Handwritten Stories

Anyone who has heard stories about my grandparents will know what amazing characters they both are, and how much fun they are. This is the story of how they got engaged. My Granny’s parents are Goan, but she she was brought up in Nairobi in Kenya. My Granddad started his life in Goa, and competed in the all-Indian Olympics in high jump (he would have won and gone on to compete in the Olympics but he broke his knee in the finals). He didn’t have any qualifications but was very smart and came top of his class in aptitude tests for banking. His father gave him a loan so he could move to Nairobi where there were better paid jobs. He was poor, paying back his dad and the rent and bills on the mess he was sharing with five other men. In his words, he had a lot of women interested in him but no money to keep a girlfriend.

He happened to work alongside my Granny’s uncle Albert, and every now and again she would come in to get a lift home with him. She thought he was smart and well dressed. Little did she known it was his only suit. After a spell at his job, my Granddad asked his boss if they could give his brother a job, and they agreed if he would be transferred to their office in Mola. The day before he left for Mola, my great uncle Albert, his wife Betsy and my Granny went to visit him at the mess he was staying at. When he arrived at the Mola office he received a letter from my Granny, and it took him an age to work out who Joyce was. Eventually it clicked and they began writing to each other, and my Granny invited him to a family Christening which is when I guess things got serious.

He was transferred back to Nairobi to open up a training centre for the bank. He was due to make a trip back to Goa to visit his family and dad advised him that if he had his eye on a woman, to get engaged because he would be inundated with proposals when he arrived. So he proposed to my Granny. Goa still worked on a caste (class) system back then, and my Granddad’s grandparents happened to know my Granny’s family so a goid word was put in. Apparently he was quite the catch!

They married in Nairobi with about 200 guests. The cake slice was missing and uncle Albert had to run home to grab one so they could cut the wedding cake. Their honeymoon was 3 days in Mola in a farmhouse, and when they returned together with my Granny’s parents they bought a house: my grandparents living downstairs and my great-grandparents living upstairs. My Granddad maintained they were too poor to have kids just yet but my Granny wanted to start a family (strong lady) so along came my Dad. I think that’s about it for the story of how my grandparents courted and came to be together!

Do I see you?

It sounds stupid and condescending to say but I think about you all the time. I worry about you. I worry about the way you perceive yourself, and how you feel the world sees you, and how you think the world wants you to be.

I think you are you with me. I think I know you, and if I do then you are a good man with a good heart. You are generous and loyal and strong and tender and honest.

I don’t judge you for your vices. I am so proud of you for acknowledging them and fighting them and working to quash them.

I can see you’re sad from your work. It’s like you’re crying for affection and I don’t know how to give it to you without confusing whatever our relationship is at the moment. Your work is intimate and that makes me sad; that you’re more honest detached than in person.

And I love you very much.

Grace Us.

For such a short while you were real and we dreamed and planned and worried and soothed. And then you were gone leaving a void a thousand times larger than you were.

It’s not meant to be, but when it is, it will be great. Swathes of cotton and swaddles and blankets. Bunting and cakes and dummies and cribs. And we’ll worry and get excited all over again.