On parental interference and sundry matters - III

A Problem Child

I have a blessing; I still have my parents who are alive and well, but we have a situation where we are estranged. This estrangement is probably because they are embarrassed or ashamed of me, and that is something we all have to deal with in life when it comes to how we live and the choices we make.

In those circumstances, I have taken measures to manage their exposure to these things, sometimes by reducing or eliminating communication.

For those children who have made their parents proud without having to sacrifice anything of themselves, I guess you are doubly blessed. The stars were aligned, maybe angels were even singing to the shepherds in the fields, as wise men journeyed with presents of gold, frankincense, and myrrh from the East to herald your birth. Oh, the prophets foretold it all.

I was not that child; I was different, difficult, and diffident. I was at one time smart and then considered stupid; for a while, trusted, and then not trusted. I was a handful to my parents, yet a product of the environment I was in.

We Were Not Friends

My African parents made many assumptions about what they thought I had learnt from examples that were not always obvious, for instance, the handling of money. Heck! My father is an accountant, but tell me, how do you pass down the genes? I guess only one of my siblings pursued a career with any semblance of that profession, so much for the power of example.

My parents are of the generation that maintained a certain status and stature, with a school principal for a mother, someone moulding impressionable young lives. The pressure to perform was even more stifling, the need to impress was necessary, and every failing was condemned with such excoriation it left an indelible mark.

Then I failed. I failed woefully, twice. I started courses at two polytechnics, both ending with the advice to withdraw. When I look back, I realise I was clinically depressed; my mother had Psalms and white-garment prophets on the rolodex of that time, and I found religion. I had finished secondary school at 15 and was starting all over again at 20.

A Different Parent

The difference this time was being under the guardianship of an uncle, my sadly departed Uncle Cash, a close relation who had experienced failures early in life but had become very successful in his chosen profession of insurance.

That relationship was different. It was not built on a yearning to show power by demanding and comparing, but on engagement and an appreciation that I was a person first, with my own beliefs and persuasions that could be accommodated within his mentorship and guidance. My parents backed off a bit, and I thrived.

The purpose I gained moved from setting goals to make others proud to achieving success for myself. I had the power to make my own decisions, based not on what others thought, but on what I thought was best for who I was, what I was doing, and what I aimed to achieve.

We Are Really Strangers

In their eyes, I could very well still be the child they once knew, because we grew so far apart from the day they sent me to secondary boarding school. They knew one child; I am a different man, and their child still.

In the same vein, my parents have changed from the people I once knew, even as some characteristics remain, and we have never really had the time to compare notes about who everyone turned out to be.

I have issues and misgivings, many of which I have written about in my blogs. I think I have had a reasonable relationship with my father and a rather volatile one with my mother. Even as I think of them and love them, there are elements of past resentment and abandonment that have taken hold as I review their parenting of me as an individual.

My parents, I can understand, have their concerns too: they have a firstborn son who is gay, has never married and will marry a man, has no offspring, and whom they have not seen in decades. And I am comfortable with all that, because it is my own life and not theirs.

Let's Do This Again

On my Facebook page, I have a friend request, the inspiration for this blog, because it is from my father, who I once blocked, then unblocked, but did not re-establish the friend relationship. After all, he conflated the situations of parent, participant, and policing.

Allowing him to participate in my social media activities meant that he began to police me, and then I got the message: “The earlier you make a good change in your lifestyle the better; it is not too late. All the best”. I was 53. I am going to be 60 in December.

You know what? I’ll accept that friend request.

Blog - This is my life, this is me

Blog - On parental interference and sundry matters

Blog - On parental interference and sundry matters - II

A mandolin, I traverse

My kitchen lessons

While we are estranged for reasons, she quite easily forgets in impactfully unguarded expression that cannot be misconstrued by the listener, there are benefits to that unsteady relationship that have served me well. I guess the biological relationship has met too many issues of ego and standing to develop into a friendship of any significance, and I am fine with that.

From an early age, I was invited into the kitchen, whether by my personal interest or her coercion, what I have learnt therein has meant when I am as inclined and disposed, I can fend for myself and attend to the cravings I need to satisfy, if alternatives would not suffice.

Doing it myself

A case in point was when at one time in Cape Town, I could not find anything like Agege bread, even in the shops purveying Nigerian fare. I was soon out looking for a baking tin with a lid, that I could not find anywhere in the shops, that I ordered one for delivery to home in the UK.

I made do with what I could find and started baking, it was when I returned home that I got the Agege bread recipe to a level of satisfactory achievement and was later able to give Brian the true experience of what that kind of loaf was all about.

It is probably laziness and lethargy that gets the better of me when there are things I could do at home that I end up spending money on at the local supermarket. For instance, I hate chopping onions, I can do that with a mandolin, and I have had one about the house for about three decades.

The mandolin in this context is not the musical instrument, but a kitchen utensil used for slicing, there is a difference in spelling between English and American English which takes an ‘e’ on the end.

Cost-saving benefit

On one supermarket shelf, I saw a bag of chopped onions going for a song and I bought them, the price looked reasonable enough until it went up by 50%, how I can tell prices have changed, I cannot explain, but in my subconscious, I notice how prices fluctuate on the everyday goods that I get. There is a threshold beyond which I would whisper to myself, almost spitting out in disgust and disdain, that I am not paying that much for that.

I returned home to my red onions, prepared them for the mandolin and apportioned quantities to zip lock freezer bags, then wondered why I had never done that in the first place. That is the case with a few other things that I have learnt from domestication encouraged by my mother from childhood. It is one of those things to celebrate, despite the other things.

Childhood: Concerns, memories, and traumas

Classic inadvertent abandonment

I happened upon a Facebook status at the end of last year, where there was a discussion about some parents sending their foreign-born kids back to Nigeria to apparently teach the kids discipline and resilience along with avoiding any possibility of their kids being dragged into inner city issues like drugs, gangs, and crime.

After reading some of the comments and one especially of a parent who had successfully reared kids in America and could not countenance the idea of sending their children into the care of strangers, be they relations, paid guardians, or strict/conservative boarding schools, I offered a perspective of my own experience.

The lifelong consequence

Imagine being sent from a private primary school environment with a majority international pupillage in Kaduna to a boarding school in Sagamu, Ogun State, at the age of ten. It could have been worse as I had admissions to even more remote places.

The lasting effects of that experience apart from feeling abandoned even if it helped make me both independent and resilient, not that it was unachievable at home, but my parents knew best.

As a child, I was quite outgoing, precocious, and inquisitive, with independent views. I have decidedly refused to associate with old student activities at my secondary school, nor do I retain any enduring friendships from that time. The scars are lifelong.

A rash of parental control

I suffered serious child psychological issues just months before I was shipped off and then in the first term at boarding school, that my parents' closest friends pled with them to bring me back home, those appeals fell on deaf ears, as if they had not learnt from the experiences of being placed with foster parents in England, one of such even starved me, much of that, I have blanked out of my mind.

These seemingly benign parental decisions still affect my relationship with them, and they are both octogenarians. There might be an immediate benefit to fostering your children out to strict environments, but the long-term break in the familial bonds would scarcely ever be repaired.

While there are parents who still think the boarding school experience is a rite of passage that is wholesome and germane to child development, if I was blessed with offspring, I would have totally negated some of decisions taken as part of my upbringing. I know many parents of my generation did not repeat that vicious cycle.

I speak as someone who will be fifty-nine in less than a week. I charted my own course and chose what was good for me in the scheme of things. Some memories are best left unrecalled. [This was drafted before my birthday in December 2024.]

In the throes of maternal angst

Thinking motherhood

Mother is a word of many emotions, to which we all belong sometimes in terms and ways we cannot find to describe. Of all my siblings, it is obvious that we all have different views of mother almost like the Six men of Indostan.

Of love we have plenty and of experience we have many, in her duty it is impossible not to find praise and admiration, even gratitude will abound because she is devoted and unstinting, if that were the only perspective to consider, sainthood would beckon without asking.

Yet, the mother is human and imperfect, with passions and frailties that might shock or surprise. The memory of such is hurt and pain, leading a declension into resentment. Forgive, forgive, the heart cries, in pain, in pain, the soul weeps. For a child much can be done unawares, and to the child, the memory does not disappear.

Conflicted situations

Why am I plagued with a remembrance of abandonment, threat, and curse? For they leave marks indelible that the showers of love fail to wash away totally. Even somewhere in my spirit, I hear the divine ask to take care of it all, I guess I have not reached where I can cast it all upon him.

Much as I have questions, I probably do not need any answers, for there is no change to be expected of those who are determined they did no wrong. One has to be thankful that God is not like man for His longsuffering, mercifulness, lovingkindness, and faithfulness. How hard have I made my way to be more like God?

There are many ways in which I am blessed and even when mother is sent to Coventry, in spite of everything, a mother remains steadfastly praying, for the peace we all seek to live by.

Pouring sugar into my ears

Mums in admonition

It is quite funny the kind of early Friday morning banter I have with my mum which after the greetings follows a range of questions, answers, prayers, advice, admonitions, and generalities.

At 57, I am both a child as much an adult, though, in the admonition department, it is like a tussle of wills and determination. Obviously, one of the sticking points is how to wean me off sugar and my apparent addiction to sweet and sweetened things. Much as I avoid artificial sweeteners of every sort, pure sugar that goes into confectionary and demerara sugar that I put into beverages, I cannot seem to avoid.

Then again, some years ago, I did take sugar out of my tea and as long as my latte was milky enough, I could have coffee without sugar, I have returned to my old ways, and the craving for sugar heightened by reduced sensitivity of olfactory receptors and taste buds.

Sweet to my hearing

Mother however would not hear my pleadings and even as I would hate to admit I am addicted to sugar; it is something I should work to reduce just for health’s sake. She seems to think she can apply and exert coercive pressure by twisting my ears so that they turn and burn bright red to which I retorted, sugar does not go in through the ears.

The impression I got was the flaring of my ears might well moderate my use of sugar and before I could say, Fat Chance! I could feel my ears warming up and I relented on the point of adjustment I was taking only to make coffee some two hours later with the same amount of sugar I put in the mug yesterday, which I ended up not drinking because I was invited for tea by my neighbour. It is muscle memory as it is taste bud memory.

As for my ears, spare the twisting, I can still remember the last time.

Thought Picnic: On mother today and everyday

On being mothered

A mother remains mother, motherly, and mothering and I am blessed to have my mother whose voice gives soothing and calm to a child nearing 60. Even with the challenges she faces, she abandons that for concern and consideration of others in encouragement and prayer she speaks to the heart of me, telling me not to lose hope and assuring me that there is a God on the throne.

My health she asks after, my well-being is paramount, she mines the timbre of my voice to determine how I am holding up even when I give assurances. She remembers every detail of things I have shared with her to know whether there has been progress or new developments. 

At times, what might seem hopeless is given the radiance of possibility as her fervent desires are expressed in private supplication and entreaties for tremendous change to come.

My mother who sat and watched my infant head still watches over my greying bald head, a blessing immeasurable in duty and responsibility, a treasure beyond any calculable value that many a time, we never well appreciate. Yet, in the whisper and the sound of her voice when we converse and in the playback in the recesses of my mind as I reminisce, I know I am blessed.

My Eema of God, dear mother of life, Shalom! Shalom! May your heart’s desires be met with the grace, favour, love, and power of the God you serve so diligently. Amen!

Feyike: 5 years on and the memories

My kidulthood was over

You were the reason mummy called me into her bedroom one late evening to have our first adult conversation, she was probably in her second trimester with you when I, totally oblivious and that is strange having been schooled in noticing when girls get pregnant with the whitening of their eyes and their constant spitting, along with the morning sickness. Maybe it was the familiarity, for apart from my immediate sister, I had never really noticed when my mother was expecting, the babies just arrived after a few days away.

Anyway, the conversation went along the lines of, I am an older woman now, as she was just shy of 40 and I 17, exactly a month after her landmark year, well, our birthdays have always been a month apart in and out of leap years. Yes, an older woman having a baby, and this was unexpected, but we now have to pull together and recognise that some responsibilities would fall on us over time.

My deception was complete

Much as she felt that this information should be shared with me, I was not having the best adolescence, my first year at Lagos State College of Science and Technology was going to be an unmitigated disaster doing Chemical Engineering, my performance was woeful, it was not even good enough to be asked to repeat the class.

Meanwhile, I had pulled a switch to Yaba College of Technology (YabaTech for short) for Electrical Engineering where the faculty had to be given proof that I was still 16 when we had the admissions interview, the underlying issue that many would call unseriousness and was patently clinical depression, carried along into that stint, I just rarely understood why I was in a class, the new beginnings for mother and child too divergent for concern or consideration.

My situation was dire

What would a nursing mother do with a child who is supposed to be smart but cannot understand anything going on in his lectures? I had never used drugs, that was not the problem, I just had a fog in my head that I could not clear, that religion became the steadying rail for my mental health until things began to clear up was the background in which Feyike arrived.

That week in which Feyike was born was when I moved into the YabaTech hostels, I was a parents’ nightmare, for when my mother was in hospital I had stolen money out of the kitty in her wardrobe and then had to face an inquiry against the conviction that she put aside some money and it had somehow disappeared, indeed, I was a nightmare, everything I could do wrong, I did.

My behaviour was atrocious

For the hostel, I snagged that by writing to the accommodations department that I could not stay with my uncle, even my parents found a copy of that letter when I did not arrive home on time having been on the new students’ jaunt to Badagry and Cotonou. I guess I was excused serious punishment that my father was always ready to mete out when I explained the situation.

I did not attend Feyike’s naming ceremony and for that, I faced the full wrath of my father, this weedy kid against the brute force of an angry and menacing bully, I asked for it and I got a lot, I never escaped being a child. Some encounters with my father in those times have so defined the quality of our relationship since then.

My religion was unhelpful

As I was rarely home, I did not know much about the illness that put my baby sister in hospital many times, and sometimes for weeks. I returned home once to lift her and there must have a dislocation in her arm, we soothed her with lullabies and lulled her to sleep. Many times, I prayed fervent prayers for her healing, hoping for a miracle and much else, but there was a radical change in our family unit.

Medicine only seemed to provide temporary outcomes, my mother’s inclination was she was in deep spiritual warfare for the soul of her first son and the life of her last daughter, she found a prophet that had some answers to whatever ailed all of us and got stuck in. My father with all pretensions of rationality hated religion even if he did the basic church attendance and community group activities, he could be persuaded to do the full fetish rituals, which had the accoutrements of the macabre. I saw a lot and said very little.

My knowledge was deficient

Invariably, I never knew how ill our Feyike became over the years for most of the time I visited home, she was in remission from another hospital visit or bout of illness, everything I know I have learnt mostly after the fact.

When I was told that she had fallen very ill some years before her passing, I made enquiries through some doctor friends of mine on Twitter, they found the medical notes and history that for her apparently chronic illness she had not been adherent to her medical regimes.

Probably, a trait in our family, we hate medical regimes, it took a medical emergency for me to face up to the reality of my own situation, and now, I have been on at least 3 pills a day for over 12 years. It is just part of my life.

My mourning was early

She had end-stage renal disease requiring dialysis thrice-weekly dialysis and consequently needed a kidney transplant for hers had stopped functioning. I saw a medical abyss ahead, and began to mourn, long before we knew much more, the system in Nigeria, I did not think could sustain her dire medical needs and my sisters put everything they had into trying to keep her alive.

We were somewhat in a losing battle, and towards the end, Feyike herself was donating money raised for her own treatment to others. On the morning of the 18^th of October 2016, my middle sister called, Feyike had left us.

My sister was my daughter

The way our story was intertwined seems to be much more around what I was going through than what her own experiences were because I had left home in the second year of her childhood and everything else I know of her is through conversation than observation. Yet, she to me felt more like a daughter than a sister, she would have been the sole beneficiary of my estate, it was her name on the life insurance policy I took out when I bought my apartment in the Netherlands in 2001.

Maybe, I was something like an absent father, one she knew was somewhere out there in the periphery, not intruding but interested, I cannot tell. I know I miss the snatches of conversation we used to have, the hopes and dreams that seeped into the ever-present sense of hopelessness that something might just change for the better.

She lived her life and when she died, it was a great release from lifelong suffering and disease, a baby, a girl, a lady, a woman, a person who touched our lives in immeasurable ways, some difficult to put in words, but time becomes a store of the fondest memories that can never be forgotten, recalled for sombre occasions like this.

 

Oluwafeyikewa, 4^th November 1982 – 18th October 2016.

This extraordinarily amazing woman of Ejigbo community

 A life quite interesting

There is one person I do not sing enough praises of, a kind of strangeness and then familiarity that seems to escape the purview of acknowledgement of humanity, service, motherhood, tenacity and all-round extraordinary. A prophet that is somewhat without honour in their own land.

There are stories we have heard that could be hair-raising, a childhood that seem to offer opportunity but was suffused with such guardian cruelty, yet against such no malice is borne. I watched how distraught they became when that guardian passed on and the final rites were missed by an hour.

In tribulation triumphant

Dockets of tales in a matrimony that seemed to all perfect whilst it was any but, the witnesses of tension and worse that dotted occasions of détente never so sure to survive a season, the spouse pretending to fidelity rarely not there, but we do believe the best of everyone.

In offspring sometimes affected, tainted, or traumatised by that environment, there remained such support hardly appreciated or understood, a dogged focus on protecting the brood and shaping destinies in ways sometimes unintended, yet fundamentally consequential. Here is a masterful ability quite unheralded.

Exceptionally gifted to lift

A person who has charted courses less travelled to become a symbol of relevance that set them out as one to be chosen to pioneer a project of investing in young lives to build a future. The project was tough and arduous, yet adept with skills to manage and marshal, in the pit of the fire and the cold workface, hands were calloused, and faces blackened with soot, but gems were mined that have appreciated in value year on year.

And this is not a culmination, but a journey that overnight a pilgrimage was embarked on fully sponsored by the former uncut rough diamonds whose horizons were not that clear but were given the prospect of a world beyond their locality. They have in this day become persons of means and influence, extending the hand of their mentor into places of power and significance.

Dams of gratitude bursting walls

They return season after season to that anvil of life where they were forged and moulded into implements of change and the chief blacksmith invited time and again to inspect the workmanship of exquisite and priceless provenance wrought in that forge. The power of gratitude flows like brooks into streams, into rivers, into seas and waters that lap lands all over the world.

It is in this that our person is celebrated; Mrs A. J. Akintayo, daughter, lady, woman, teacher, wife, mother, administrator, principal, businesswoman, prophetess, leader, fighter, voice, pilgrim and this list is hardly exhaustive. I salute you, enjoy your trip of a lifetime and there are more to come. You shine and we are exceedingly proud of you.

With the Class of '85 of the then Ejigbo Community High School on the 27th of July 2021
You can laugh this well if you have made lives so good. My mother is in the middle.

The presentation made by the Class of '85
to my mother as the pioneer principal of the then
Ejigbo Community High School that was founded in 1977. 

Chicken Licken unsafe in Ejigbo

Ideas from mother

I do wonder if those who dare me to write about them on my blog are indirectly asking to be written about. The conversation is usually topical enough to find a few lines of interest. Whatever, the idea sown, until it is executed, it stands alone.

Like this morning, I called to chat to my mother, who answered her phone with strict formality, I had to say, this is your son calling. She was no doubt pranking me as we exchanged greetings and got a message to her that I should have done, a couple of days ago.

Chickens lost and found

During our conversation, we were interrupted by a neighbour who had apparently come round into her compound looking for their chicken, though, I did not ask if it was a cockerel or a hen. Whilst chickens do stray into neighbouring compounds, my mother said two of her chickens never returned home.

One would not want to suggest the neighbours have been chicken-napping, but chickens are intelligent enough to know their way back home except if by happenstance they have met an expected end at the hands of someone else. Chickens that free-range into my mother’s compound are safe from danger, and that is why neighbours can expect to collect their flock if they have strayed there.

There was Chicken Licken

This brought me to the idea of giving one’s poultry names, and though one cannot vouch for the mental capacity of the galline (adjective for chicken) flock to have individual identities, there might be possibilities therein.

It would ensure that when chickens wander off, they can be called by name, just as one would any of the canine kennel and have then cluck and chuck back home long before they are stewing in strange neighbouring pots. Honest neighbours matter, but hungry neighbours make chickens an endangered species.

I will be a son but can’t be my dad

A drama in my head

There is an American situation comedy series titled, How I Met Your Mother, I have never watched it nor do I know much about what it is about apart from what the title suggests.

On my walk this morning, a whole series of conversations played out in my mind, possible conversations with my dad that I expected might end badly that I resolved to put it to one side, but what transpired between the dramatis personae in my head was vigorous and vituperative, I was angry, probably too angry.

A question seeking answers

The other conversation was between my mum and me; we have developed a friendlier and communicative rapport, I enjoy it. I was going to introduce a topic with humour and move it on to the fact that I was feeling unnecessarily stressed out by my dad. He is becoming as impossible as he is inconsiderate and obdurate; I don’t use those words lightly and they explain to a larger extent why we have much conflict.

Then a sense of exasperation overcame me, I felt like asking my mum, how did you meet my dad? What was the significant moment that brought you both together as husband and wife? Materially, without the union of these particularly significant people, I would not have existed, someone else would have been born in circumstances and situations quite different from the one I have inhabited.

A son a bit different

It is almost like the bane of life, a fate over which there is no autonomy or agency, we happen upon a state and wish upon a star, each second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year becomes a story writing itself as each moment passes. You then find that of the things you can neither change nor alter, you make peace, make do and make the best of it towards telling a better story.

Where I might have found my dad to be a reasonable listening person, I find I have not been persuaded of the reality of that thought. It saddens me, but I will not agonise, I find that it is our attitude and our forbearance that gives us the means to deal with many things, especially the difficult. I will be a son but can’t be my dad.

Thought Picnic: In triumph beyond the memories

An ordeal called life

I called the matriarch for a chin wag just after work and what a conversation we did have all down memory lane into streets and avenues I never knew existed. Paths and tunnels couched in stories that have probably never been told to anyone else, the wealth of experience in a world where the loved have the darkest hearts known to man.

The things I learnt were hair-raising leaving me tingling with sensation that the saints lain under tombstones long ago were anything but, the evil they perpetrated lives in the tales that get told in remembrance of them.

At a point, I thought, should all these reminisces be jotted down and then told for if not one for non-fiction, it exuded the elements of fictional thrillers, but for the grace of God, here we stand, and they are long gone.

Grace and enduring peace

Then you wonder about the inability of people to capture the zeitgeist, the things said in jest that have become the definition of people in whom we once laid trust. They have forgotten taking umbrage at strained relationships they in their careless talk forsook.

Yet, in not any one of them have we been left blinded or in their shadow, for in the deliverance of great favour and fortune with the goodness of people as angels we have risen. We would tell stories of amazing triumph that leaves the slights way behind in the completely forgotten, for we have been blessed and that prayer has been a living stream from the mouth of the matriarch.

For all her faults even amongst those who have sought to besmirch and assail her, she remains faultless, navigating the strangeness of this world with premonition and insight, guided by the divine through the many valleys of the shadow of death to new still waters beside green pastures, her soul restored, her peace enduring. I smile thinking, I do love my mum.

Our mother, the example of community involvement

Our mother, the partisan

My sister, Ibukun Olawepo-Johnson, wrote on Facebook about our mum and her activism, even I learnt a few things too that I had to ask if I could share what she had written, below.

Yesterday I was talking to my cousin about the presidential visit (to Lagos), I told him I can bet my last kobo that my mum was at the stadium in Surulere.

It dropped in my mind that we have a lot of lazy youth in this country, my mum retired from the civil service after 35 years of service. I think she was even kept on for one extra year because of the beautiful work she did when she was in service.

Our mother, the principal

All throughout the time I knew her, she was a principal and she was a principal in all the trouble areas in Ejigbo, Okota and Oshodi where she had running battles with thugs and difficult students, (I would add, teachers and some presumably family friends who thought she did not deserve her position), she fought them to a standstill and won the battle. She was last promoted to special principal grade.

[Some backstory information, my mother was asked to start a school from scratch at the age of 34 in 1977, she created and ran Ejigbo Community High School for probably 13 years. Just over a year ago, I think in the 40th year of the establishment of the school, the alumni of the school honoured her with a commemoration and thanks for her leadership, mentorship and contributions to the community.]

Our mother, the activist

After she left service she was still very active, later when she moved to her house in Ejigbo, she joined the Community Development Association (CDA) group on her street and became the Chairman of her CDA, somewhere along the line she joined politics and she is a strong member of APC in her area.

My mum had the option of retiring and watching things unfold in her community, but she chose to be involved. Even when my younger sister was ill, and she was her primary caregiver, she still found the time to be involved in what was going on in her community.

When glaucoma almost made her blind, she was still attending CDA and APC meetings and activities at over 75 years old. [We were able to get some of the best medical help to save her eyesight. She is even more up and about with community, political and church activities.]

Our mother, the example

It's a shame on all of us that are under 70, we have the power to be involved in our communities, yet all we do is make noise on social media, criticising the government in our various offices and the country without getting involved to bring about the changes we want.

No one will hand power over to us, we need to be involved get involved in politics.

It is time we clean it up if we feel it is a dirty game.

We need to stop all this ranting and noise making, we need to make the next necessary move to bring on change and take our communities to the next level.

The elders will only hand over to the youth if only the youth are actively involved.

Campaign for your own candidate, don't say my vote does not count; go out to vote and ensure that votes are counted before leaving the polling booth. Demand good governance in your locality and attend CDA meetings.

Change begins with you and me.

Start from your house, move into your street, on to your local government area, then your office, all the way until you get to the very top.

Postscript

This characteristic of community involvement is not unique to our mum, our dad is also quite involved in the community also. From as far back as I can remember when we returned from the UK, the renovation of our homestead, the bringing of electricity supply to our village, the building of the new village cathedral, a new secondary school and many other activities to help people in their careers, businesses and general needs.

They are examples of a standard well beyond whatever we have ever attempted, yet they show a way to what can be achieved when we have the commitment, drive and a vision to make a difference in people, situations and communities.

In this, we begin to commend that exemplary lives of our parents.

When the cult of mother becomes a curse

Speaking of the oracles

Òrìṣà bí ìyá ò sí. This is a saying in Yoruba that is not that easy to translate without losing the fundamentals of meaning and context.

Òrìṣà in Yoruba is the core of the indigenous animist culture representing the supernatural, elemental spirits that are varied depictions of polytheistic deities, powerful, revered, worshipped and honoured. In the main, they traverse the early plane in legend as human and the heavenly plane as spirits, they are the mainstay of the deepest cultural identity of the Yoruba.

Only, a decade ago, I had to reflect on who the Yoruba were when I met two Cuban professors whilst on holiday who appeared to have more insight and knowledge of Yoruba myths, mythologies and legend than I ever knew. Steeped in superstition in what Lord Lugard dismissed as a ‘vague dread of the supernatural’, you probably would never understand the Yoruba without being Yoruba.

Blog - Who are the Yoruba?

The enduring hold of our oracles

I might extend that to suggest the Yoruba influence that remains strong in the practices as varied as Santería, Candomblé, Trinidad Orisha, Umbanda, and Oyotunji suggests some fundamental underpinning of the mother culture has been lost to the influx of new religions that have in most cases branded these traditions as savage, uncivilised and inherently evil.

Yet, these beliefs have sustained people for centuries and endure in the spirituality of the peoples and their descendants of the new world who were trafficked in the malevolence of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Òrìṣà bí ìyá ò sí. Indicates that the mother or motherhood usually as seen from the perspective of the child is the genre of elemental spirits worthy and possibly demanding of worship, adoration and adulation.

In the cult of mother

Recently, in watching a film and a television dramatization, I was exposed to an interesting dynamic between mother and child, the blood relationship persisted to serve the purposeful hold of the Òrìṣà mother on the worshipper child, but it was progressively damaged through abuse brought on by drug addiction.

A child desires of a mother love, attention, care, protection, maybe encouragement and even guidance, but some children get little of that because the mother’s capacity to mother in a somewhat ideal mothering situation is impaired by personal struggles that distract the mother from that objective.

In the one case, as in the film, Moonlight, the mother only seemed to come to, late in life whilst in rehabilitation and she profusely apologised for being less of a mother than she could have been. It was a time of tears, of hugs and of healing.

Blog - My own #Moonlight story is not a movie

Breaking the cult of mother

In the television drama, it was the 6^th episode of the 5^th Series of Law and Order: UK, called Deal where a drug-addict mother could care less about her son, first blaming her 13-year old son who for years had been told he was responsible for her problems and then when she was owing money to her drug dealer, she sold her son to the drug dealer to abuse as he saw fit.

The Òrìṣà mother bond was kept strong with threats to kill the boy’s mother if he stepped out of line. It is not until he saw that his mother had indeed sold him that the wicked Òrìṣà mother – worshipper child hold and bond was broken.

The travails of mother and child

The Yoruba culture places great burdens of responsibility and duty on the worshipper child to serve and sacrifice to the Òrìṣà mother, which in many cases is a willing and honourable function in the life of a child who has had positive influences of the mother, mothering and motherhood.

We as child strive to do as much as we can to uphold that Òrìṣà – worshipper bond, yet, that bond can be broken, broken beyond repair by agency or acts of either or both mother and child. The addiction that belies incapacity does not have to be drugs, it could be any other activity that brings on the infirmity breaks that maternal bond.

At peace, away from mother

As I wrote in my blog on Moonlight, the case of my mother is an addiction to a syncretism that combines elements of Judaism and Christianity with African-initiated interpretations of scripture along with strange animist traditions enlivened by incantations of the Psalms, rituals and holy waters, the result of which has broken the Òrìṣà mother – worshipper child bond.

Whilst it pains me that there is no relationship of any note between us, I cannot help but see my mother through the prism of those other mother addicts with no prospect of a Moonlight ending, because somewhere down the line she sold that motherhood to her devotion, hoping my fear of it would bring me into line, like the drug dealer’s threat to the boy.

Coming to terms with this has meant that I have decided not to waste precious time trying to make peace, but as I learnt in a conversation with a dear friend, I must find ways to be at peace with myself. I write about these things because I believe I am not alone in this kind of experience, it is also my own personal therapy in resolving the deep conflicts of the heart.

Thought Picnic: From the village with love

Longer than usual

These conversations never last long, at least not for as long as he can remember. 3 minutes would signal a rather long exchange that had pleasantries, an expression of concern, some laughs, always some laughs, a prayer or two and a closing.

That was deed done, duty done, even if there was desire to have a longer engagement, just because engagement and conversation is good.

Yet, this time, the conversation went on for much longer than one had anticipated, they caught the 20 minute mark before any semblance of closing materialised. Interesting is the word that came to mind.

Ambushed at noon

On a topic she had not broached for nigh on a decade, it became the burning issue, a funny deployment of older smarts came in to play, after opining about not seeing a recent picture it leapt to seeing a picture of the grandchild will be recent enough.

Quite an ambush that was that he reared before he caught himself, not so much in agreement, but there are things that were never on the agenda regardless of yearnings of others and this particularly, never was.

As she weaved and waned between the suggestion of promiscuity and lack of choice, she offered her own unique and quite funny solution.

A parcel to bear

To the village she shall go and obtain for herself a prospective daughter-in-law, green and untouched, she will embark on adventure to arrive abroad passing through border checks, the name of the son emblazoned across her bosom for the sole purpose of procreation.

This is the stuff of stand-up comics, something that should have people laughing until their tears flooded the auditorium. At once the whole idea can be both amusing and repulsive.

Some parents just cannot let their children live their lives if that life does not conform to a norm or some expectation. In this, fantasy and reality will never unite in the fulfilled desire of another and for that, he is saddened for the disappointment others will just have to live with. C’est la vie.

To hear the voice of motherhood

Feelings of utter discomfiture

Caught between the vagaries of life and unhealthy resentment, I watched this day approach with some foreboding and trepidation.

It felt like that uncomfortable feeling that greeted my emotions as I returned home from any outing, the long walk to the end of the street that represented the house that did not feel like home.

The building was comfortable, my room self-contained and private, but the atmosphere laid heavy like a cloud of despair, I rarely felt happy returning there.

Just over 28 years ago, that place became a closed chapter, a place I only visited because I had a duty to, but I avoided because I did not need to return for anything.

Reflect and review

Therefore, as my mother’s 71^st birthday approached, I found myself writing, Thought Picnic: To wilfully forget a parent's birthday – it was something I had the capacity to do and I had worked myself up for it – I could be that detached.

However, when I looked on Facebook to see a picture of my mother and a celebratory message from my sister, and the night before chatted to my sister-in-law about my misgivings, it became something I had to face, I must do the needful.

The first call did not get through, but a few hours after, I got through, and she was quite pleased to hear my voice just as I was to hear hers.

Soothed by motherliness

All the knottiness and tension dissolved and the soothing and comforting voice of motherhood in a mood of celebration and happiness became the balm to aches and pains of pent up uneasiness and angst.

We talked for longer than we usually do; mostly in English as we always did, exchanging pleasantries and making each other laugh with incredulity at the things we say and recollect of times past.

Then I wondered why things just soured, it is because there are still many things I have not shared for her to understand some of the tough journeys I have been through.

The little I shared brought prayerful encouragement and empathy. For all our differences and conflicts, she is quite capable of deep understanding and appreciation to show affection and compassion.

Of why and where

Why do we end up in conflict with our parents?

Where is the balance between the familiarity and the distance to make relationships work?

This is difficult to gauge, but it is something we on both sides have to work on, for to cherish and honour for as long as we have them and to forestall the deeper wounds of regret if we do not strive to make amends and make things right.

Even I realise how parent-child dissonance can reflect spiritual apoplexy meaning a lack of fulfilment in many areas of significance to a person’s sense of wellbeing.

I am glad I had the opportunity to reconnect, and I hope I can make more of this as time goes by.

Thought Picnic: Chance encounters of relative closeness

A seat beside someone

What can one do about chance encounters that lead to interesting conversation with strangers than just engage?

I got on the train to Upminster this evening and it was quite busy that I wondered about whom to bump off the priority seats for the less able that includes a graphic of someone with a cane - I use a cane.

Just then, I saw a spare window seat that was difficult to get to because this lady had taken up the aisle seat and was busy sorting out her bags.

Birthdays and mothers

I asked and she allowed me to squeeze through leading me to suggest I needed to get the resolution of keeping trim the next year on an urgent list. She simply said I had nothing to worry about, I guess I have heard that as many times as a compliment as I have added the pounds too.

She was busy fidgeting with a birthday card to a daughter, I enquired if it was hers, but it was for her sister's 50th birthday, she had bought the card on behalf of her mother who I learnt was 83 and was too frail to go shopping but aware enough to ask for a card for her daughter.

Before we knew it

Then started a conversation that covered when I was born, where she lived, the cost of transport, my comparing that cost with transport fares in Amsterdam, her visit to Amsterdam over 12 years ago along with the good and naughty things she did, we could have known each other for years.

As the conversation drew to an end, I found that her sister shared the same birthday as mine - so uncanny - a stranger, the coincidence of seating, the spontaneity of conversation and a convergence of lives - none of which would have happened if we had not dared to talk rather than mind our own businesses ignoring each other after our somewhat stressful days.

Get engaged

In fact, I learnt much more about her as she did of me than I relay here but the moral of the story is the amazing goodness of life when we interact such the stranger is not so strange but just separated from you by a few degrees and when you find out and thinking about it afterwards, you have to agree that life is full of surprises if you are willing to be adventurous and be surprised too.

In parting, I sent my birthday wishes to my stranger friend's sister and I received good wishes too.

Ìyá - 70 and Strong

A word

Tenacious – That is word that comes to mind about a lady I have known all my life. A fighter, a warrior, a lioness and an Amazon.

As the middle child she was never a middling, from childhood despite all she went through; I heard stories that made my hairs stand on end but when I look back with deep reflection and I realise that I get my fighting spirit off her.

The day I was born, no one believed that she had been with child, she was back at work because the hospital had to keep me and they did not need to keep her – she never idled, she just got on with being resourcefully productive.

Facing countless storms

We walked into the ward 43 years ago, the bed was empty, where could her Diamond have gone? The worst could have happened; my dad had gone for an operation, between the confusion around and the distress I was having, she calmly located where they had moved him, it is the earliest I can remember of my mother tackling serious life issues.

A very religious woman, prayerfully withstanding every kind of opposition, I do not think we have ever fully appreciated her worth in what she has struggled to be and become for all of us. But today, I see a mother hen who has shielded us like an eagle to her chicks, a lioness to her cubs, a mother lovingly holding the hand of her child as we walk through the crowds.

Her greatest desire

That she always wanted the best for us was never in dispute, that we probably did not get that far was not her fault, she saw dangers we never envisaged and worked to ensure her premonitions never became our experiences.

Her love, her zest for life, the sacrifices made that I have seen of no other person, she is of inestimable value, a treasure we have sometimes abused, maligned or ignored but still carries the greatest worth of what we can ever possess.

Relentless, unstinting, dogged, determined and supportive, a peerless mother whose voice to me still comforts and says things are well.

70 with thanks

We celebrate Ìyá. Ìyá is 70 – Happy Birthday, woman of God, A. J., many happy returns, with love and affection, may you see more happy, wonderful, healthful, bountiful, joyful and fruitful days.

Ìyá!

The life of Mother Theresa in a London exhibition

A mother of excellent service

As I walked up Charing Cross Road just after Foyles but before Tottenham Court Road Station on the left where it is a construction site with diversions and a modicum of inconvenience, I was handed a leaflet for the official exhibition of the life of Mother Theresa.

If I remember correctly, she died in the week following the death of Princess Diana as if she chose the occasion to slip away with pomp or ceremony as the world was distracted by the celebrity and sad end of the fairy tale of this other famous woman.

The exhibition in a church just off Soho Square had a chapel with a statue of Mother Theresa in prayerful pose with a notice for all to pick a prayer card from a bowl beside the statue. I in fact thought the statue was real at first.

Features to see

There is was a 55-minute documentary about the life of Mother Theresa, a corridor with pictures of events in her life and a hall with about 100 posters illustrating and describing her life from birth, through her ministry to her death.

There was so much to read of this remarkable woman, her faith, her service, her Christian piety and her deep commitment to the suffering of so many, her example puts to shame too many Christian leaders reaping their rewards already that they might naught when heaven comes.

Profoundly, I was moved by her response to aborting by getting involved, she offered to care from the unwanted children pleading that they be brought to term. It is a lot different from those who pay lip-service to being pro-life but are not there to really bear the burden that comes with the good-intentioned activism but absence of requisite charity to back those agitations.

There were panels of effects of Mother Theresa to view much of which I believe when she is made a catholic saint will be put in reliquaries for veneration and supplication.

Elsewhere in the church a replica of the room where Mother Theresa lived was constructed for viewing too.

Getting there

The volunteers were helpful, friendly, knowledgeable and nice, they exuded temperance and soothing affection, you could not demand too much of them.

The exhibition runs until the 15^th of September from Tuesdays to Sundays between the times of 11:00AM and 7:00PM at St Patrick’s Church, Soho Square, London W1D 4NR. The entrance to the exhibition is at the corner of Charing Cross Road and Goslett Yard.

Those requiring wheelchair access should call 07719 927 419, it is also the number of other enquiries and you can also email MotherTheresaExhibition@gmail.com – visit if you do have the time, donate to the church and write in the register of visitors.