamaica my educated eyes totally respected his portraits, his greys, his drawing and the courage with which he took on huge and difficult subjects.
He never patronized me, as his fan club certainly did. As I grew, stuck to it and my exhibitions increased he treated me like an equal and was always glad to see me and to watch me looking at his work. Painters are always lonely for other painters especially in Jamaica, where there is so sense of community. Even a short visit with another painter has a comforting and also inspiring effect.
One day he said
“No matter how well I paint, I am always dismissed as “Technically competent”. I thought but didn’t say “Et tu Brute?”
“ I’m going to form a group called The Technically Competents, would you like to join us?”
“Oh, I would be honored to be considered technically competent”.I can never think of it without giggling. It was the same when Huie once pointed at a misshapen arm in a painting and whispered to me “We can’t get away with that can we?” It was like being in a secret society of those who had declared their intentions boldly, without disguise, without cover or convenient excuses, so that if we failed it was immediately obvious.
By now the full enormity of how hard this type of painting was, of what it was going to require of me, the years of practice that it demanded had set in and as this realization grew, the more I respected what he had achieved. He bought one of my portraits and I was inarticulate with pride to measure up in his estimation.
As I grew older I not only respected him, I loved him too, for what he represented, for being a survivor, for standing up to ignorance and insensitivity and for his big, brave, example.