Sylvia Wynter's Dream

he is remembered only in bits and pieces, with the question of how accurate those things about him may be, we will never truly know, he was a quiet jeweller who travelled across the island and more impressively he travelled with his father to our motherland, he fell in love and married young and lived by the rule of thumb, he is a man I never knew, never met him, barely heard others speak of him, and envied the moments he shared in photos with my older sister when she was a toddler, I hesitate to call him grandpa, I can’t find an exact reason why, is it his lack of presence in my life and the absent relationship that affects our connection of kinship and my acknowledgement of him? when speaking to my father about his parents – my paternal grandparents – I always refer to them as your parents, unintentionally avoiding the title of my grandparents, why can’t I call you grandpa even though I never knew you? I learned about you from the words of other people’s mouths and the few photographs ranging from your youth to your old age, even with all of this I still do not know you and you sadly remain as the man I never knew