Elaine Reed was five years old when she learned the person she thought of as her mum was actually her grandma.
Her mother Leah left home in Jamaica for the UK, aged 22, as part of what we now know as the Windrush Generation.
“My mom had left me when I was six months old to go to England to make a better life and hopefully send back for me someday,” recalls Elaine, from Kingswinford.
“She was staying in touch with my grandma and sending letters and parcels back. She sent for me when I was nine. I met her for the first time that I could remember, at Heathrow Airport. I had my little pigtails on so she could recognise me. I had come to pretty much a ready-made family of Mom, new stepdad and two younger brothers.
She added:
“It’s very difficult really – you’re excited because you’re meeting this person who is your mom and you’re coming to England, which you’ve been told is this amazing place, and you’ll have the most amazing time. So all the excitement was there, it’s just the new adventure really when you’re that age.
“It took a while to build the relationship with her because it’s hard to just accept this person as your mom when you’ve not really known her for any length of time, but Jamaican kids respect our elders anyway, whether they’re family members or not.
“But leaving Jamaica was really sad, because that was all I knew. That was my life. A nice, hot country where life was free and easy. You could climb trees and pick mangoes! And then we came to England, which was really cold and struggling to understand the language. It was almost like a different language because we speak broken English in Jamaica.
“It was difficult understanding the culture and the people. And getting to know my siblings and understanding where I fitted in and how to act. You realise you can’t just run around barefooted and do whatever you want anymore. You have to act a certain way.”
Leah’s support has been instrumental in helping Elaine through both happy and traumatic times in her life including weddings, births and following the death of her first husband Patrick, in 2000, leaving her a widowed mum of two young children.
“My mom and dad have been a pillar of strength to me. I had quite a few part-time jobs because the kids had to go to school and I had the house to run. My mom was always there for babysitting, school runs etc. after Patrick died.”
Having been diagnosed with cancer in 2022 after a successful round of treatment Elaine is now free of cancer, Elaine is now happily married again, to Phil, but dedicating much of her time travelling to Halesowen to care for 82-year-old Leah who has Alzheimers.
“When I finished my treatment, I thought, oh, I’ll be fine. I’ll just get back to my job, in the charity sector, but that’s when I started realising what a traumatic time I’d been through and didn’t have the strength or energy to return to work. So I turned into being a full-time caregiver for mom and dad,” she said.
Elaine maintained contact with her late nan, who came to England in the early 90’s to spend time with Leah, and help Elaine with her young family. More recently Elaine attended her Nan’s 90th birthday party in Jamaica, a country she will always recall with fondness.
Of Windrush, she said:
“It’s very difficult when you look back, and you think England was shouting out for the Caribbeans to come across in the ’60s to help them. It was seen as the land of opportunity – and then all these years later it feels a bit unfair that they came over when they were needed, but then moved on to something else, and that generation’s been forgotten about.
“Some people have been ripped out of their homes and told they’ve got to go back to Jamaica. But fortunately, my parents weren’t in that situation, they both came here in their early twenties so they had those opportunities. They aspired to be better and make their family more comfortable, with a better education.”
Elaine appears in episode three of the ‘Gaarn a Foreign’ podcast, which is released on National Windrush Day on Monday. (June 22nd) It can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@walsallblacksisterscollective
“I enjoyed recording the podcast,” she said.
“It was a really interesting experience, nice to talk about my history and revisit things that I’ve not thought about in many years. Nikki was amazing. She’s such a good host and makes you feel really comfortable.
“I think these sort of projects are so worthwhile. It’s great for people like myself to be reminded that there are many more of us out there. They’re not alone and they can talk to people, share their stories and educate the wider community. It doesn’t have to be confined to the Black community. Our culture is already going through it, so I think other cultures need to understand it as well.”
