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

Thought Picnic: Through Sibling Eyes

My buttons are just right

She asked me to button up my shirt to the top, in fact, she commanded me to do that. Immediately, I felt a tone of authority that I did not expect I should have at home.

Indeed, she has every right to see that we are well turned out, something that was lost in that communication was that we also had just as much a vested interest in ensuring that she was turned out well too.

However, that moment had created a conflation of roles, at work she is a teacher/principal, at home she is my mother – the words came out of my mouth as I refused to button up beyond a certain button-hole, I am not in your school, and you cannot treat me like your students.

Understanding each other well

There was a time when the swipe of a backhand would have connected with my face at that daring effrontery but an unassailable truth had been shared, the boundaries of her school authority should not encroach on the moat of existence within which our home is situated.

Having been in boarding school, I was not going to allow my home to become an extension of that regime, I think we understood each other well at that point.

Sometime after, she was prepared to go out and though we did not barricade the door, we the kids made our views known; there was no way she was going out like that (Mama Cordelia was the name we coined for that look) – for the simple reason that we would not be able to show our faces in the neighbourhood for people knowing that our dear mother had made an appearance we could not abide.

We prevailed and she did change into something we felt was acceptable and indicative of the status and air we expected our mother to carry as a mother and a respected member of the community.

In some ways, we had to duty to ensure the emperor did not appear in public in the proverbial “Emperor’s New Clothes”, the case had been made.

Siblings and quibblings

Having shared some deep and secret things with a sibling, there are reasons why that closeness of trust and candidness has been cultivated and nurtured.

As individuals we live quite different and separate lives with varied outlooks to our present, future and for some even the perspective of eternity holds sway – I cannot begrudge the strength of faith, belief, avowal and religion but a question lingers about what the basis of the relationship is.

In my conversation with the hospital chaplain – a catholic pastor this morning, this matter of conflated roles came up with the possible conflicts of interest – you might have a sibling lawyer but should that person be your advocate? If you had a sibling doctor their advice might be very valuable but would they be too close in helping you deal with very serious illness by playing the role of doctor?

Only with sibling eyes

The concerns of my sibling are well intentioned and much appreciated, well read and we are quite aware of the way our theologies differ but we need to be clear about the roles and relationships avoiding the situation where the bonds of our sibling unity are weakened or frayed by external influences that do not define the original affinity.

I crave a closer relationship with my siblings; I had flown the coop long before they grew old enough to know about big brother, if there is any fact to share and understand of each other, it should be clear and simple.

My sister is my sister and definitely not my priest, she need not play that role and neither do I want to play the role of supplicant or flock which just seems to complicate the basic brother-sister interaction introducing concerns that do not engender the ease of communication, just as many relations tend to conflate their genealogy with their professions and confessions creating uncomfortable scenarios.

Sound advice is good but not to the extent that we lose the bond that creates the relationship, I am sure we can just get along fine without the extraneous, the encumbrance and what else.

Thought Picnic: Vulnerability offering opportunity

Finally answering the call

I relented this morning when the phone rang; it was the Patriarch who I’ve been avoiding for the past month.

Whilst there is pleasure in conversation it veers too frequently to matters that concern others more than the principal.

Every reticence on those matters seems to embolden the resolve to alter the course of one’s life and decisions to ends that might well satisfy the desires and requirements of the protagonists but those things are not in my purview at all.

Taking liberties

There was a time an understanding that whilst advice was welcome the decisions were chiefly mine, the use of English to narrow the Power-Distance Index allowing for very frank talk should have put paid to this but one might well have been playing soft ball in situations requiring a bit more assertiveness.

The annoying if not bordering on the despicable ploy has been to use the unfortunate times of vulnerability as the opportunity to push their agenda.

There is a case for companionship and care when ill but that should not result in a permanent relationship, worse still was to cite the survivors at bereavement as the warning to act.

My view of friends

There are some rights I can exercise without the need to consult anyone, as refusing to take calls I do not consider encouraging or helpful, the decision to terminate communication if subtle entreaties do not yield the desired adjustments.

One has been reliably informed that friends prevent me from the responsibility of marriage and family – I beg to differ – rather friends respect my views and do not interfere with decisions I have made because they think they know better – besides, I have the friends around me, the more concerned have not been seen in decades.

Despite this, I am

They all mean well, parents are what they are, parents; siblings are who they are, siblings but none have good enough excuses to meddle in my affairs beyond where I have given latitude for them to roam.

So, I answered the call and as usual an antagonistic accusation came forth to which I have adopted the golden rule of silence; this could first appear to be an broken connection but it also helps to move the conversation on – if I had to say what I had in mind, my heart would have been out at the repair shop.

We are back to the fundamentals again – accept my choices or lose your voices in my affairs.

Thought Picnic: The Americe First Principle in Fort Hood

No more a news junkie

But for the guest living with me whose presence helps my recuperation no end, I would not have seen anything on television since I returned from hospital about a month ago.

In fact, of all the television I have watched, most has been DVDs or a Friday night Dutch entertainment programme; I have suddenly become a non-news junkie.

I am no more interested in channel-hopping news channels seeking opinion and fulminating analysis of the events of the day.

If the breaking news is that I have won the lottery, eventually, the letter confirming the win will arrive in the post and we can do what needs to be done. One has to ask, what use is breaking news if you are not locked into a hypertensive stock market where your blood pressure undecided vacillates with the market, every minute is lived on the verge of a heart attack.

Even the diehard would soon realise the heart and mind does need respite from the pestilence of news and wars that surround us, we cannot find inner peace if we continue to bombard ourselves with the negative that masquerades as news.

Late on Fort Hood

It is this situation of deserved withdrawal that left me late on the trail of the Fort Hood killings; I refuse to give that situation any volatile labels because there is an underlying issue well below the rhetoric and public pronouncements that needs review.

The man joined what some people have called a family, the family of the United States Army and he was resident amongst his folk in the broadest sense of what family means.

As a psychiatrist, one would suppose his functions include “ministering” to the mental needs of siblings in that family who for all intends and purposes are trained to attack, kill and overrun the enemy, the survival instinct being alive and sometimes this ignores the way war and conflict changes a man into something yet to find adequate description apart from a fighting machine.

This man on certain aspects of merit had been honoured in the family, he had risen to the rank of major, so he was no idiot, he earned that rank, deserved that rank and was respected in that rank.

Accentuating his difference

However, there were other issues, the man happened to be Muslim, not that it should matter, I have close family members who are Muslim and they are no different from me, they are respectable, honest, diligent and worthy people whom I honour and treat with the utmost respect and regard.

Apparently, in his family, that is to say the US Army, this man found little acceptance, was disrespected and treated “badly”, one would assume. At least, this treatment within the family did lead to him wanting to leave the US Army but some hard-headed disciplinarian within the family thought little of considering this request and I am sorry, that person or persons are just as culpable in this act not by commission but by omission.

The family dynamic broke

The family is supposed to be a harmonious setting but if one of the siblings is ostracised for whatever reason and the parents do not act to make that sibling inclusively loved and cared for as to feel equal and accepted as equal in the family, it is a recipe of great disaster.

The superiority of the other siblings that belittles the abilities and the status of ostracised sibling usually ends up later in exchanged roles where the ostracised suddenly holds all the aces and everyone else is left begging for something they no more have the ability to keep or protect.

For all the opprobrium the Fort Hood killings would generate about religion, people of foreign descent and many other things that excite bigotry in the name of commentary and condemning a supposedly dastardly act, the problem started long before the man made Major, it started when they saw he looked different and did different things – nobody dealt with it then and now we have a monster. No excuse for the act itself but it calls for a deep soul-searching in the US Army hierarchy.

The family dynamic can only thrive when everyone is helped to feel part of the family, that responsibility first falls on those in charge like parents and then on the siblings who hopefully have good examples to follow from parents and good leadership.

American first no matter how different

It is a tragedy, no less but the triggers were pulled long before the guns downed the many unfortunate victims of a dysfunctional family situation that was allowed to thrive to the point of disaster.

The family needs to come together and ensure everyone really feels in and involved without ostracism, that would take longer than an inquiry, it would be a paradigm shift and complete change of mindset because the diversity of America would soon be fully reflected in every establishment and there would be no place to differentiate between people apart from the binding fact that you are all Americans first and Americans always.

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.