A reader writes:
My granddaughter set up this computer for me and showed me how to read your website, and I have been reading the letters. So I will write one. She says you will fix the spelling.
I was a mason for forty-one years. I built other people’s houses from Mandeville to Santa Cruz, and when I was fifty I started to build my own on the land my father left me. I built it slowly, the way we do, one room when there was money and nothing when there was not. My wife used to say I was building a hotel. Five bedrooms, three bathrooms, a big verandah facing the hills, a kitchen with two sinks because she said when the whole family comes for Christmas one sink is a war.
I built it that big for a reason. I had four children and I could see the grandchildren coming. In my mind, this would be the family house. Everybody would come home here. Maybe one or two would build on the lot behind. Sunday dinner every week, not just Christmas.
The house was finished, really finished with the grilles and the paint and the tiles, the year my eldest son got his papers for Canada. I was proud of him. I am still proud of him. Then my daughter went to England to do nursing. Then the next boy followed his brother. The last one, my baby girl, married a man from Florida.
Nobody did anything wrong. They went for work, for their children’s schooling, for chances they could not get here. I would have done the same at their age if I had the chance. They send money, they call, they come when they can. My daughter comes nearly every year.
My wife passed six years ago.
So now it is me. One old man in five bedrooms. I sleep in the small one at the back because the master bedroom is too big without her. Three of the rooms I only open to air them out and to kill the lizards. I have a woman who comes twice a week to clean and I pay her more than I need to because I like the company. At night I sit on the verandah with the ceiling fan going and I can hear it turning in the empty rooms behind me.
I am not writing so people will feel sorry for me. I have my church, I have my friends from the old work gang, those that are still living. The pastor comes by. But I want to say something to the younger men, especially the ones abroad building their big houses back home by sending money every month. I did it too, in my way. I built for a picture in my head. I did not build for the family I actually had, or the way the world was going.
If I could go back, I think I would have built three bedrooms and a flat that could be rented. I would have spent some of that money on plane tickets to see the grandchildren grow instead of on the second bathroom. I would have talked to my children, really asked them, what they thought they would do, instead of assuming.
But I also do not want to say it was a waste, because it was not. This house held us. My wife’s last years were in a house she loved, with a verandah where she could see the hills. Every Christmas that the children managed to come, and there were some good ones, there was room for everybody, even the in-laws. My son says his children talk about “Grandpa’s big house in Jamaica” like it is a castle. Maybe one day one of them will come back and live in it. Maybe not.
Lately I have been thinking about what to do. My daughter wants me to come to England. I went once in February and I thought I would dead from the cold. My son says rent out part of it. The pastor says there is a young couple in the church who have nowhere to live and maybe they could stay in the front part and help me with things. I am praying about that one. It frightens me a little, to have strangers in my wife’s kitchen. But it frightens me more to hear the fan turning in empty rooms for the rest of my life.
I read in the Psalms that God sets the solitary in families (Psalm 68:6). I used to think that meant He gives lonely people a wife and children. Now I think maybe it means He can bring a family into a house that has gone quiet, even if it is not the family you planned.
Anyway, that is my letter. Build what you need, young people. And call your father.
— Mr C., Manchester
Editor’s note
Thank you, Mr C. Many families in the region and the diaspora will recognise themselves in your letter, on both sides of the ocean. Two things stay with us. First, a house built for a picture can become lonely when life turns out differently, so it is worth talking honestly with children about their plans before building, and designing homes that can adapt: a rentable flat, rooms that can close off, space for a carer. Second, your openness to letting a young couple share the house is a beautiful picture of hospitality. If you go ahead, please put the arrangement in writing and take advice first, so everyone is protected.
Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.
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