Beverly East, Contributor
WHEN I was a teenager I could not, for the life of me, figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. The world of work seemed a total maze.
My sister, on the other hand, had a clearer idea of her career from she was 16 years old and ran off with a drama group and followed her dreams. My niece, at seven years, knew she wanted to be a pilot and became one. But me, I tossed and turned for nearly 15 years before I really found my true passion.
All my school career counsellor in England offered me was nursing, teaching or factory work none of which appealed to me. Too squeamish to do nursing, too impatient to teach and too prissy to work in a factory. So what was a young girl to do?
A FORWARD-THINKER
Advising me on the home front was my disciplinarian mother and the gentle persuasion of my father, with his 'out-of-the-box' thinking. My mother was pursuing her second career at the age of 45 and had very little time for us, working and studying simultaneously, so I often turned to my father for advice. (I write this with pride and without malice for my mom).
Nothing that he said to me or advised me then made much sense, but now I see that he was a forward-thinker and encouraged me to think 'outside the box' long before the phrase was coined.
He forbade me to take up any stereotypical position at school or at college. I was not allowed to represent the school as an athlete (I was the only black child in the school). All black people can sing, dance and run; do something else, he pummelled into my brain, and achieve what no one else has done.
"I dare you to be dynamic," he once told me. Dynamism is not a career but the process of thought he instilled in me. (I'm still working on it).
He coached me for one year of cricket. A female cricketer may have been one of his dreams for me. He did not want me to cook, clean, sew or take home economics or learn anything that defined me as a girl. Instead of dolls, he bought me trains, cricket bats and endless books. Now as a grown woman, my thought process is so far removed from the 'norm', I don't even know where the box is any more!
If you were to speak to my mother, she would tell you quite proudly she was responsible for my career successes. After all, she was the career-driven machine and, of course, she is my role model and she would be correct in saying so. But I have to give my father much credit for his attitude to me as a young girl growing up in London in the late 1950s.
His dreams had been suppressed and were tucked away in a suitcase, and it was after his death I found that suitcase in the attic, full of certificates for competitions he had won as a dancer. Certificates that showed he was fluent in Spanish and a notebook full of drink recipes.
As a dancer, my dad may have been as formidable as the Nicholas Brothers, Savon Glover or even Gregory Hines. But how was this career feasible and profitable for his family in Jamaica in the 1940s when the opportunities for success were being promoted to migrate to England?
So, he joined my mother in 1956 and struggled like all other Jamaican men, to find their place in a society that did not really care to accommodate them.
"Your colour and gender will never change so don't make it an issue as long as you live here in England," he once told me. He was also a staunch Garveyite and where many black British kids were and still are confused about their identity, he made it clear to me that I was a Jamaican. Not British, not West Indian, not even an immigrant, but Jamaican with my own country customs and values.
In the summer, he would send me home to stay with his brother Howard East, who worked at RJR. From my uncle, I learned the passion of work, the competent ethics and total commitment to a job. My uncle lived, breathed and slept RJR. My father died over 25 years ago but I still hear his gentle persuasion and soft encouragement when life decisions are hard to make. He sat on his dreams so that my mom, sister and myself could live ours.
So for all the fathers out there today, often you are overlooked, underestimated and never given the credit that is so deserved of you. There is a handful of deadbeat dads and the focus seems to be on what they have not done, and everyone gets painted with the same brush.
MAKE THE TIME
There are endless stepfathers, single dads, fathers who love and worship their children. Unfortunately, the pressures of work and the focus to achieve and provide sometimes override the need to just 'be there'.
I believe the workplace is brutal for both parents as the pressure for men to be the breadwinners, in their drive to take care of their families, they sometimes lose the essence of what they need to do as fathers, not just earning the money but spending as much time with their children as possible. The time spent is more valuable than money given.
You can email your
comments to
writefully_yours@hotmail.com
