Now We Know Better

My mother reminded me that life gives you everything including those things you do not have. But you do not have to waste any of what you are given. “Put out the fire, Tomide. We do not have enough charcoal. It is only in this house that i see children wanting to have their baths with hot water. You children are grown-ups; there is nothing like the weather is cold. Look across you, do you see Ibinabo’s children bathing in hot water”?

I think i loved my mother. Nobody could dispute that. She would complain about everything until her voice chimed in your head. She would nag to my father about his smelly feet. She would bark at the gate man for making her honk her horn more than once. She would even yell at my dog for being only a dog. Sometimes she’d wished she could send it to the market and have it wash her car.There’s a lot i’d remember my mother for.

But i am here now. I watch my wife scream her head off at the children and i immediately remember my mother. I think i know why now. My dad once said the fire that raised her mother’s house still burns inside her head even though she survived it. I am not sure he fully understood why she was the way she was.

Leonell