Eighty six.

My lovely friends, visitors passing through,

Me mother, the great book-gobbler (eating more books than bookworms) turn a new page on Thursday. She turn 86 years old, as we would say.

Me sister had a small party, seven o' we, which was just the right number o' people to make enough noise laughing and talking and eating a nice Guyanese-style lunch. 

Y'know we got to have curry, right? And daal and rice. And chicken that me sister cook in a special Guyanese-style, and pumpkin and I don't remember what else. Me head feel fat with post-lunch syndrome today, pardon me if I don't remember the entire menu.

J., the neighbour across the road who love me mother plenty, visit too, and bring cupcakes.

Me mother receive mo' gifts than I ever get in years. Nightgowns and shoes and sandals and clothes. A tangerine scented candle. Chocolates (which I, the food-police, making sure she ain't lay she hands on every day).

I can't believe that she who was only 68 the year before I start that ol' Guyana blog is now 86.

She mouth useta be so hot. Like pepper...she had a wit that would burn like pepper...and now look!

 That was in Georgetown, in we lovely native land. Trekking back and forth, to and from the courthouse, them street vendors get to know she well.

Now, most days, in the mornings, in she new and foreign land, you gon find she strolling on the street outside she home, chatting with the friendly Mericans, or puttering about in the garden even while she fighting severe back pain. Or you gon find she in a corner of a room reading. 

When she reading, she don't hold back. I does get a running commentary about the cruelty, the goodness of the characters. Or I would get a run-down of the plot. Lawd help me if I don't...do NOT...want the plot-reveal. 

If the book is funny, she gon laugh out loud-loud-loud. I especially remember one night, when she been in she 70s, she reading and hollering with laughs.

"What tickle you so, man?" I ask.

This, she say,

If I go for walks with she, or we sit on the front porch, and she see something that remind she of a poem, she reel out the quote like magician pulling ribbon from the mouth. 

Musta been the colour of the sky that remind she of this one afternoon:

Y'know, me friends, because me mother love books so much, I think it is most fitting that she-self should be in books too. And here she is, featuring in the very first book that I write:

Well, dear friends, it is 4:16 pm now. Or, as we say in my lovely native land, 16 hours, 16. 

Day almost done. I gon go for me walk and make a small dinner for me mother.

I hope you keeping well, eating well, taking good care of you too.

Plenty lurve, neena.