Notes

My Early Memories by Colin L, Rowell
I was born on April 5, 1937, at a time when my family was living on
Morningside Avenue in Harlem. My parents' first child, my sister, Marilyn, had been
born five and a half years before. I have no recollection of the Harlem years. They
say our earliest memories usually involve a trauma, and mine does. I was four, and
we had moved to the South Bronx. Gram Alice McKoy, my maternal grandmother,
was taking care of me, since both my parents worked. I
was playing on the floor and stuck a hairpin into an
electrical outlet. I remember the blinding flash and the
shock almost lifting me off the floor. And I still
remember Gram scolding and hugging me at the same
time. When my mother and father came home from
work, much intense discussion occurred, followed by more
scolding and fussing. My keenest memory of that day is
not of the shock and pain, but of feeling important, being
the center of attention, seeing how much they loved and cared about me.
When I was nine, catastrophe' struck the Powell family. As a student at P.S.? 39, I
passed from the third to the fourth grade, but into the bottom form, called "Four Up;
a euphemism meaning the kid is a little slow. This was the sort of secret to be
whispered with shaking heads in our family circle. Education was the escape hatch, the
way up and out for West Indians. My sister was already an excellent student, destined
for college. And here I was, having difficulty in the fourth grade. I lacked drive, not
ability. I was a happy-go-lucky kid, amenable, amiable,+ and aimless.
I was not much of an athlete either, though I enjoyed street games. One of
my boyhood friends, Tony Grant, once counted thirty-six of them, stickball,
stoopball, punchball, sluggo, and hot beans and butter among them. One day,
I was playing baseball in an empty lot and saw my father coming down the street.
I prayed he would keep on going, because I was having a bad day. But he stopped
and watched. All the while Pop was there, I never connected. A swing and a miss,
again and again, every time I was at bat. I can still feel the burning humiliation.
It was always painful for me to disappoint my father. I imagined a pressure that
probably was not there, since he rarely uttered a word of reproach to me.
As a boy, I took piano lessons; but the lessons did not take with me, and they
soon ended. I later studied the flute. Marilyn thought the noises coming out of it
were hilarious. I gave up the flute too. Apparently, I would not be a jock or a
musician. Still, I was a contented kid, growing up in the warmth and security of
the concentric circles my family formed. At the center stood my parents. In the
next circle were my mother's sisters and their families. My father's only sibling in
America, Aunt Beryl, formed the next circle by herself. These circles rippled out®
in diminishing degrees of kinship, but maintained considerable closeness. Family
members looked out for, prodded,
7 and propped up&
each other.