Trini to the bone: Children of God

AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

My name is Jacqueline Mary Scott and I wish my grown-up children could live with me.

I thought I knew everything at 24.

I grew up in Petit Valley – 3 Palm Avenue, to be exact – the last of five children.

I’m single now, but I have a seriously strong bond of love and friendship with my siblings and their spouses.

Our Scott cousins lived one house away from us and we had a lot of Valdez and Quesnel family in the Palm Avenue horseshoe, too. I totally consider myself to be a Valley girl. I’ve always been proud of how and where I grew up.

I then got married and lived with my ex-husband in Westmoorings and Maraval.

I’m really happy to be back in Diego Martin.

My father’s death in 2007 broke me open, like an earthquake. My world shifted and the cracks in my life became crevices.

My mum has had Alzheimer’s for years. It feels like we lost her a long time ago. I hope the grief is ours alone and she’s happy in whatever world her mind takes her to every day.

I have two adult children, twins, Keegan Toby and Cassie Jane O’Brien. They were 30 years old last July!

They are non-verbal, developmentally delayed and have a few other issues. They are doing very well and are healthy and very happy.

I come from a very Catholic background, a lot of priest uncles, an aunt who was a nun. Archbishop Anthony Pantin was a family friend.

But as soon as I was allowed to stop filing into that church bench with the rest of my family, I stopped going to Mass.

I believe in an extremely compassionate God greater than myself, but that God is very, very broad.

I don’t believe I’m going to hell because I had sex before marriage.

I don’t know why bad things happen to good people.

I could pray from now until kingdom come and my sick child could die. And your sick child, who nobody at all prayed for, could get better.

I attended Maria Regina Grade School and then on to SJC PoS. Literature, English, history, the subjects I loved, I got good marks.

I admire people who did well in school not because they had a good brain, but because they studied and applied themselves.

I did not. I regret it.

I’m always amazed at people who know exactly what they want to do at a young age and go after it.

I wanted to be a journalist and/or a model, but made no real effort to pursue either.

I only realised in my 50s that I never even knew what I wanted to be or who I was.

The truth is – and I’m ashamed to admit it because I always thought I was really smart – for all my enquiring mind and sense of adventure, I was brought up to believe I should be married and have children.

I was constantly fighting everybody in authority, acting out, drinking, smoking whatever, trying to find my way to myself…

And in the end I still got married at 24 and had children at 27. It’s astounding, really.

I turned 57 last month and I’m just beginning to understand what life is about.

People have said some the most awful things about my children and the fact that they kind of have no purpose on this earth. They can’t even go to university and be productive!

I believe my children have a purpose as important as mine.

Do I know what it is? No! But I don’t know why I was born and another egg didn’t get fertilised. I believe every man jack here on this earth has a purpose!

Someone said to me, to my face, that people like my children should be put down at birth, like how you would put an old dog down, out of mercy.

It wasn’t said in a mean way or a cruel way. The person actually meant to be sympathetic.

But how can anyone say that to any mother? No matter what their children are like?

People ask if I would have had an abortion if I knew beforehand. That’s a very hard question.

It comes from a lack of understanding, from a person with less connection to the world than I have now.

I can’t think of anything more painful, but if I was to lose one of my children tomorrow, I would know deep inside of myself that their purpose on this earth was served.

I was not a natural maternal person. I had no experience with babies at all, far less mine.

I don’t think I’m a very selfless person. But my children have made me so.

People have asked me how I could believe in a God that would provide me with two children like mine.

But I don’t believe God gave me my children as some sort of punishment.

I wish no living thing ever had to suffer…but then that wouldn’t be life! Suffering is as big a part of being alive as anything else.

I’ve been asked often if my children contributed to the end of my marriage; I always answer, “I don’t know!”

I was 28 when they were born and we stayed married for 18 years. My children might have
kept us together.

I have no right to speak for anybody but myself, but there is a lot of grief attached to the process of finding out what’s going on with your kids with special needs, and finding out they’re non-verbal, and might be autistic, or might be something else.

So there’s a lot of pain and grief attached to it and that is felt by nobody like it is by the parents of these children. Of my children. Of
our children.

With grief like that, it is very hard (for you) to turn to each other and get the support you need. It’s the same grief but you’re both experiencing it differently, both doing the best you can, but it’s not necessarily the best for each other.

But you don’t know any other way. And life is spinning so f--king fast…

I think the older I get, the more I realise that
too much was going on at that time.

In my very humble and not very intellectual opinion, I think everyone who was in charge of Trinidad and Tobago f--ked it up.

If everything isn’t f--ked up, why am I scared? Why are we desperate? Why are our children hungry? Why is there this small little group who nothing touches because they’re so wealthy – and there is so much hurt and suffering in this paradise? And so much f--king anger!

I may often say Trini but I always mean Trinbagonian. I believe I am from Trinidad and Tobago.

To me, a Trini is Carnival Friday night on the Avenue.

Being in Royal Castle at one o’clock in the morning after Fantastic Friday. And defending Royal Castle workers when New York Trinis complain about fast-food workers moving so slow. Even though I
never defend bad service.

A Trinbagonian is innately kind and cares for their fellow man.

To me, Trinidad and Tobago means everything. And nothing.

I feel like we were given every tool in the toolbox, every gift that could be bestowed upon a country, we got. Gifts we didn’t deserve, we got: natural resources; financial resources; everything.

And I know I may be naive but I think (through) corruption and self-gratification, the people in charge of sharing all this beauty, all those gifts we got – the people responsible for making TT a beautiful place, I feel like they wasted our beauty and our gifts.

We should be thriving, an example to the world. We have everything, but we are nothing.

So I feel like Trinidad is everything…and it’s nothing.

Read the full version of this feature on Friday evening at www.BCPires.com