+travel essay. jamaica

back to my mother's land
+nicole thompson

I returned to Jamaica this past summer unexpectedly. My great aunt, Gladys, passed away at the age of 87 and my mother and my aunt invited me to go with them to the funeral. At the time, I had taken time off from working to travel and I learned of Aunt G’s death while I was passing through my home town, New York, between destinations. Coincidentally, the purpose of my summer hiatus was to “find myself,” recent graduate twixter that I am, and this trip to Jamaica met my agenda precisely. The opportunity presented itself with uncannily perfect timing, and I obediently took it.

It was a trip back to my roots. My mother’s family is from Jamaica. My mother, the oldest of nine, was the first to immigrate to the United States and I am the first family member to be born here. I had been to Jamaica on numerous occasions previously but the last time I spent quality time with relatives there was when I was four years old. I knew that on this trip, I would see some family members that I had not seen since then and others that I had never even met before. (Aunt G, for example, I had never had the pleasure.) I was eager to fill in the blanks in my mental family tree. I became the proverbial sponge for knowledge. We were in Jamaica for a total of three nights. For two of those nights, we stayed at a hotel in Kingston. On the night of the funeral, we stayed in Luna, a country town about an hour outside of the capital, where my mother grew up. Neither my mother nor my aunt wanted to stay in Luna long. Our family’s house has no running hot water for baths, no electricity in the new bathroom, and lots of mosquitoes that love people who visit from the States. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that they didn’t want to drive back at night along those narrow winding mountainous roads that simulate the experience of a real-life rollercoaster, we would have gone back on the same day.Nevertheless, we arrived in Luna on the Sunday of the funeral. The first thing I noticed when I got there was how much smaller everything was than I remembered. The shop across from my family’s house where my cousin, Tye, and I used to buy penny candy, was not way on the other side of a wide street as in my memory, but only a few strides away, across the road of this one horse town. The church that I used to feel so grown walking to with Tye and that marked the farthest point in Luna that I could possibly conceive of, was only about four houses down the road. My perception of Luna as a four-year-old was like Alice in Wonderland’s perception of her world after she drank from the “drink me” bottle. Everything around me had seemed so big because I had been so small.

Once there, my mother, my aunt and I spent most of our time chilling around the house. Out of this downtime came one of the most touching experiences that I had had there. My mother had called me over to sit with her by her father’s grave. My grandfather, as is common in Luna, was buried in his house’s backyard. As I sat by the grave with her, she pointed out to me all the different trees growing there. The mango tree, the cocoa tree, the breadfruit tree, all hardly distinguishable to me. She told me about how she used to sell fruit sometimes for pocket money when she was younger. “I was an entrepreneur from birth” says this woman, who now owns her own successful business in Brooklyn. It was a memorable moment because my mother was opening up to me, a rarity in our relationship. At one point, I felt a pang in my heart. I knew that this moment was special and it was almost too much for me to feel all at one time.

Ironically, the funeral, although nice, was not the highlight of the trip for me. The ceremony was standard. We went to the church, some key family members gave speeches and the congregation sang songs. After the ceremony, the congregation relocated to the back of the mountain where Aunt G was buried. The burial, in its modesty, was actually very beautiful. A team of three or four men laid Aunt G to rest next to her previously deceased husband. She was buried above ground and the shape of her plot was like the mouth to a cave, carved out of the mountain. The men slid her casket into the opening and worked quickly to close the entryway with cinder blocks and cement. The process was all done by hand. The onlookers sang hymns as if to provide musical encouragement to the workers and to lull her soul. The scenery was raw, lush and green and you could smell the dirt beneath you. I think it even rained. It was so perfect in its imperfection that it was cliché and even movie-like. As customary, there was a delicious curry goat dinner afterwards. The reception took a slightly more upbeat tone. Aunt G had lived to a ripe old age and the guests there focused on celebrating her life rather than mourning her death.Not all immigrant children have the opportunity to go back to their parents’ countries. I took special note of everything that I saw because I wanted to have enough information to pass on to my future children when I bring them there. I amassed the knowledge out of the anxiety-ridden truth that my connection to this land is not direct but linked through my cousin, my aunt and others who were born there. What would happen if I didn’t have those people in the future? Would my connection be lost? What if my aunt moves and people in Luna don’t remember me? What stories would I tell my children?In the end, the trip did bring me a more rooted sense of self but I don’t quite understand why. I mean, I don’t and then I do. I went back to where my mother is from. Revisiting Luna with her gave me a better sense of who she was and where she came from. I understand how that helps my relationship with her but not how it helps my personal growth. On the other hand, while I don’t see the direct correlation, I do recognize that there is something intangible but undeniable about knowing where your elders are from that gives you a sense of pride. I can’t put my finger on it, but I do know it’s real.I enjoy going back to Jamaica because something new opens up for me each time. I went back to Jamaica again this holiday season with my mother and 11 other family members from the States. This time, I met my mother’s high school teacher, her college sparring partner who told me stories of when they used to go partying, and my grandmother’s long lost sister and her family. And again I felt so lucky, especially as a black person, to be able to retrace my ancestry.

I don’t believe in God but I do think that all things happen for a reason. I was meant to return to Jamaica during this period of self-discovery in order to ground myself. As a child, I was connected by Jamaican culture but was not cognizant of it. Navigating my way through private schooling, those ties became frayed along the way. Returning to Jamaica as an adult, I reinforced those bonds and then some. They say you have to know where you come from to know where you’re going. The trip, in many ways, gave me the direction I was searching for.