This post is all about memories of Christmas past, based on a recently re-discovered email to my niece, Rachel.

Christmas really was magical for us as kids.  What amazes me as an adult is how Mummy managed to keep her enthusiasm so high with so very few resources at her disposal.  Mummy made us all spiffy new clothes, baked for the whole family, decorated, shopped for gifts for everyone including toys and clothing for the many children of all the various workers...I cannot imagine where the money came from!  She also used to take us to town to listen to the public carols in the open area that was next to where the tax office is in these days.

Carols at Cane Grove were always wonderful pre-Xmas, and Christmas morning at Hope with Granny always seemed bathed in a special aura, although we were there most every day!  Perhaps it was the euphoric lack of sleep from attending midnight Mass and then liming with the nuns afterwards - patties and sorrel and black cake and mince pies at the Convent!

One special memory is of the men from the villages who would show up at Hope on Christmas morning to serenade us with Xmas songs on homemade instruments.

These guys were usually well in their cups by the time they got to us, but this is the kind of sweet music that can be made by traditional home-crafted instruments throughout the Caribbean...

Marjorie and Cecil Salmon, parents of brother Malcolm’s wife Geraldine, hosted a lovely Christmas dinner for some years at the doctor’s house at Pembroke, where they had moved after his initial posting as the doctor at Petit Bordel in north Leeward. Other years the dinner was held at Peniston.

But the Twenty Hill Boxing Day fete was the high point of the whole season as far as we were concerned.  Very casual – leftovers from Christmas Day and big bowls of breadnuts!  Grownups and kids racing toy cars the length of the veranda, playing pan and cowboys and Indians, cricket, marbles; just all being together and having fun together.  I have a memory of the Canadian husband of one of the cousins going for a ride and the horse galloping right into the Twenty Hill gallery with him crouched low – did it really happen or is it another of those unreliable memories?

Somehow along the way it felt like we stopped having fun together as a family – probably when we stopped doing things – river picnics, beach picnics, cricket matches….and just sat around having the same conversations over and over. I remember people used to talk about the way we Punnetts gravitated towards each other on social occasions – we really all seemed to like each other a lot, and to be each other's champions.

Shout out to Cousin Betty Jane and her husband Don Wood who still host a family Boxing Day party (at the house they had built on the old Peniston Estate).  As long as we’re engaged with each other, our tenacious family endures!

One love, Lisbie x

photos from Christmases long ago (about 1962?) at Hope House when Granny (Lilias) was still the matriarch.

Aunt Maysie

Having very recently seen our niece, Gemma, though for too short, I realised that our decision to record family bits and pieces is really a good one, no matter how insignificant the information may seem to us!

Unfortunately, I didn’t meet Gem’s three year old daughter, Paige as I met up with Mark and Gem at Malcolm’s  the day before their return to England.  Unfortunately,  I also missed seeing her older sister, Claire, and her husband, Ron.

At one point, mummy’s sister, Louie Blencowe, was mentioned, and immediately Gem’s interest perked as she tried to figure out where Louie fit into the family.  This was the confirming moment that even tiny bits of information would one day be enjoyed!

I then also realised how little I know of our great aunts, so today I choose to write about Maysie Barbara Punnett, born in St Vincent in 1882, where she spent most of her very long life except for a few years living in the west of Canada, housekeeping for her eldest brother, Lewis Leslie Punnett (1874-1958).  Aunt Maysie was an unassuming woman of few words and probably very shy.   She never married but I remember hearing that she had been in love with someone who died before the romance blossomed into marriage!?  I am not sure if she lived with her brother, John and his wife, Lilias Fraser (1883-1970) before Lily's blindness from glaucoma, but after John’s death in 1950, she lived at Hope House with her and became her lifeline and housekeeper.  After Granny’s death, Maysie moved to Cane Grove House with Jack and Eithne Punnett until she died in 1979.  For several years before Lily’s death, their sister in law, Florence (also known as Pop), widow of Christopher Young Punnett, moved into Hope House until she emigrated to Toronto with her only son, Desmond, his wife Helen, and their two children, Mary and Winston. Christopher, popularly known as Kit died in 1942 at Pyreau House, a part of Cane Grove Estate.

Maysie was always at Granny Lil's side and she bravely put up with the visiting family members on a twice daily basis!  Lily' four sons, all living in "The Valley" usually gathered there for drinks before lunch, and again in the evenings for drinks before dinner!  Wives and children also!  I don’t know if she yearned for a life of her own?

Whist writing these lines, I am thinking of looking for more information on this lady.  If I find anything, I will add to this.  One story that was always told in our family was that she had declared that she was very glad she was a Punnett so that she would never find herself marrying one! 

That’s all for today, January 8, 2016.

brenda