Dreams

All human beings are dream beings. Dreaming ties all humankind together.Jack Kerouac

It was the year 1962. I was a skinny, dreamy, thumb-sucking five-year-old, about to leave my homeland with my mother, two brothers and sister. Unusually, we were to travel by plane, the height of privilege in those days. At least, compared to the thousands of other Jamaicans making the same journey by sea, taking up to twenty-two days to reach the shores of the Mother Country. For the past six months, in preparation for our migration, we'd moved from our home in the bustling town of Kingston to live with Aunty Hilda and her family by the sea in Annotto Bay. Now the long-awaited day had finally arrived. Amid the tears, the kisses, and the bosom-heaving farewell hugs, as we embarked on our sleepy nighttime journey back towards the capital a whole banana was tucked into each child's hand. I clasped mine and made the decision that I would not eat it. I would save it as a gift for my father, that mysterious figure who had gone ahead of us to that mythical land called England to realise his dream of social and economic self-improvement. His absence had amounted to a lifetime in my young universe. Being just three years old when he'd left our tropical island, I'd virtually forgotten who my father was. When I announced my sacrificial intentions to my brothers and sister and they decided that they too would be saving their banana, my grumpiness was unsurpassed. But I needn't have worried. By the time we reached Palisades Airport, all they had to show for their efforts were three empty skins. Several times on the plane I felt my mother gently prising the yellow fruit out of my grasp, and each time I awoke with a start to tighten my hold. After an eternity of sleepless and sleep-filled hours, our BOAC flight finally landed at Gatwick Airport where, dressed optimistically in flimsy sunny frocks and khaki shorts, my siblings and I stepped on to the tarmac and shivered in the chilly May winds. As we entered the milling terminal building, a tall, caramel-skinned man wearing a brown suit and a felt trilby broke through the crowds and strode confidently towards us. I'd spent many hours dreaming of this exact moment, and now that it had arrived, I froze, unsure of my next move. But as soon as I felt myself rising in the air, swooped into my father's embrace, I remembered to wave the triumph of my gift. My father chuckled aloud. A mixture of pride and joy, it seemed. It didn't for one moment occur to me that it would be at the blackened, oozing mess sticking to my palm.

My friends will tell you, I have a terrible memory – mostly for long-term events. But, of course, there are those images and sensations that embed themselves like a virus in the nervous system. Sometimes the virus will have a conscious presence, either as a recollection to be cherished (the first time I felt the heart-melting warmth of my newborn on my chest), or as a difficult memory (the first time I saw real anger in my father's eyes and feared the sting of a slap). Other times the virus will hide like an invisible echo in the soul, lying near-dormant, till the right trigger catapults the memory into one's awareness, igniting all of one's senses. This banana memory is one that has inhabited my being in full Technicolor for as long as I can remember. I've recalled it so many times you must forgive me for perhaps embellishing it with the sentimental touch of a hero's journey: the silent determination of a dreamy five-year-old travelling 5,000 miles over 24 hours, intent on delivering a soft fruit, uneaten, to a stranger in a strange land – and succeeding.

Though I could not have articulated it then, sucking my thumb was my interface, my high-speed connection, to communicate with my 'other world'. But this 'disgusting' habit wasn't at all appreciated by my parents. They tried every method, from slapping the slimy, shrivelled digit out of my mouth to smearing it with freshly-cut chilli. But nothing would deter me from retreating behind closed doors, burrowing into dark corners, hiding below the safety of the bedclothes, at home, during school, or even behind the flap of my woollen coat whilst walking the streets. Sneaking a suck on my 'pipe' was such a compelling habit, I couldn't imagine living without it. Left in peace I would allow my eyes to roll towards the back of my head and be transported to a place that embraced me like a homecoming; a place that felt like ... No-thing. In this space there was no judgement, no anger, no disapproval, no anxiety, no fear, no shame. It just Was. In the end, my parents threw up their hands in defeat. My father rationalised that, as a 'bright' child, my thumb-sucking was most probably aiding my intelligence. He may have had a point. For in that realm of Nothingness, I discovered that I was able to create and manifest a virtual world of anything I desired. Inside this space-time I would paint vivid dreamscapes of shapes and colours that could not be found anywhere on the drab shores of this outer reality where my family of six dovetailed in two cramped rooms. I could fly. I could dive. I could disappear. I could reappear. I had friends. I had comfort. I had laughter. Any quality or concept I desired was mine, in an instant. So, with my parents' new resigned attitude of blind-eye-turning, if not quite tolerance, I continued my ventures into this other plane of existence. The pull was so strong that aged sixteen I was secretly thumb-sucking in between dates with my first boyfriend. And after giving it up in my later teens, shame-faced, I took it up again, albeit briefly, when I became pregnant with my first child.

As an inward-looking immigrant child, I had my fair share of bitter lemons thrown at me by the turbulence of life. My survival technique was to gather up the seeds and grow a sweet-variety lemon tree in my secret Eden of dreams. One early example springs to mind. In those days, trussed up in my seamstress mother's colourful chiffon and organza creations, I wafted around the edges of friendship circles, sensitive to everything and everyone, in a state of perpetual confusion. I was baffled by the unruliness of the playground, the rules of the classroom, wary of the flighty, unpredictable emotions of other children, and slow at deciphering the new cultural codes. In other words, a perfect target. As a consequence, I would find myself involved unwittingly in situations of which I had no idea how they came about. On this particular day, I'd entered the upstairs toilets and encountered a group of whispering girls huddled by the washbasins. My very entrance apparently amounted to a transgression of some unspoken commandment among them. As a result, I was informed that a beating-up was scheduled for next play. During Mr Biffin's class, my ink pen took on a life of its own, scratching emptily at a maths problem that my eyes were barely able to pull into focus. All the while, terror struck at my soul. My heart...