A Winslet Stylie Acceptance Speech

- Minus the acceptance

What it was, this week my blog won an award. It was an Honest Scrap award, passed on to me by the writer of one of my favourite blogs - McCaffery.

Thing is, I don’t believe in awards. For someone to win someone has to lose; and I’ve been on the losing team for too long to switch sides now.

Besides, I’m not honest.

I miss her – my grandmother. I lived with her for a little while when I was very young, probably between the ages of 2 and 6. I remember that we lived in the countryside, somewhere in the Algerian countryside. I can recall fields of lemon and olive groves and mornings spent squeezing warm, fresh juice out of blood oranges. When it was time for us to return to Britain, she wouldn’t come – she loved her country see, her home. At the airport, she removed her veil and held my face. She was crying. I asked her, “Nana, why are you crying?” She said, “Because I’m never going to see you again.” She never did.

That’s not the whole story…

Several years ago, I was living in London and some of my 'blood family' (whatever that means) got in touch. I had made it my business to lose contact with them, but unfortunately, bad blood’s hard to shake. Turns out, the reason they had made contact was to inform me that my grandmother had cancer. She had – for the first time in years – left her beloved homeland to be with her children in Wales. She had been asking for me…she was dieing you see. Ravaged by chemotherapy & cancer, she had been asking for me.

I couldn’t go back to Wales. I wouldn’t go back, I had just escaped it. It was the wrong thing to do but, I still did it – I lied to her. I made an excuse as to why I couldn’t return. And she died without seeing me – just as she had predicted all those years earlier. I inherited her two pet birds and her tarot cards, which came in a leather purse that also contained some copper coins. She is buried, I am told; on private land deep within the Welsh Mountains – in a coffin that was draped with an Algerian flag.

The recollection of the love she gave me during those formative years has lasted me my entire life. It was, and is always, just enough love to see me through.

Sometimes, if I have a dilemma, I will lie to myself. Make-believe I can remember her divulging a segment of wisdom to me [that pertains to the dilemma]. I think the sweetest lies are the ones we embellish our ‘good’ memories with. 

Anyway, regarding awards…

A very wise Arab woman, who just happened to be my grandmother, once told me (I think):

"I’d rather be a nobody who believes I’m a somebody, than a somebody who knows anybody can take it away from me."

I can’t keep the award, but I want to thank McCaffery for sharing her moment with me. The honesty and sweetness contained within her blog, is like a voice from my past whispering, “Don’t be afraid, juice is thicker than water.”

Thank you McCaffery.

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