No hugs for JoyJoy on Mother’s Day

Great-grandmother Valerie “JoyJoy” Laurent-Thomas describes herself as a hugger. All she has ever wanted for Mother’s Day since 1964 is to hold her children.

“The part of physical distancing that upsets me is the fact that I cannot hug the people I love. That’s what I miss with this covid19 thing.”

Laurent-Thomas, 82, is a retired nutritionist, former actor and social butterfly. She has a tight group of friends she limes with all the time and frequently attends cultural events such as plays and calypso tents. Her father, Eugene John Laurent, is a legendary educator from Arima, and her brother, Eugene Cipriani Laurent, a medical doctor and top goalkeeper for Arsenal, one of the finest football clubs in TT in the 1950s, which also brought a close circle of friends.

When she loves a person, nothing brings her more joy than hugging them.

“I’m a hugger when I love you. But there’s an anti-magnet that comes between me and someone I don’t want to hug. If I don’t know you, don’t give me no hug-up. When you are in my cocoon of love, you get a hug.”

She’s always knocking about with her husband or other friends, but because of covid19 she’s staying at home.

“I am one of those endangered species from the covid. I’m an endangered octogenarian. We are obeying the rules to the letter. Nobody has been in our house.”

She lives with her husband Dr Carlos Thomas in their Arima home. They have been married for approximately 20 years.

Though they are staying at home together, Laurent-Thomas craves and misses being hugged by her children, including those she said she “stole from other mothers.”

“The hug I would get from him (her husband) and the hug I would get from my children are two different hugs. The hugging you would get from your children is an unconditional kind of love that makes you miss your parents even when you are 82.”

Laurent-Thomas describes her mother, Andrea Marin, as a rock, and the person who taught her to value affection over material things. She died in 1997 at 87, and Laurent-Thomas misses her to this day.

“I was trained on that unconditional kind of love. We were not ‘things’ people. I am not somebody who had to get things for Mother’s Day.”

She has three children from a previous marriage – Verlia Stephens, 56, Vivian Stephens-Keels, 55, and Geoffrey Stephens, 53 – and one adopted son, Jefferson Ashford, 49. She adopted Ashford when he was ten, from the St Mary’s Children Home in Tacarigua.

She has six grandchildren – Javan Keels, 27, Madelaine Keels, 25, Denver Stephens, 20, Poppy Stephens, six, Romeo Stephens, four, and Josiah Ashford, six. Her great-granddaughter is Saraphina Keels. She’s two years old. Poppy was born on her 77th birthday. She calls Laurent-Thomas her birthday girl.

Her eldest grandchild Javan, Saraphina’s mother, gave Laurent-Thomas her nickname JoyJoy. When Javan was born, Laurent-Thomas would sing: “I have that joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart” to her.

After finishing secondary school, her three children left Trinidad to live in Canada. She travels frequently to Canada to spend time with them.

“We’re in touch. There’s no problem with being in touch…I spend as much time in Canada as I spend here.”

Even though they are away, she said she does not feel any less appreciated by her children, especially on Mother’s Day.

She’s never expected gifts from her children. To this day, she has saved a Mother’s Day card her daughter, Vivian, made when she was a child.

“They don’t have to send me things. Feelings mean more to me.”

However, covid19 has brought a greater gap between Laurent-Thomas and her children because of the closed borders. She and her daughter Vivian were supposed to be on a cruise through the Mediterranean from April 19-May 5, but the trip was cancelled because of coivd19.

“What I feel anxiety about are those borders closed. I’m not saying they should be open by the way – don’t get me wrong…The fact that the borders are closed, even if somebody wanted to come for Mother’s Day, they can’t. That’s very difficult. But it’s bearable because of the internet.”

Describing herself as a “geriatric Facebooker,” Laurent-Thomas said her children made her internet-savvy. She also chats with them frequently on WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

Ashford lives in Trinidad with his son Josiah. Before covid19, he would visit Laurent-Thomas all the time.

On Mother’s Day, Ashford would visit Laurent-Thomas and together they would conference-call her other children. But that family tradition is cancelled this year.

“The fact that he’s here doesn’t make a difference, because he can’t come to me on Mother’s Day. But he makes up for it by calling and saying what I want to hear. So I don’t feel neglected.

“I can’t allow him to come. I won’t. We are very serious about the fact that we are at risk…We can’t be shut in all the time, but we are being very careful that we don’t fall victim because I am a cancer survivor.”

Twelve years ago Laurent-Thomas had stage three colon cancer . She said she lost that year to fighting cancer, and does not count 2008 as a year. She isn’t going to count 2020 as a year either.

This Mother’s Day she anticipates her children will be waking her up early on Messenger to talk, but not like they usually would, with Ashford in the house to hug her.

With her children away, she has a group of “surrogate” daughters and sons.

“I have a lot of people who call me ‘Moms.’”

Her “surrogate children” are usually all too willing to help Laurent-Thomas. One would come to her house to help her fix her computer. Another would help her do her hair.

Usually, she and her husband would be visited by friends and relatives. But because of covid19 no one has set foot in their house since mid-April. Not even their cleaner has come in, which has made it difficult for them to keep the Sahara dust at bay.

“We’ve had no visitors inside our house, but because my husband has a sister who is in a senior home and he’s a doctor, he has to carry prescriptions and stuff for her, so he has had to saunter out of the house.”

All in all, then, the stay-at-home rule is being observed more carefully in their home than in many. On May 1, the two went out to go grocery shopping together for the first time. Laurent-Thomas was appalled by how many people were out.

“It was quite the experience. I was shut in for so long and I was under the impression that everybody else was shut in, and that the town was quiet. We got out and found that was not the case.”

In the following weeks, Newsday will be doing a series of stories on touch hunger, and the biological impact of human touch on the body.