Most of you don’t really know me…
So… This life…
So quick, so sudden…
The things we take for granted take centre stage and show us the folly in the ways we’ve been living our lives. How we waste our time concentrating on the wrong things; the parties, friends, how one’s hair looks, the flat stomach, how’s this, how’s that…
And none of these things really improve our quality of life.
Because after you spend hours fixing your hair, it takes a gust of wind the ruin it.
Been working on those abs, yet you have to put clothes on over it.
Got into the “hottest parties”, but alas you’re in a sea of strangers and no one cares to get to know you.
Your friends have their own issues dealing with and people grow up and apart.
For one to feel some sort of security in life, you must revel in the familiarity, which then breeds contentment and at times this stifles you’re spirit.
My father Audley Theophilus Hutchinson Snr. passed away yesterday…
Not a lot of people have heard me talk about him or any of my family members for that matter, which is something I don’t feel I had to…their influences come out in me from time to time…and I’m guarded as to who I let in to my world & family.
The things I learned from Pops.
My love of music came from the man I refer lovingly to as “ the fat man”.
On sundays he’d be playing his records on this killer sound system with amplifier and all and would spin some country western songs: Kenny Rogers, Gene Autry, Johnny cash etc…
Along with the Motown sounds: The Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knights and the pips…and so on…
There was a wide range of music pouring through that house and would continue to through my brothers as well and I appreciated them all.
My wit or “feistiness” is also from him, along with being too proud (or stubborn)
What I learned mostly was to be satisfied with what I had growing up, which didn’t bothered me then or now looking back.
There are 13 of us, I grew up with eight siblings with different personalities, thou most of them overlapped and range between: being loud…to “boasty” to creative and artistic. We kept our emotions to ourselves…which prepared us for the hardness of the world…where being self sufficient is an asset.
My father taught me the way he learned to be a man, take care of your own no matter what. Pay a man what’s he’s owed, especial tradesmen. He provided a roof over your head and food on the table (always), the occasional laughter and the sacrifices he made for our education that he never had, which attributed from him having to take care of his brothers from a young age…
He was definitely not a touchy feely man, I don’t remember ever hugging my father, but I knew he cared about us, with a lot of the things he did.
He was home almost every single day, I honestly can’t remember him not coming home, you could hear the loud rumble of the “big bike” coming from up the road
The fat man could cook anything and did!
I fondly remember him coming home with 3 large bags filled with pinching, snapping crabs and proceeded to boil them all.
Bwoy, we had everything crab for a week, curry crab, regular crab legs, stewed crab meat, fried crab dumplings, crap soup…hmmm…I’m allergic now, so there.
As the tradesman he was, we all built more than a house together, but a home.
From mixing cement carrying sand and gravel, laying blocks and steel, it all looked weird from the outside, but it was practical, every decision made was a practical one.
Some how I couldn’t think about him not being there, he was always his jovial stubborn self and in my quest for my own individuality, I might have overlooked his and that of my family, but I thank you all for giving me pieces of you so I can be wholly and solely André Damion Hutchinson.
I honour my father with some white rum, the love of everything pork, my ingenuity and practical creativity!
Lovingly, my father…
The fat man!
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