So much begins with parents. Their daily, persevering, unending love and interest and example teach lessons which reach deep into us; we are nurtured and our minds and souls are formed into shapes and disciplines that last all our lives.
I am past eighty now and the work and love my father and mother devoted to their children, of whom I was the first-born, remain in my memory to this day; I recall vividly the distinction and the joy of my days as their son. They lived the standards we learned to expect of ourselves.
Deep respect was owed to people. Ram the gardener, drunk and erratic sometimes, was treated kindly and was an important human being in the family. We cherished great-aunt Anna who sat in her chair and protected all our lives with her prayers. We saw that the good in people must be found out and brought forward for inspection and for praise.
At six years old I am in agony and very frightened. In hospital an infected appendix is removed. The night comes when no visitors are allowed.
My mother says they with their strongest arms will have to carry her out screaming if they think she will not stay, and I still remember her gentleness and lullabies all that long night and all the other nights.
I could not make head nor tail of calculus. Numbers have never lined up easily in my brain. But my father’s patient hours of tuition, with hugs of encouragement in between, helped see me through to a maths distinction in the School Certificate.
So much in a person begins with parents, and so much in a nation depends on the family. Sun and rain are not more important to growing things.
So much begins with mothers. It is nearly seventy years ago. I am returning with my father from playing my first competitive tennis matches, and my mother, who could never bear to come to watch, always greets me with her shining smile and a hug of utmost love. I was a lord of the universe, win or lose. Confidence grows. The world cannot undo you.
So much begins with fathers. When I was about fifteen and listed my ambitions – which included winning the Island scholarship and also winning the national tennis title and going on to win Wimbledon – my father approved. But he pointed out that another list came first: what work and disciplines I had to pursue if I hoped to make these dreams become reality.
When I came home fainting from pounding a tennis ball for hours against a wall in the mid-morning sun, my mother scolded and pampered me. My father took me aside and gave me a wide-brimmed hat and sun-burn cream and told me always to bring a big pitcher of glucose-laced lime juice and some salt.
Once I petulantly smashed my racket on the court in a game and to this day I feel the steady, grey eyes of my father lock on mine afterwards, and I hear his quiet words: “My son, if you have to behave like that, I do not believe you should play this game.”
My father was very old and very sick in Antigua and I was in London when a phone call came to say he was dying and wanted to speak to me.
I spoke to him a while, unburdening my heart, and he spoke to me and said he and my mother were proud of me, I had been a joy to them all their lives, and thanked me. No honour or pride or praise has ever, can ever, come near.
