My Mother: She Is Strong But Human

There are those who didn’t birth us but love us nonetheless. They give us their hearts, their time and their wisdom. They wipe our poopy bottoms and nurse our wounds, they wipe our tears and kiss our fears away. When we bump against a stonewall because we didn’t listen to them, they are on hand to catch us anyway. Our mothers, what will we do without them?

My mother, what will I do without her?

She taught me respect, honesty, integrity, perseverance; to hope and pray. I saw her work herself to the bone, I saw her fall again and again and rise, each time more determined than the last. She made sure all her five children got an education, oh, she made sure! She would have murdered any one of us and sent the corpse to school if it came to it. She dreamed dreams for us before we understood our own dreams. My mother!

She kept quiet, she pursed her lips; she shook her head, she didn’t speak up, she let issues fester and boil. She wasn’t one for a sit down and a talk. When she reacted, it was explosive and extreme.

But when do you discuss (one of) your mother’s shortcomings? How do you discuss it, when everybody’s Mama is an angel? On the days when it’s a man’s world and nobody is paying attention?On the brink of mother’s day? Well I choose to do so today, if not now then when? Please do not crucify me.

Back in the early nineties, somewhere between 1990 or 1991, our family lived in Konongo where my father worked as a metallurgist, I was about seven or eight. We lived at the senior staff section of the mining community, the houses in that section were nicer and bigger and the children were better dressed, but that is a story for another day. Our immediate neighbors were another ‘senior staff’ family, my two elder brothers were friends with the boys in that house and I was friends with the girl. Anytime my brothers went over to play, I followed. Our eldest, my dearly beloved sister, my Mama’s deputy stayed home. She knew something I didn’t.

One evening we returned from our playtime with our friends to meet a locked door. My mother unlocked it, and let the boys in, first the eldest boy and then the younger one. When it got to my turn, she held both my hands in her hand and took off her flip flops. She was one strong woman, there was no freeing from her grip, she slapped me with her flip flops until the lines under her footwear made imprints on my cheeks and blood oozed from my nostrils, only then did she let go and put her flip flops back on. No words were spoken, I never got an explanation for the beat down, I just knew I’d done something bad. It took my big sister, when she saw me a day or two later on my way to the neighbors’ to tell me, “Mama will beat you again if you go there.” Is that why I got beaten? Oh. My. God!

Family portrait time. The photographer stood ready. Daddy sat on the couch, legs spread wide. My mother and the rest of my siblings squeezed in beside him. Mama shot Daddy a dirty look, supposed to make him close his legs and make room for the rest of us, I think. He just sat unfazed, legs still wide open, either he didn’t understand her look or couldn’t be bothered. There was no room on the couch for me, I stood. Mama pursed her lips. The camera clicked away. About a decade later, my mother and I went through the old family album and when we got to that picture, she expressed the message her eyes and pursed lips couldn’t express years before, “see how he alone opened his legs and took all the space when the rest of us had to squeeze in uncomfortably.”

“Well Mama, why didn’t you say something?” is what I wanted to say but I’d learned from her, I kept my thoughts to myself, looked at her, judged her in my mind and kept flipping through the album.

Dear Mama, I love you. I appreciate you. You are an even more amazing grandmother, but I have to unlearn some of the things you taught me, starting from biting my tongue when I don’t have to. So, I speak up when I feel I need to. Oh, I speak up a lot these days. I am not one to be bullied and take it sitting down, I will let a person know! When anybody brings it, it will take it, turn it over and dissect it word after word after word until I get it all off my chest. I keep sane that way

Why? Because I will not let it fester and boil over so I explode. Nip it in the bud is my new motto and it comes with inner peace.

I am unlearning letting my boys think they have more freedoms than their sister. In my household what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

So, shall we sit and have a conversation Mama, would you like to talk?