My father was British.
My mother was Ghanaian.
I was the boy in between.
On the train, people asked my mother if I was really her child.
She just laughed.
Before these were old photographs.
It begins in Ghana.
I am
Gabby
Woodham.
A painter.
A Ghanaian boy, still.
A few things I remember.
Before these were old photographs.
Mother to us all.
My grandmother refused to be called Grandmother.
Mother would do.
So I had two mothers.
Both called Maame.
The difference was in how you said it.
Akim Oda. A boy looking up.
Our ceiling was woven raffia. I would lie on my back and follow the pattern.
I wondered about the hands that made it.
Perhaps that was the beginning.
I did well in science.
Art got me anyway.
I followed it to Pratt Institute in New York. Trained as a graphic designer. Made a life in art.
The sensible thing?
I’ll leave that to somebody else.
Trinidad, these days.
Still painting.
Still looking.
Still becoming.
You can leave a place.
It takes its time leaving you.
There is a book
in all this.
Dora’s
Children
In 1998, I went back to Ghana and brought the family photographs home. I began restoring them for my children. The pictures brought the stories with them.
This is a little of mine.
Open the first pages PDF · 10 pagesA great deal left to tell.