Learning To Finish What I Started (Part I)

Learning to Finish What I Started (Part I)

I was filled with the best of intentions and ideas. I had read blog posts by many other writers. I had an idea about what I wanted to say.  I had come up with a domain name that was actually available.  What?  No one else created a blog entitled Cod Fish Cakes?  I couldn’t believe it.  I jumped at the idea.

I had made my first trip to Barbados some fifteen years earlier.  I was feeling a little nostalgic about my Barbadian(Bajan) past. Thanks to whomever created the internet, I could recapture my roots through a blog. My grandparents had long since passed on, but the three that I knew were still vivid in my mind.  They had come to these American shores via Ellis Island. I could talk about them.  I could share pictures of Barbados, their home of origin.  I could also tell some Bajan jokes like my aunt used to do Sundays at my grandmother’s house. 

There was so much I wanted to talk about including my grandfather on my mother’s side who left Barbados to work on the Panama Canal.  I could talk about his brownstones in Harlem and also the small church he took such pride in attending. I could talk about his smile and how he was the only relative who ever made me laugh and bought me popcorn in Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey.  I had the best of intentions when I started this blog.

I was even going to share some of my favorite Bajan recipes.  I learned one recipe from my mother and one from a sister.  I would search for some of the others especially the pastry that my grandmother used to make.  I can see the coconut bread and pone right now.  Delicious. 

I don’t have a lot a Bajan stories to tell because if you knew any who were born in the early 1900s one thing is certain, they didn’t talk about the past.  Even when I pressed my mother to tell me about her childhood, all she would say, “There’s nothing to tell,”

or “Why visit the past?”

I could also talk about the church I attended as a child.  Just about everybody was from one of the islands—especially Barbados.  First generation immigrants and a separatist Christianity can leave an indelible mark on an individual.

So I started with what I planned to be an ongoing discussion about one small facet of my life.

I knew I had a little talent in the area of writing, and I was going to move forward with it.  Writing endless observation reports of teacher lessons can get quite annoying. So I   planned to branch out sort of like Peter, all excited about walking on the water, except I was walking on the waters of the internet. I had planned to be a little more successful than Peter.

  

I didn’t write an outline or anything.  I just let my fingers fly. The white blank page was filling up fast.  I was beginning to feel like I really was a writer even though I had been writing privately for who knows how long.  I was proud of what I had produced.  I had finally written my first blog.  Then I reread what I had written to make sure I didn’t make any silly errors or omissions.

And then I took my first final blogging plunge.  I pressed publish.  I was a little frightened at first.  I had done it. I was now out there on the high seas of the world of the internet.  I felt a little exposed.  I wondered what would happen next.