Circle of Love

I have long eyelashes. They curl upwards and are pretty cool so mascara companies don't get any of my money. :)  I got them from my dad. His are even so much better and fuller. This was inspired in part by that and also by my relationship with my mum.

Parents are pretty special people. Let us remember to appreciate their sacrifice always. Merry Christmas people. God bless you.

'Roli! Stop rubbing your eyes,’ I tell my child as I follow her journey from her bedroom into my kitchen.

‘But it itches! My eyelashes keep getting into them. Besides you have been telling me the same thing since forever. I haven’t listened yet.’ She answers me with a smug smile, all the while rubbing her large doe eyes.

People tell me all the time how much Roli looks like me. I think she is a lot prettier than they give her credit for. Her face is shaped like a heart. Her lips are inordinately full and will be the downfall of many a man. Her eyebrows are full as well while mine are sparse and thinning out. She has towered over me since she was fourteen and has the kind of body that models would die for while I am squat and plump.

It is the eyelashes; those long curly eyelashes are the reason people are misled into thinking that we are more alike than we really are. Roli is more of her father's daughter than she is mine in that respect. 

‘Do you need help, Mama?’ She asks when she is done blinking and rubbing her eyes.

‘I thought your eyes itched.’

‘I will be fine.’ She answers taking the knife away from me and starting to cut the ugwu.

She cuts almost the same way as I do and I smile. I have taught her well. She is as ready as she will ever be; ready to be a woman, ready for life, ready to face the world without my hand in hers, ready for it all. I look at my  child and tears blind my eyes so that I cannot see anymore. I find my way to a kitchen stool and pretend to rub at something that got into my eyes.

'Oho, look who is rubbing their eyes now.' My daughter says to me. She has her father’s smile.

'Must be the onions I was cutting earlier,' I lie.

‘Right.'

‘Why are you looking at me that way?’ she asks when the ugwu is all cut up.

I smile at her from the stool. ‘What way?’

‘The way mothers look at their children. The way you always look at me.’ She smiles back. ‘Do you need help with something else?’

‘I think I can take it from here’ I say as I get up and turn on the stove. I know she is in a hurry to get back to her packing.

She leaves for her room and I chuckle to myself. My daughter can only stand the kitchen for so long. Even as a child, it was never her favorite place to be. 

That thing that people said all the time about children growing up fast was not really true. Growth requires some kind of slowness, some kind of waiting, a period when the seed you plant remains the same for the longest time before it eventually sprouts. There is nothing  of that sort with children. They don’t wait for us to notice and say ‘oh your flowers are beginning to bud so I shall water, fertilize, build you a sun roof…’ They fly past us like they are in a hurry to get somewhere and we are slowing them down. 

One minute they are relying on you for  their everything and then just as you are finally settling into this motherhood part you have been chosen for, you find a woman in place of the child you were just making cooing noises to. Our children don't grow, they fly past us and we have no clue until we are being dwarfed by six feet tall 17 year olds leaving home for college, until we are watching them drive off into the sunsets while we are left with the empty homes we built just for them to fill.

I place the wet pot I washed a few minutes ago on the stove to dry out. The hissing noise it makes fill my ears so that I do not hear the footsteps that steal behind me. I only feel the arms that circle my waist and hold on for dear life. It is the same way she used to hold onto my legs when she could not reach any higher. ‘Roli and Mummy’s circle of love’, I called our hugs. It has been a while since we indulged in one of these circles.

I turn around and take her face in my hand; a face that is exactly like mine. It is covered in tears but my own mother taught me to never look a gift horse in its face so instead of asking questions, I close my eyes and cradle my six-footer baby. Underneath those eyelashes, our pain is the same. I cradle her and kiss away every fear of the unknown, every waterfall, every empty nest syndrome, every gray hair that has found its way to my head. I kiss whole every bruise, every hurt, every disappointment that life holds in store for her. I kiss my child whole and goodbye.

We stay in each other’s arms till the smoke alarm goes off and we burst out laughing.

We make dinner together for the last time for a few years. The next time we get to make dinner together, our circle is a little bigger and there is another little girl with long curly eyelashes in our lives. 

Song of the day: Andrea Bocelli - The Prayer

Thankfully, Kiah

Lately i have done nothing but moan!


And groan, gripe and complain. I cannot seem to find any reason to be thankful. Ok that is not true. I do see reasons to be thankful but i think i am forgetting how to be thankful.(Heaven forbid)


And somehow i stumbled on this http://www.kiahsscript.blogspot.com/2010/10/dear-john.html. 


I am still the same girl that wrote that. Yes it has been a year but look how far i have come and all the wonderful gifts i got on a platter of GRACE in 2011. Right now, i am feeling like the ungrateful heel that i am. 

Today, i am especially thankful for my amazing friend and fellow blogger SN. Its his birthday and like December, he shines.
I am thankful for life, Jesus, my family, friends, school, my unborn children (all 4 of them), my soon to be husband (faith people, faith!), my career, my ability to put words together and weave tales, my amazing hair that has weathered Virginia's winter beautifully :), my pink nail polish, music, books, my bags that are packed and ready to flee this town, my Gucci by Gucci perfume bottle that is somehow still full, good health, my country, my dry flaky skin that hasn't weathered winter as beautifully as my hair, hope for tomorrow....etcetra, etcetra...


Heavenly Father, for everything,  Imela!!!


Song of the day: Tye Tribbett- Bless the Lord (Son of Man)

The Love Heresy

Chei!!! i am old!!! My youngest brother wrote this and when i read it, i almost fell out of my chair. I still remember vividly eating his Frisocream and being smacked by my father because Frisocream was meant for babies alone (mschewww what do adults know?). 

Apparently creativity runs in my family...if this Pikin can write this at 18, i wonder what he will come up with at my age...I am so very ashamed of myself right now...

Sigh, i will just shut up already and let you read...

Oh don’t we love to cuddle, to hold and squeeze, and perhaps to call our own? Oh don’t we want to be loved, so we can feel special and admired? Oh don’t we just love to be idiots, to hold such emotions in esteem and insult the name of love? 

For love art not what we conceived, ours being mixed with weakness is like water mixed with fuel, adulterated. Do you, in your right senses, perceive love to be the exchange of spit? Do you degrade love to the standard of bare affection, are u that ignorant are u so naive, huh? We redefine the essence of love! there’s only one genuine love, love irrespective of condition, status, ties, deeds or perhaps looks. What some may call agape, but i would not be found spiteful to classify. That sort of love is not weak, its all conquering, has no boundaries, it sees faults and bears it, it holds no criteria for its disposal. This love holds so much worth that’s its being equated to God(God is love). But when such pure love, makes compromises, borrows the sense organs, make judgments and do things BECAUSE; it becomes love as we know it, adulterated. Yet this is the sort of love humans all crave for, the intimate love, weak love.

Titanic, Beauty & the Beast, Romeo & Juliet, Sleeping beauty, Twilight and the likes, have all been successes because this infidel love appeals to us, and we are charmed by its display. What is it about this so-called love that you can't do without? What is it that attracts us as metals to magnet?

I find myself taking time to read the “life partner” column every time I get hold of a Sunday punch newspaper, not because I am searching (please of all places). No, its because i like to mock those sleazy desperadoes with their throat choking criteria for a spouse. i wonder why its those without options that are most demanding - must be tall, handsome,well dressed, descent, Calabar, not hairy, fair, good in bed, sane, wealthy, muscular... The list is never ending. The thing is these people are so troubled by the absence of affection that they seek for the angel they don’t know. 

Insecurities. Don’t you ever ponder? Why the average teen has a girlfriend and the other teens without one occupy much of their minds about this vacancy? My opinion-INSECURITIES. They could make up a thousand and one reasons why they need this love, but none abide with logic. The married are the most unfortunate, spineless mammals who can't act independently. An association built on reliance. Pitiful. They are weak and use love to make up for insecurities. 

Why do most unmarried women, above 27 prioritize marriage as their ultimate goal. Why do weaklings fret on this sort of love, like its their purpose of existence. To what end do we fall in love? To what end do we kiss? To what end do we dress to match?To what end do we share ice cream? To what end do we love in this sort of way? Insecurities if not stupidity!
 

Am i a love hater? certainly! And my detest for this love compounds for one reason. That unconditional love has being ignored. Man has evolved to be so greedy, that he would rather please his own than care for the many. We have grown to dwell so much on this love that we are unperturbed by the pain in our environment. Man has become so homophobic that he’d love his bride and scorn his brothers. He has become so senile as to classify love, so intelligent as to defend his greed. 

We, in classy restaurants playing love n feeding each other, whilst another in Sudan contemplates eating his fellow. We walk majestically with gorgeous matching clothes and jewelry whilst another adorns a clothing without spare. How could we kiss and cuddle, when we bear knowledge of brothers who lay without the warmth of shelter? How could we even think of a vacation with our significant others when children being afflicted by diseases wonder if they will see tomorrow? How can you profess your love to her when inside lies a sinister mind of wickedness towards other men.

 

Man should cease to build tents of his own love that shields him from these realities. I am no pastor, humanitarian or activist, but deem me credible to say, love your spouses in the best of ways but never fail to show love to the world in the least of ways. Selah!

I think the young man has been listening too much Damian Marley and the like hence this rant against love...sigh...i will ask him how he feels again about love in five years...


if you can't tell already, i am so very proud...of both my boys...

Daddy's little girl

I think i am trying to make up for February and the three dry blog posts i could come up with all month long. I am on a roll this March. March is one of my favorite months. I like the numbers 3 & 8 a lot.

Its Baba Lola's birthday today. i am at work and i wish i were rich enough not to work for anyone. i would throw my father the biggest birthday bash there is. Ok, i would at the very least take him out. Somewhere nice where he can forget all about work and his patients and Nigeria.

I love my father. Whats not to love? He is the watered down, kinder version of me. We have had our issues but men, that man has been there for me all my life. He has let me down a few but that's okay too. He is human after all. i remember how as a child, i wanted a doll that could talk and walk. We walked Agboju market together looking for that doll. When we couldn't find, we drove to Sura.

I see gray mixed up in his full head of black hair and i almost want to cry. Baba Lola is growing old and soon it will be my turn to be there for him. I hope i do not let him down. I hope that i am willing to go all the way to sura and beyond to make him happy.

Happy birthday Baba Lola. There is so much i want to say but i hope these words say it all

'Thank you'.

Song of the day: The Redeemed Christain Church of God Choir: Iwo Nikan

There she goes

Found her on the desert plains. She became my oasis in that strange land. It took me two years to look in her direction. It was well worth the wait.

She won every heart with her smile. But it was my soul she stole with her goodness.

She saw through every facade i put up. She laughed her way through my temper. She came back no matter how many times i showed her the door. she taught me lessons i never taught i could learn. On my birthdays, she would wake me up, and pray for me at dawn.
Its been 6 years since i found my sister. Its been two years since i laid eyes on her. so much water under the bridge and yet i know i will never love like this again.

White tiger, my sister, my friend, my angel...there are friends and there are FRIENDS!!! You, my lovely, are evidence that God loves me. Thank you!!!

p.s If you cry today eh, i will never wish you happy birthday again ...and you know it isn't beyond me!!

Song of the day: Six Pence None The Richer - There she goes

Rose Colored Glasses

My Grandma has the funniest glasses ever. They make her look like an owl. Sometimes i am not sure if she doesn't make them look owlish. There is no separating them.

Every time we come to visit, she hugs us and lifts us up. She doesn't lift Chike up anymore. He is all grown up now. Chike doesn't begrudge her. He thinks she smells like camphor anyways.

After all the hugs and the lifting ups, she sets us down. Lines us up and out comes the rose colored glasses. With it she peers closely at each face. She sits at her stool and peruses our faces. Like books she has read before and in which she hopes to find new meaning.

Grandma takes her time. I have always wondered what she searches for with such patience. I will ask her one day.
When she is done, she hugs us with renewed fervor. kisses and calls us pet names we blush at.

Grandma's rose colored glasses. Morning came and she couldn't find them. She wept and called me Chike. I am not Chike, i say. She says to me 'without my glasses you are all same to me, with them i see each of you for who you are'.

I searched hard for Grandma's glasses. Chike found them. She hugged him to her breast and tried to lift him up again. He didn't fuss. I think he missed Grandma for those few days when she called him Anwuli and Bingo.