Learning abundance and scarcity before I knew their names

This memory comes from earlier childhood, but it shaped how I understood everything that came after.Some lessons arrive before language does.

The drive from Kingston to Montego Bay always made me sick.
Twisting roads. Long hours. Me throwing up in the car and getting yelled at for it.

But all of that vanished the moment Grandma appeared.

I’d run up the hill shouting, “Grandma! Grandma!” and she would come from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her house dress, smelling like whatever she was cooking. Her hugs were warm, soft, safe — everything Kingston was not.

Montego Bay was abundance.
Fruit trees. Peeny wallies glowing in the evening. Hills rolling like folded fabric under the sky. You could hear the church choir from the veranda, though Grandma never went inside — she had beef with the church sisters — but she sent me, dressed in ribbons and handmade dresses.

She spoiled me with food, freedom from chores, and the belief that my mind was something worth protecting.

“Study your books,” she’d say. “You’re bright.”

Kingston taught me the opposite.

At my father’s parents’ house, everything shrank. Food. Affection. Patience. You couldn’t touch the refrigerator without permission. Guard dogs patrolled the yard. Discipline was punishment, not guidance.

If Montego Bay was sunlight, Kingston was a cold shadow.

I learned to shift between these two worlds — abundance and scarcity, affection and hostility — forming two versions of myself to survive two versions of childhood.