My Diamond & I (part 1)

How was your weekend all?

My mum will be 50 this week. As usual I went to ask her what she wanted for her birthday, I think between my dad and us kids we have gotten her all the gifts there is because her birthday and Mother’s day are always in the same week. We thought of what we have never given her and we all came up with nothing.

There I was on her bed and she answered “as long as you kids are happy, I have gotten all I wanted”

I was surprised and I told her we were happy already and she should come up with a serious gift she wants and she insisted that what she said was all she wants.

That statement inspired this post. It made me think of the relationship between us. I have to say she is my closest friend if I exclude my sister. She knows when to be my mother and when to be my friend.

My mother cool like the waters of a spring. I remember whenever things go awry; she is most times the voice of reason. When you want to take a rash decision she comes up with different ideas that would automatically make you change your mind. She has intervened on more than one occasion when my boyfriends misbehave and I complain to her, she makes me see other sides to the situation that I didn’t think of.

My mother strong like the trunk of an Iroko tree [insert laughter]. I remember when I was in secondary school, my school was a 4 hr drive from Lagos, My mum never missed a visiting day, she would drive down those Saturdays and cook all kinds of food. It makes wonder how many hrs she spends making all those. There would be Jollof rice, amala, fried yam, mashed potatoes, fried meat, fish, dodo etc and she was most often than not the first parent to arrive.

She had this flashy red car, once it appears on the express beside the school fence, I would hear people scream my name that my mum was around. The joy that made me feel is still indescribable.

She comes early so she can spend several hours with us before making the journey back.

My mother the working mother. She holds down a powerful job and still managed to raise us. When I see people making a fuss about raising kids and going to work, I wonder how she managed it, there weren’t too many people doing that, because most people we knew then were house wives. She travels all the time and my dad was always on the move too but she always makes time out to be our mother. The times she is around she will drive us to school and gist with us all the way.

I remember all her training courses when she has to travel all over and implement software for all her company locations, she got a moniker for that, I had finished my SSCE then and I was alone at home, she would take me round the locations with her, We used have so much fun. We traveled round Nigeria. We once took a luxurious bus because she wanted me too see the Lokoja bridge.

She was always making chin-chin, kokoro, cookies, fruit punches, so many things I can’t recall their name now at the weekends. To say our bags were always filled to bursting would be understating the obvious.

When I was younger, every party my mum went to, she would bring something back. She would share it equally and as the custom the eldest being me chooses first but really, there was no needs for that because none is bigger than the other so just pick one and forget it.

Every December, when all the neighbours decorate their houses for Christmas, my mum would do ours too so we wouldn’t be left out even though we were Muslims. She understood kids could be cruel and our house would be the most decorated and all the neighbourhood kids would want to come. I was always so proud of that.

I can’t remember a time when she ever embarrassed me.

Once I caught a cousin of mine having sex with her boyfriend. I was six. I told my mum and she explained to me what it was all about and how I should be careful and never let any boy touch me that way until I was an adult. That lesson stuck and I am glad she didn’t take the high road of most parents and shun that topic.

When said cousin got pregnant, I saw the disappointment in my mother’s face and she told me that if my cousin had been careful, she wouldn’t have gotten pregnant. That it was too much too soon.

To be continued...