Summer Memories are the Best Memories
I had the greatest summers as a child. The ending of the school year signaled the end of academic learning and the beginning of eight wonderful weeks of experiential learning in the beautifully rugged parish of St. Andrew; at my grandmother's house.
Growing up in the eighties meant that my summers were creative and exciting. Going on an adventure was simply packing a 'picnic basket' filled with eclipse biscuits and cheese, a bottle of mauby and venturing into the nearby hills. My cousins and I would take great delight in sitting on the trash from the coconut tree and sliding down the hill countless times.
Those hills were filled with cows, tamarind trees, coconut trees and the tall and willowy casuarina tees oh, did I say cows! With lots of cows came lots of little patties of cow dung and out of each one grew toadstools which we called duppy umbrellas. Of course, the person who collected the most duppy umbrellas was the champion of the day. Time to return home was signaled by my grandmother cooing like a wood-dove and we'd scramble madly down the hill with our little treasures of duppy umbrellas, coconut branches, and seeds from the casuarina trees.
One of the highlights of the summer was roasting the cashew seeds. There was a giant of a cashew tree which grew in the yard and whenever we ate a cashew, we'd twist the seed off and throw it on the galvanized roof to dry. This started before the summer holidays began but by the end of summer we'd rake all those dried seeds off the roof and my aunt would light a big fire to roast the seeds. Once roasted my cousins and I, with rocks in hand, would crack the seeds open and store the extracted nuts in repurposed Horlicks jars. Nothing tasted better than fire roasted cashew nuts.
Without the gadgets and cable TV of today, most of my time was spent outside with cousins and friends. I learnt how to share, communicate socially, solve problems and disagreements (my grandmother acting as referee), cooperate with others and to appreciate the wonderful beauty that is St. Andrew. My childhood summers formed the building blocks of my life and those summer memories will stay with me forever.
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