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island guy used to having windows and<br />
doors open with fresh sea breeze all day<br />
long. And here, being cooped up in a locked<br />
house, idle, just wasn’t for him.<br />
“I have to go take care of my garden,” he<br />
often said. His yam and plantains and even<br />
sugarcane. “I don’t like being in a closed<br />
house doing nothing. ”<br />
One year later, tragedy struck and James<br />
had to make the trip again…<br />
Fast forward to March 2015 and James<br />
would find himself traveling from Vieux-<br />
Fort to Miami again. Not to cut cane or<br />
celebrate his birthday this time, but to<br />
celebrate life, the life of his youngest<br />
offspring whose life was cut short by this<br />
darn Lupus. Lupus stole her from us. She<br />
was only 30 years old.<br />
The stories of moms and dads, uncles and<br />
aunts, grandpas and grandmas immigrating<br />
are abundant and their experiences perhaps<br />
similar. When they weren’t en route to the<br />
sugarcane fields, they were traveling to<br />
reunite with relatives or friends who paved<br />
the way for them. Often taking jobs, albeit<br />
unattractive, paid the bills and took care of<br />
the family they left behind.<br />
While we received the barrels and new<br />
clothes and perhaps a transistor radio<br />
(every cane worker came back home with a<br />
radio–lol), the experience on the field was<br />
either poignant, pleasant or both. And for<br />
this West Indian sugarcane cutter, Morrison<br />
James, it was both.<br />
Everyone has a story, what’s yours?
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