Diedr M.

Blake, 1 Wata: A Personal Reflection On The Consequences Of Ancestral Neglect

"Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Disremembered and unaccounted for Toni Morrison, Beloved

The longest day of the year marks a seasonal end and beginning. It marks also the passing of my grandfather. I did not know him well. He was a quiet man of earthy, muddy roads and fields of long-bladed and narrow grass, which he tended with a cutlass. I remember his smile, but only through the eyes of a childs memorya smile that creased all the lines of his sun-aged face and his almond-shaped eyes that bespoke of his Asian lineage. I was told he played the banjo. I only remember him playing a harmonica and allowing the music of his laughter to blend gently with the word dawta, which he called all of his granddaughters. As a child I went once to visit my grandfather in the country (as we say in Jamaica), where during that time there were no real roads and the bathroom was a latrine outdoors. I remember he bought me a bulla cake, spiced with ginger and nutmeg. I remember I wore a red shirt and was afraid of a bull in a field. I remember he smiled and promised me I would be safe. He liked to garden and was a farmer, knew how to ride horses and owned a donkey, loved to fish and always wore water boots, was father to ten children, some of whom are now dead. I saw him fifteen years later in America after he had had a stroke. I learned then that he did not know how to read well, but liked to be read to. I learned then that even in his helplessness he still smiled in such a way that it alleviated fears. He spoke in past terms.

Diedr M. Blake, 2 Wata: A Personal Reflection On The Consequences Of Ancestral Neglect He called me by my mothers name. I do not know when he returned to Jamaica. I only heard the whispered sadness of his story. He could not remember. He could not care for himself. I remembered then that my grandfather had been orphaned as a child, but the reason why and the names of his parents were never told to me. He lived with a nameless uncle and nameless cousins. As a teenager, he eloped with my grandmother, whose first name was Bernice, but her last name has remained unknown or at best uncertain to me even as she died this spring. When my grandfather died I saw summer begin in Provincetown, Massachusetts. I was told a day later on my birthday. After all, I did not know him well. I sat then, as I have since, by the seaside. I looked at the waves and thought about how lost my family had all become to each other, to our history. Nameless: great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. My grandfather, I know only his names, Vivian Bennett, of his love for the sea, and that we called him Wata.