St. Kitts, I love you!

I am all of 6 here

Dear Sweet Sugar City,

I wasn’t always a head­strong runaway.

Before tur­bu­lent air­plane flights, tumul­tuous weather pat­terns and ten­u­ous rela­tion­ships, I was always the one stand­ing at the heavy-duty glass par­ti­tion, peer­ing into the soul of a man as he held the hand of a girl. She could have been me, but she wasn’t, with her tamed shiny mane, that even within the tight clasp of three col­or­ful bub­bles still called atten­tion to itself, as they over­flowed into fat, lengthy ropes. I wanted with every­thing in me to be the one to go (not leave—they are not the same), the one to be taken away (I’m work­ing on my pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with being res­cued) from the small­ness of my world to that place where I just knew he preferred.

It was not that I needed to be res­cued. I was not a vic­tim of cir­cum­stance. I knew what shel­ter was, I knew what the guar­an­tee of break­fast, lunch and sup­per looked like—and it all felt mirac­u­lously like love.

So, what was miss­ing? What was fuel­ing these intense long­ings to be else­where? Hon­estly, I think I had yet to fall in love with home, as it shifted from one norm to the next, or soil, as it often felt like so much quick­sand hold­ing me tight around the ankles. Love was New York, where he lived, and Trinidad, where she stud­ied, and love was the naked real­ity of 65 square miles of Kit­tit­ian play­ground. Love was not lim­ited, but it was con­fused and stretched thin and incom­pre­hen­si­ble. I was always shel­tered, never with­out the neces­si­ties. Never starved. But I wanted to go, even before I knew the cost, or what it meant to carry the weight of such guilt and respon­si­bil­ity. Leav­ing meant per­ma­nence, but to my young mind, going felt like a priv­i­lege. I could always come back. Couldn’t I?

The sum­mer of ’87 was pre­cip­i­tous for many rea­sons. It was my first trip abroad. I was dressed to the nines in a khaki pin­stripe pantsuit that today I would like to imag­ine was some seer­sucker blend. And I felt sophis­ti­cated. Yes. At the ten­der age of nine, I used that word to myself in the mir­ror. I thought that word in the absence of any reflec­tion. I felt grown, not wom­anly grown, but smarter-than-average grown. Oh, the nerve and the inno­cence. And if there were not any num­ber of moments of lost inno­cence before this, 90 days of per­ceived free­dom in New York’s jaws would have sealed the deal.

All I remem­ber of this trip were my hands around a girl’s throat. Now, I did not know what her end or mine would be, but I knew that I wanted to be there at hers with a pas­sion. It did not mat­ter the whys of being there—even now, it does not mat­ter that her face should be etched in the Oxford dic­tio­nary next to BULLY in all caps—the real­ity was that I might have paid any price to go, and yet going had brought me full frontal with that side of myself that would fight to the death, and then, even after star­ing at the scabbed remains of a once-beautiful throat, remain unapologetic.

It was the begin­ning of my reck­on­ing and con­fronta­tions with choice, for I could not have both worlds, which was not just a mat­ter of locale, but per­sonal ties. I could not have him and her. I could not have here and there. From that time onward, I would have to choose, and so even while I resented choice, I could also sym­pa­thize with those who had cho­sen their own paths with­out con­sul­ta­tion. For on the one hand, there are those intense feel­ings of aban­don­ment. On the other, there is the erased threat of star­va­tion because some­one else took a chance. And then, still on that other, unfore­seen hand, there is the thought that maybe it is bet­ter to strug­gle and sur­vive together, than to lose time and heart apart. This leaving/going busi­ness is not so cut-and-dried, but in it there is room for forgiveness.

“The only peo­ple for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of every­thing at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a com­mon­place thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fab­u­lous yel­low Roman can­dles explod­ing like spi­ders across the stars, and in the mid­dle, you see the blue center-light pop, and every­body goes ahh…” Jack Ker­ouac – ON THE ROAD

My Amer­i­can friends love choice. It is not a shame, even as I write it here. They wear it ironed across the front of their T-shirts, in ink sleeves run­ning along their arms and end­ing some­where around their ring fin­ger and, and most assuredly, they weave it into con­ver­sa­tions. I love this about them. I love that Jack Ker­ouac men­tal­ity that sees an open road and packs a bag for no other rea­son than it being Tues­day, and why not? Surely, there’s a seg­ment or maybe even a whole younger Caribbean gen­er­a­tion that knows and thinks noth­ing of access to infor­ma­tion (tech­nol­ogy) and the knowl­edge that can come with it as their inher­ent right to life and lib­erty (I refuse to believe that this is a purely Amer­i­can con­struct) and choice. My view of a her­itage has been much more survivalist—doing what one must and all that—and over the years, I have embraced empa­thy. A global world and Inter­net (which is my cho­sen medium of com­mu­ni­ca­tion) might make access rel­e­vant, but it is fore­most not a thing of ease.

So begins the launch of DASHEEN, a mag­a­zine rooted in the belief that ‘cul­ture feeds imag­i­na­tion.’ A mag­a­zine designed and pre­med­i­tated toward pro­mot­ing and evok­ing every glo­ri­ous image of a Caribbean peo­ple pos­si­ble, I say hello again. Thank you for being the foun­da­tion that held me up. Thank you for inflect­ing my speech. Thank you for giv­ing me char­ac­ter and con­fi­dence in a world that, some­how, on any num­ber of occa­sions, seemed to expect so much less. Thank you for allow­ing me to go, for every time I should have stayed until my leav­ing. Thank you for lay­ing out a wel­come mat to a clime where there is always shel­ter and break­fast and lunch and sup­per at home. Thank you for being the place where cul­ture fed my imagination.

Yours,
Tynisha

ABOUT THE WRITER

Hi there, I’m Tynisha C. Leon, writer, West Indian, mango-lover, founder and editor-in-chief of DASHEEN mag­a­zine — the online des­ti­na­tion where cul­ture feeds imag­i­na­tion. Join the cul­ture con­ver­sa­tions on Face­book, Twit­ter and Tum­blr!