“The poetry of a people comes from the deep recesses of the unconscious,
the irrational and the collective body of our ancestral memories.”   

Margaret Walker

Generations of the Future, Greetings! 

I am Lisbie (Elizabeth Angela Donna Punnett), second child of Ruth Palmer Darwent and Christopher Alexander Punnett. Brenda has told you about Daddy’s first wife and children as well as of John Christopher Alexander, myself, and Stephen Mark Langley, the children of his second marriage. Mummy had also been married previously – first to American John Hersey Monroe Woods, with whom she had John Hersey Monroe (1943) and Roger Nicholas deBaskerville (1946); then to Trinidadian Albert Max Serrao, with whom she had Mary Catherine Ruth (1948), Esme Jean Lynn (1950), and Michael Albert Max (1951).

Reading Brenda’s opening letter and her description of the first time she met our youngest brother Mark, I was struck that my own very first memory is of Mark’s first day of school. I must have been 8, and most people seem to have memories that reach back further. Mind you, I have earnestly laid claim to memories of events which occurred before I was born! I think I have always been an attentive listener, and stories I heard became real to me in the telling and retelling. I remember arguing passionately with Mummy about some incident of which I had clear recall and Mummy insisting that these happenings predated my birth, rendering it impossible that I was present! Just shows you how fickle memory is!

Daddy had bought Queensbury Estate from his father (at a nominal price), and he and Auntie Eileen made their life there. When Daddy and Mummy married, Daddy left Queensbury and bravely set about finding some other way to make a living. At one time, he managed the Casson estates at Leeward - Mt. Wynne and Peter’s Hope - and some arrangement had been made for us to spend a few months away from home at one of the Casson bungalows in the grounds of the Great House at Arnos Vale. This is where we were staying when Mark started school at the St. Joseph’s Convent in 1965. There is a photo of me, in my Brownie uniform, standing next to Mark outside the house on that first day of school. I wonder why this day implanted itself more securely in my memory than all the previous days of my life?

I’m looking forward to sharing recollections, stories, and all manner of things with you as we continue to write these letters. The idea to do this was Brenda’s and I think comes from our own wish that we might have known more about the ancestors than names and dates on a family tree. That seems to me more urgent at a time when many of the youngest family members are being raised away from our West Indian roots. We have no particular plan or direction in mind, and the flow will most likely not be chronological; we'll just let it unfold as it will.   

Until next time, 
*One love,
Lisbie x

*The urban dictionary says “One love refers to the universal love and respect expressed by all people for all people, regardless of race, creed, or color.”
It was also a song recorded by Bob Marley and the Wailers in 1965