Each project arrives with its purpose, milestones and first tasks written out. Here is how the first three read.
Heritage baseline and twelve-month intentions
Children of Caribbean parents abroad often carry a vague sense of being half in and half out, without ever writing down what they know, what they miss and what they want. One honest page covering family, food, language, music, places and belief gives you a starting point to measure against, and stops the whole area turning into a guilt list. Two or three intentions for the year come out of it naturally.
First tasks
- Write what you already know about each parent's island in ten minutes, without looking anything up
- Score your connection to family, food, language, music, places and belief from one to five
- Pick two or three intentions from the low scores that matter to you
- Save the dated page in this area for the quarterly review
Your parents' arrival story in their own words
Plenty of second-generation people know the year a parent landed but not why they left, who met them at the airport, where they slept the first night or what the first winter felt like. Those details disappear with the people who lived them, and most parents will tell them if asked properly and given time. A recorded conversation, or two, gives you the story behind your own life in this country.
First tasks
- Ask a parent when they would be willing to talk about the year they left home
- Test the recording app on your phone in a quiet room
- Record the conversation, starting from the day they left and moving forward
- Back up the audio to two places with the speaker and date in the file name
- Ask the agent to draft a one-page summary from your notes on the recording
Questions you never asked at home
Growing up, certain subjects were closed: why a grandmother stayed behind, who an uncle really was, what happened to the family land, why nobody went back for years. Writing your questions down, sorted by who could answer them and how sensitive they are, turns vague curiosity into a list you can work through gently over the coming years.
First tasks
- Write down every question about your family's past that comes to mind in twenty minutes
- Tag each question with the relative most likely to know
- Sort the list into easy, careful and wait-for-the-right-moment
- Ask the first easy question at the next family meal or call
