Barbados memory
I remember my first airplane trip. It was a family trip to Barbados when I was in kindergarten. The year was 196- something. My youngest brother hadn’t even been born yet. It’s strange to remember family life before him, since most of my family memory includes him. I mean, it’s strange to remember a time before my brother existed, a time when he did not exist.
In those days, a plane trip was a special event, and my brothers and I dressed in our Sunday suits to board the plane at Toronto International Airport. (In those days the airport had not yet been re-christened “Lester B. Pearson Int’l Airport.”) I still have the tiny necktie I wore then. It’s currently adorning the neck of one of my teddy bears.
I remember being at the Bridgetown, Barbados airport waiting. Waiting for what, I don’t remember. Maybe a taxi to the hotel. I remember the hotel clearly, and the smell of the heat, the salty ocean air, and the ubiquitous sunshine so bright it hurt my eyes. Barbados is small, so the heat, the scent and the sunshine permeate the island. They are everywhere. Anyway, at the airport my dad was snoozing on an outside bench behind these cool 1960’s-era aviator sunglasses, looking like Don Draper from the Madmen TV show. Mom was watching her brood run around like over-sugared maniacs, burning off the stored-up energy we couldn’t expend on the plane.
There was a native police officer on duty at the airport terminal entrance - a small facility in those days. He was standing stiff at attention, completely unmoving, like a Buckingham Palace guardsman. We were fascinated by him, so my brothers and I clustered around and stared at him.
“Boys, don’t stare!” Mom whispered.
“Oh, Anne, it’s alright. They’ve never seen a negro before.” That’s how middle-class white Canadian liberals spoke in those days.
Dad was right. This man was the first black man I remember seeing. But that was not why we were staring at him. We were staring at him because he looked so fantastic! Standing perfectly erect and unmoving. He wore a snow white pith helmet, like in a movie, with a snow white tunic jacket. His belt buckle and buttons were polished and shiny. To my young eyes they looked like gold. His trousers were perfectly black with a red strip down the outside seam, and they were creased so sharply like you could cut butter with them. And his shoes were polished so that they looked like black glass.
Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how I remember it.