At ninety-five he’s still so vibrant
He beats everyone else out the door
On a Sunday morning
(Never mind he’d been up since three,
Got bathed and dressed since four,
And paced and fretted until six).

Teacher Eddy

Say the word, and he has a story to match it:
You point out a container boat in the harbor –
“Oh, I remember the first time I heard about a container…
You remember Alfrid?”
And out comes the story about Alfrid and the container.
(He always asks if you remember
These people he knew since he was a boy).

I love to sit and listen to his stories;
He takes you back to a time
When the men wore waistcoats, scissors-tailed coats and top hats,
And rode horses to church.
He cocks his fingers to depict the coat-tails flying behind them as they rode.
The top hats they squelched flat and sat on them at church
And once outside restored them to their former height
With a quick flick of the wrist.
This ceremonial attire he said, was reserved for Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide,
The only times these men graced the church door.

Yes, Father is still the academic;
He sits on the porch with studious intensity
Poring over his crossword puzzles, muttering over the tricky ones
And later quizzing us like a schoolmaster:
“What’s another name for lard?”
“What do you call one of a pair?”
We marvel at his mental alertness – at ninety five.

Ninety-five – this makes him one of the few who have seen
Easter Day come twice on March 23;
It last happened in 1913, the year he was born.
To us his children, he seems ageless;
We try to capture the essence of his being
From his funny stories, his limericks, the old sayings recalled from his youth:
“Ida, dese chillrun does nettle me!” his father would say when annoyed.

He is a walking history book
He even helped to bury canons in the hills of St. Thomas during World War II
And he was there when they cut down Sarah Hill to fill Bournefield Pond,
The present site of Cyril E. King International Airport;
Banco Popular, McDonald’s and a shopping plaza
Have now replaced the barracks where he stayed at Lockhart Estate;
Its fertile provision fields have now become a sprawling housing complex.
“Lord have mercy!” he says when he sees the Charlotte Amalie harbor
Where he used to bathe among the mangrove trees
With the water lapping the sandy foothills;
“I knew this place when it was nothing but bushes,” he muses.

Father is one with the elements around him
He knows the right times for sowing the corn, peas and potatoes
He still delights in planting, his fingers delving into the soil, nurturing, tending
He is happiest in his beloved garden among the flowering crops that seem
To hug him as he passes.
Nature is his best friend – from the White Ground of Anguilla
To the Red Valley of St. Croix
It has kept him vibrant, alive, still young at heart
It is his reason for waking up each morning with the dawn.
His peaceful and unhurried life is firmly grounded in his Christian faith,
And it warms our hearts to know that he is ready
Whenever the good Lord is, but we pray that moment is still far into the future.

| Printer-friendly page | Send this article to a friend |

World News