Mummy- 1941-2007

I still can't believe that my mother is not alive. I do feel orphaned even at 42. My father put this together- it's a compilation of her passport photos and it really hit a nerve with me as I remember her at every stage. And she always looked the same to me. She was still very young when she died at 66 but breast cancer took its toll. I miss her every day and think of all the things that we haven't told her this year. Grief is an extraordinary place.

St Kitts

St Kitts has been appearing in my dreams. If it is possible to feel a kinship with a place, this island would be the one place that I have travelled to and felt it immediately. Strange feeling, but a lovely one. I was in the mood to revisit it tonight and pulled up some of my old photos. I wish I knew the name of this beautiful flower. It grows on a large tree and I found it in the main Basseterre Square.

Despite having a Boabob tree in our savannah, I had never noticed the flower. It has an almost paper-like texture and is the lovely colour of tea stained cotton.
An example of early Georgian architecture in the churches. St Kitts was one of the oldest colonies in the British West Indies and much of the region's history can be dug up here in the museums and churchyards. The churches, in particular, have such a beautiful, austere look. In a region that was subjected to a spate of earthquakes and devastating fires that often wiped out whole towns in the 18th and 19th centuries, it is amazing to see these buildings still standing.
The cathedral in downtown Basseterre is beautiful in its symmetry. I believe this is the Catholic cathedral which is fairly unusual as St Kitts or St Christopher as it was known, was never a Spanish colony (please correct me if I am mistaken) and, as such, Catholicism was never as strong a presence as it was (and is) on islands like Trinidad. Tomorrow we head off for a Western Caribbean cruise. It's our first family vacation with Daddy since Mummy died in September and I hope he is going to enjoy it. They have done this particular cruise several times and I think it will probably bring up a lot of memories. But we are all looking forward to it.
I will have my laptop this time around and hope to blog on some of the places that we visit. We are heading to Haiti, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, Cozumel and back to Miami so I hope to document some interesting things.