Thought Picnic: The whip that stole a father's confidence

Differentiating the import

Until the time I realised that my father’s word was not an order, a command, an instruction, or even advice that I was duty-bound to follow to the letter with all submissive obedience along with fear and loathing, our relationship was defined by what I saw him do to others and how he treated them.

Today, I consider his views an opinion limited by his perspective of things to which I have the full volition to entertain or discard, albeit respectfully and with a clear understanding that the decisions I make are my own responsibility and no one else’s.

Big brother and little sister

No relationship with another was more impactful to how I saw my father than the one he had with his youngest sister who came to live with us in Jos in the early 1970s. Obviously, my father was the king of his entire, his word was law, and there were standards of behaviour and conduct expected of his wards, the breach of which attracted the severest sanctions.

My aunt had an independent, if not adventurously wayward streak, and one day she tattooed her thigh using the alkaline sap of a fresh cashew nut. When my father saw this indelible adornment, he unleashed his fury on her with such a fiery vehemence in his room. Having her lie forward at an angle, feet on the dresser and hands on the floor, he horsewhipped her mercilessly. I hope I have been a better big brother and I have had some regrettable failings.

A matter of consequence

Her cries and howling could not be assuaged as he locked his door that no one could entreat him to have any leniency. Whilst I did not see her bruised body after that ordeal, there was no imagining what happened in that room and that crystallised my view as a 7-year-old that my father could be implacably cruel at the meting out punishment. In essence, he was unapproachable, and I could not have him in confidence about anything, even the things that mattered. I rarely faced that wrath, but what we had as father and son, into my twenties, was full of the foreboding of wrath.

Invariably, anything I could do to escape his ambit of influence, I probably did, until I left Nigeria. Now, we do not have that fearful relationship, but that lasting effect of that event is I engage on my own terms and at my own convenience. I probably will be quite sorry and regretful if he predeceases me, I guess we unwittingly laid the ground for the fraught because we lacked the anticipation of consequence.

Do well to all

Then by extension, much as I love to be treated with courtesy, respect, and dignity, I also watch how those who make allowances for me deal with others because it is not a singular thing but a broader expression of character and integrity that regardless of status, position, means, ability, standing, or representation, everyone deserves to be treated respectfully, fairly and justly.

I do observe how people interact with others and if they deal badly with others, there is the possibility that a confluence of events might create the opportunity to do the same to you. If you cannot call them out for correction, you want to give them a wide berth before their odium becomes the perfume you are forced to sniff.

We should be anything be character schizophrenics, having many faces to different people, allowing a sense of superciliousness or superiority to get the better of us, because there might just be someone thereabouts ready to give you your just deserts when you need them most. If you can’t be nice, be good, or just hold your peace in neutrality that your offence is not reckoned in the book of Karma.

Blog - Childhood: My aunts saw red

Fathers for the laws of human gravity

Gravity rules again

I was standing in the bathtub having a hot wash being supervised by my father when he approached me and felt that undercarriage in what I soon learnt was to determine if my balls had descended. I believe I was around 7 years old and that might have been the only time I think my dad took interest in my sexual health and probably allayed of the fears that the boy who barely fit in the palm of his hands at birth, might well, grow up to be a man.

In the news, there is some alarm, as a doctor has found that phthalates are causing human babies to be born with deformed genitals. That would suggest it is not enough to check that the balls have descended, but to ascertain that there is an appendage, it has some function of endowment and the absence of deformity, after which we need to address the matter of low sperm counts. [Sky News: Human penises are shrinking because of pollution, warns scientist]

It is a serious problem

The question is what we are going to do about this existential crisis, whether we are going to allow this to become an evolutionary process of the decline of reproductive health leading to a possible extinction of the human race in the worst-case scenario, or begin to act decisively to tackle all forms of global pollution, global warming and a refocusing of reproductive health from the regulation and abuse of female genitalia, their sexual expression, and the decision matrix around birth rate and abortion.

Meanwhile for the babies who have presented the issues observed in Dr Shanna Shaw’s report, there opens a possible new branch of genitourinary medicine with an essential component of plastic surgery as pioneered by André van der Merwe, otherwise known as Dr Dick, from South Africa where the aesthetic and reparative will include the corrective and interventionist to ensure that the demonstration of certain prowess is maintained and probably enhanced for these unfortunate people afflicted innocently by the world they have been born into.

Blog: Hello Dr Dick, my friends need a ...

Get interested and involved

The medical profession having highlighted an issue that should engage us all, engendering activism, informing policy, should fully persuade politicians locally and globally to act in the interests of humanity.

Fathers and the male folk whilst on the one hand feeling for irregularities that presage prostate or testicular cancer might as well be ready to be involved enough to be fully interested in the development of their scions to observe the forces of gravity and the thriving of the organs of reproductivity.

The father in me on Father's Day

I could have been a father, I’m not,
For that, I have no regrets,
Not that I can do anything about it now,
Good old chemotherapy coursing through my veins,
Carried the sentence I probably knew it would,
You cannot by yourself create new life,
It was not something to cry about,
For it is my story to tell.

I do have a father, he’s a man of 80,
For that, I am utterly grateful,
Not that we do not have many disagreements,
Good old desires that a son turns out differently,
Carried through life objecting to your control,
You wonder if he indeed is your son,
It is something in which you agonise,
For it is your story to tell.

I know I am like my father, I do,
For that, I’m ambivalent,
Not that we know enough about each other,
Good his integrity and community spirit shine through,
Carried by his sense of great responsibility,
You ponder on if things could be better,
It dwells on the matter of father and son,
For it is our story to tell.

I could be a grandfather, for my age,
For that, there are no answers,
Not that it matters than much even to me,
Good that situation did not complicate another life,
Carried away from the required sense of tradition,
You think of the message of Father’s Day,
It is one of love and appreciation,
For it is a story to tell.

I wish I had a child, I don’t,
For that, it is not an issue,
Not that the child would have suffered neglect,
Good that I would have eyes, ears, and heart to care,
Carried on the wings of great possibility,
You know it would have amazing relationships,
It calls for a different fatherhood,
For a new story to tell.

Blog - Father's Day on my mind to be continued, at some time.

Father's Day on my mind

Some reflections on fatherhood

On this Father’s Day, it has been difficult to get hold of my dad on the phone. My reflection on it is deep and strange, for within my heart I have much love and much hurt, both have shaped many elements of my outlook to life, to relationships and to the world.

In many ways I see some traits of my parents in the things I do, and in others, we can be so different because of the generational differences and the radical influences of time, manner, and place.

A journey to travel

I am walking towards a better reconciliation and understanding, I appreciate that when my dad learnt clearly of my sexuality, even in his deepest misgivings and regret, he did not reject me, for that I am very grateful. Thinking of this, I wrote a poem of my intimate views of fatherhood from many perspectives, if I tried hard enough, all these paragraphs would be in the poem. Maybe, it is a task for another time.

The job of fathering is never fully done, so, the work on this is one that is in progress. After I left my home for boarding school at the age of 10, everything after that was one of recognition rather than disposition, we have drifted far apart and come close many times, it never mattered to me anymore whether I made anyone proud, I lived my life and tried to do my duty.

I cherish my aged dad; he is a fine gentleman of a certain persuasion. If I had nothing more to say, I still can wish him a happy Father’s Day.

My own #Moonlight story is not a movie

Why I write

I wrote the themes of this blog in my mind and my head as I walked back from the cinema after watching Moonlight, the 2017 Best Picture Academy Award winner.

Normally, I would write a review of the film and from it draw allusions and relationships that resonate with me. However, on this occasion, I would suggest everyone who has the opportunity go and watch the film.

What I have to write below touches on some very personal things that in my own coming of age I feel I must express and I am sorry if anyone after reading this is adversely affected. We bottle up too much of our experiences in silence and hurt, giving no option to expression and lessons to be learnt.

As a child

Moonlight comes to us in three chapters of life, of childhood, of adolescence and of adulthood, the story of understanding sexuality and the relationship between mother and child in the midst of addiction.

As a child, I first recognised issues with my sexuality that began to find expression originally in sexual abuse at seven, and more towards an affinity to people of the same sex from around that age. In the process, there were people who took advantage of me and took their sexual favours whilst I obliged like a catamite.

I was 3 when I noticed my mother’s own addiction, it was religion and the constant visits to prophets and soothsayers, the inclination towards syncretism and the rituals therein, the recitation of Psalms and the invocation of inscrutable angelic beings, none of which inspired confidence in me for what a useful religious devotion could be.

In my teens

As I moved into my teens, I grew rebellious and difficult, the relationship with my parents deteriorated and my mother’s addiction took its toll on her reasonableness, her marriage, our family and consequently her career. My baby sister’s medical condition sunk her under the mesmerising spell of a ‘prophet’ who I considered false, she lost her agency as my sister was shunted between hospital and grotto, my mother finding justification for her actions in such atrocious hair-raising conspiracy theories.

I sank into depression, failed at school, took religion and almost lost my bearings. Meanwhile, I found a different friendship, occasions for a sexual outlet, all guilt-ridden and self-loathing, yet taking a hold I could not deny. I, without a doubt, had same-sex attraction that I could not explain and understand other than beginning to come to terms with who I was and who I am.

I got older

As I entered adulthood, I found some stability and an accommodation for expressing both my religiosity and sexuality, a family that took me into their bosom and gave me a grounding that became the foundation of who I am today. My mother in her own way that done really terrible things to me, things she dismisses but no child can forget.

It irks me when people interfere thinking there are filial duties incumbent on me without any acknowledgement of the deeper issues that necessitate estrangement. My situation is not necessarily unique, but my experience is exclusively mine to understand and that hopefully would be respected by others.

Whilst I was bullied in secondary school, I was saved the physicality of beatings, people exercised power in other ways. In adulthood, before I left Nigeria, I was being blackmailed but I refused to pay up knowing it was the gateway to something beyond my control. I was ready to face the consequences, just as I had years before when I was caught in a sexual liaison with another man.

I accepted myself

On leaving Nigeria, I decided no more to live in the shadows, I reached a point of self-expression and acceptance of who I was and that freed me to enter relationships, find love and develop productive and useful friendships amongst people like me.

Beyond that, I was freer with information about my sexuality in my workplace and it meant I did not have to live a double life. It also meant my managers quickly nipped any homophobia in the bud. I was fortunate to be respected for who I was regardless of my sexuality.

Sex had its attractions, an outlet, a search of companionship, a kind of addiction and a self-destruct button that was pressed more times than I could reckon. In that scheme of things, I became HIV+, developed AIDS, had cancer, lost everything and rebuilt my life from scratch again.

Sadly for my father

My siblings probably do tolerate my mother, I cannot, she has no capacity to reflect and that is to reflect on anything she might have done wrong, she feels entitled and makes demands of entitlement to fealty from her children, failing which we are emotionally blackmailed. I stopped giving in to this kind of manipulation some time ago.

My father who by commission has done little wrong, but by omission failed to save me from the menace of my mother’s caprices sometimes finds himself on the cold shoulder that is given my mother. His ability to reflect and accept wrong is sometimes limited by his inability to empathise with settings in which he cannot find a frame of reference. I probably should be more forgiving of that inadequacy, but everything is quite emotionally draining, it is sometimes best to let sleeping dogs lie.

I don’t hate her

Invariably, I do not think I would ever get to wipe the tears from the eyes of my mother from her acknowledgement of the hurt that I have suffered at her own ‘motherly’ acts. I do not hate my mother, then I cannot convince myself that I love her either. We exist because of the accident of circumstance, not something I had the freedom or will to affect beyond the fact that I was born.

My moonlight is a story with parallels and analogies, it is not a movie, it is my life and the way I have been affected. In my moonlit night, I find the peace and tranquillity of accepting who I am, and in my coming of age, I cannot deny who I am. The pursuit of happiness endures and a better story will be written, either by me or by those who learn something from my life.

Decade Blogs - Feyi Fawehinmi - Daddy 2.0

Decade Blogs

Feyi has a blog that covers issues from a very informed and well-thought through perspective, anything he writes especially on Nigeria is required reading.

He willingly honoured my request to write a blog for my Decade of Blogging when I asked. Thank you.

Blog - To Celebrate My Decade of Blogging

Here, he touches on the everyday and long-term issues of fatherhood and the process of rearing children, something many can fully understand.

I sometimes wake up in a cold sweat having dreamt of my own family, my wife and two kids then wonder as I come to. how all that could have happened without my knowing. My vivid imagination has taken me to places I have never thought possible.

Yet, I could easily have been a father or even a grandfather and though I have never borne those responsibilities, I celebrate the joy of family, the fun of children and the miracle of change that sees them grow into amazing, talented, creative and wonderful people.

In Daddy 2.0, you get to the end and realise it is all worth it, it brings purpose and much else, enjoy this microcosm of life and happiness.

Feyi Fawehinmi runs a blog at Agùntáṣọọ́lò.com and goes by the Twitter handle @DoubleEph.

Daddy 2.0

The arguments lasted for the better part of one year. I was not keen. She was. But the odds are stacked up against a man in these things in such a way that you are guaranteed to lose.

F2 would be four by the time he turned up. I complained to anyone who would listen. Kids are expensive. Life was settled, as it was, why disrupt it? But I have a very strong Nigerian circle and community around me, so these complaints sounded like an abomination bordering on heresy.

Nobody ever has one child. ‘Oloun o ni se e ni olomo kan o’ [God will not make you a one-child parent, in Yoruba.], making it clear that having only one child was something God reserved as a punishment for those who had asked for it, one way or the other, by their relentless sinfulness or something like that.

Kids are hard work. Say you were given the bill for having a child in advance along with all the work to go along with raising the said child, do you reckon you’d still say ‘Yeah, I’ll have one of those’?

Then there is the relentless obsession with ‘standards’. It is trite law, apparently, that you must give your child a better education than you had. Often this means nothing more complicated than spending more money on education. The line where it stops being about the child and about you, the parent, is very blurred.

On the day F3 was born, caught on the hop as we were by his earlier than expected arrival, we didn’t have so much as a box of nappies in the house. So, I was hopping from store to store buying clothes and supplies. Then a cot came later (many things had been given away. At some point, I really did think I was going to win the argument).

I had completely forgotten everything about being a dad to a newborn child. 4 years is a long time. Then there is the whole rearrangement that takes place in your life after the second child. A first child tends to slot in seamlessly into your life, which then fools you into thinking the second child might be the same.

My car suddenly became much smaller. Luckily, we had moved to a bigger place before he was born but everything still felt smaller and more complicated. People tell you these things, but you never quite know how it works out until it happens. I complained to my friend who has two daughters spaced two years apart saying it felt like starting all over again. He retorted that spacing his kids 2 years apart felt like he never got the chance to catch his breath before the second child came.

Being the sort who likes to worry about the future, sometimes at the expense of the present, I have been ‘spoilt for choice’ since F3 turned up with the sheer amount of things I now have to worry about. How do we cope when his Mum goes back to work? How do we organize (and pay for) holidays for the four of us – a mini logistics operation of unspeakable complexity? How do we ensure we still have a life and are not just zombies constantly running after and attending to the needs of two children, boys for that matter? How do we pay for the lifestyle we have somewhat gotten used to given the bigger bills?

The answers to these questions are floating in the wind. The only answer to the holidays is to pay for them – slowly. You can apparently take a baby to the cinema in the mornings. Small mercies. Wages are stagnant these days so you cut back in some areas and try to find a pay rise somewhere, anywhere. All very boring stuff with no game changing answers. For all other things, you pray as hard as you can.

He is a good kid though. Sleeps well and F2 is a proud big brother, although I worry he might smother him one day in the name of showing his love. But I am not adding that to my worry list.

Because as I type this, I am looking at him, and he is smiling, waving his arms excitedly at me. That alone is well worth the price of the ticket as they say.

Ignore my earlier whining.

It has been 10 years since I moved to the UK permanently. So much has happened to me in that time – mistakes, blind luck, good fortune. I am amazed that Akin has been blogging the whole time. It sounds easy, but I know it is not. I can count 2 or 3 years when I could not possibly have blogged at all if it had been me. To keep at it for a decade is truly remarkable.

Very well done Mr Akintayo. Here is to the next 10 years.

Thought Picnic: Gosh! I have a black face

Is it …?

Maybe there isn’t much to read into this but I do remember about 15 years ago planning to visit a young family and I found myself asking whether their two boys have ever seen or met anyone of my race.

I just had the feeling that they having lived in a somewhat expatriate community in the United States and then moving back to Suffolk they might not have been exposed. Those silly assumptions fed my imagination with pictures of two kids under 5 hiding behind daddy’s legs and stealthily coming round to poke me to see if I will react before scurrying back to the protection of daddy.

My makeup is permanent

That is what I think prepared me for an episode yesterday at Upminster station where I was waiting to board a train into London. The waiting room has a heater on timer so I always go in there to get some warmth considering it was raining cats and dogs with blustering wind to boot.

There, I saw a man probably in his late twenties and his son, maybe not even 3 years old yet, sat in his buggy. I switched on the heater and as I stood by taking in the warmth, I looked at the boy and this conversation between them ensued.

Son: Look, he’s got a black face.

Father: He’s a man.

The appropriateness of that conversation can be left to conjecture as I smiled pretending not to be shocked by it all.

In 2012?

The boy had just been picked up from spending a week’s holiday with his grandparents and Upminster for all intents and purposes is not entirely out in the sticks and completely beyond civilisation. If the boy lived anywhere in London and from whatever baggage they had, they were not travelling far; one can only wonder how and why the boy could not have noticed and realised that black faces are not all that rare.

Kids have a way of learning fast and learning well from their environments. I would hate to think that influences around the boy had negatively coloured his quite impressionable young mind. It is not like we are in the 1960s when the sight of a person of colour was so much a curiosity as to be cause for amusement, surprise and fear.

Really?

All the knowledge the father could impart to the child was that I am a man. It made me wonder if I had a red face or a green face, dare I say a yellow face or a blue face and by the time I have a grey face, I might well be a weather vane.

If anything, for the sake of the well-being of that child, they all need to get out a bit more and if they have been saying silly things, that child will be growing up in a society that will be radically different from what he has been hearing or been fed and maybe next time, I will roll up my sleeves and pull up the leg of my trousers just to show that I not only have a black face and it is not a paint job either.

Between a patriarch and his children

Those rotten seeds

I cannot begin to imagine the loss I have suffered from not communicating with my father for years until recently.

It is unfortunate that seeds sown a long time ago in my youth created an almost immoveable tree that stood in the way of sight, contact and interaction.

There was a time about 25 years ago when I tried to address this with my father with the force of the number of siblings by trying to move the context of our relationship beyond that of provision to one of love and care but the situation deteriorated rapidly soon afterwards.

A failed son of successful parents

I was suffering in my academic work and at the same time, a son of successful accountant and a long-term school principal, I could not run to them with my failures and the true Nigerian parentage style, I was to learn my lessons get pull myself up by the boots.

I was fortunate to have other people my parents had mentored who had suffered serious failure and bounced back owing great gratitude to my parents; they took me out of the rut and helped give me a purpose, an aim, a goal and a path to new success.

My parents were indirectly involved by reason of work they had laid down before, but they could not take direct credit for the success that began to come my way.

However, I still owe a good deal of what forms my character and principles to my parents, my father especially who still stands as a tower of achievement and reasonableness that has been honed through the years.

Rebuilding relationships

When we finally got communicating again, we did not dwell on any of the issues of the past, we just started off on a new race and began to build relationships anew drawing on his wealth of experience and the shared times of living with my parents that lasted just about 20 years.

I maintain a unique kind of place in the family hierarchy, my father is the patriarch of the clan and he shoulders more responsibilities than he should as others who rely on him seem to shirk their responsibilities for the chief.

As the first-born and by far the oldest of his children before my sister arrived almost 5 years after, there are expectations, many expectations, one of which would not be fulfilled much as many desire it – I am already in enough knots than to think of tying the knot – just a fact of life as it stands.

My siblings and daddy

There are aspects of his patriarchal domain that seem to be exercised on my siblings which I have escaped, but my siblings no matter how much younger and how much familiar he is with their circumstances need a pleasant fatherly ear rather than a commander’s orders to be present, available and acquiescing.

A patriarch is free to rule his roost, but a patriarch that is a father to many needs to discriminate between those who serve by reason of his nominal status and those he bore by reason of procreation.

It is not only a case of blood being thicker than water; it is a matter of relationships that are cultivated with the finesse of a scalpel rather than one cobbled together with a mallet. The mallet would just not suffice for the children as it might for others.

They are grown-up now

One can understand that a father expects loyalties, but my siblings are grown-up respectable persons with their families and issues, they cannot continue to be treated as kids even though they were kids with kid’s needs, desires and compulsions.

It would appear there is work to be done in bringing the nest of familial interests back into some sort of harmony and agreement.

My position in the family confers the right to order people around but that would not be the smartest thing to do, in fact, it has never been my way of doing things – I listen, I confer, I encourage and hopefully offer a sympathetic perspective to help child appreciate father and hopefully help father understand child.

He has amazing memories

I still have my relationship building situation and I am happy that our conversations have such range which I would cover in another blog – who would have thought my father was some sort of activist in the late 60s?

Well, I have done much with reading up and understanding my history, my father helps clarify the issues that are confusing but most of all, despite all the negative experiences he had of living in the UK in the 60s, he recollects fondly the ways in which he was integrated and understanding of the environment he was in.

Why would anyone ever be in schism with their father? It just happens and it can take a long while for things to get sorted out – it really can.