This is how to break up with the juvenile, codeine addict who fancies himself Goth because he paints his fingernails black and wears black eyeliner.
This is how to pretend to be miserable, because you’re supposed to be miserable after a break-up. This is how to blog about it.
This is how to live life; a series of Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday-Saturday-Sundays that never get old, never change. This is how to be a yuppie. This is how to dress like a yuppie, in chiffon blouses and pencil-skirts and kitty heels. This is how to spend like a yuppie; on expensive cab rides, handbags purchased from Dubai, ice cream at Coldstone and movies with friends. This is how to wrap your box braids in a bun. This is how to arch an eyebrow.
This is how to smile at a man you like; coy and charming. This is how to smile at a man you don’t like; looking him straight in the eye. This is how to smile at a woman so she feels flattered. This is how to smile at a woman so she feels small.
This is how to wear lipstick; first coat, blot, second coat. This is how to dance in heels. This is how to dance in a club so no one mistakes you for the whore that your Deeper Life stepmother swears you’re becoming. This is how to avoid your father’s calls.
This is how to tweet; sarcastic tweet, narcissistic tweet, LOL someone else’s, RT another’s, (deep) philosophical tweet, insult-the-government tweet, slightly risqué tweet, God tweet, rinse and repeat.
This is how to chase the lonely. This is how to enjoy a book and a coffee on a Saturday morning when the power is out, and there’s no fuel in your generator. This is how to sign up on Instagram.
This is how to block stalkers on Facebook. This is how to update your profile on LinkedIn. This is how to choose a laptop; comparing specs online, Googling the specs to be sure what they mean. This is how to avoid that creep from Finance. This is how to let your boss know you’re not interested, without losing your job.
This is how to brood.
This is how to act on a date with a man you like. This is how to act on a date with a man you don’t like. This is how to spend Friday night indoors watching re-runs of Friends. This is how to save up rent money, then swallow pride to ask your father to make up the balance. This is how to apologize for your rude words to your stepmother.
This is how to turn down an offer to be someone’s mistress and not be the whore your stepmother fears you are becoming. This is how to be genuinely happy that your best friend is getting married. This is how to turn a blind eye to her mother’s insistence in rubbing it in your face. This is how to pretend to like her husband-to-be even though you really think he’s a jerk.
This is how to act at a job interview; to use your best voice, to smile a lot, to impress them into thinking you’re smarter than you are. This is how to quit your old job when you get a new one; politely.
This is how to reply a DM from the funniest fellow you follow on Twitter. This is how to ask a man out on a date. This is how not to lose your nerve when he refuses at first. This is how to insist, and flatter him into saying Yes.
This is how to dress for a date, that is somehow a blind date. This is how to smile at a good-looking man. This is how to hold the smile when he doesn’t reply your Hello, when he writes instead on the notepad he holds, I can hear but I cannot speak, I’m sorry.
Hello.
Hello.
It’s great to meet you in person.
Same here. You look better than your avatar.
My avatar is Mr. Bean.
My point exactly.
This is how to have a great time with a man who does not speak. This is how to sleep with a smile on your face.
K: I’ll pick you from the airport. Me: No, thanks.
10 hours later, I wonder how I’ll find my way from the airport. What if “Something” happens? What if my flight gets delayed and I take a taxi to my destination late at night and I get robbed or Something because I’m this petite, light-skinned woman (read: easy mark)? It’s impossible that I could be strong, you see. No one thinks you can be, not when you’re fair and petite and female.
I should have taken K’s offer.
Why do women like to be chased?
Airport. The boarding announcement comes on and we all shuffle to the tarmac. All of us will be dead in 100 years. And it should evoke some sort of camaraderie, shouldn’t it? But it doesn’t. We are ignoring one another. It’s strange, considering that we could be deathday mates.
What if?
What if our plane, this plane that Arik has christened “Michael” were to fall out of the sky? We would die together. Approach the pearly gates together. Our families would mourn together, share the camaraderie we deny ourselves now. And for that reason, shouldn’t we smile at each other now? Hold hands, maybe? Chant Kumbaya, maybe?
“THAT IS A $5000 BAG!”
I glance at the man screaming at the porters. It is a Salvatore Ferragamo bag and its jacket has been torn. He is apoplectic. I want to laugh or at least, smile. That’s a $5000 bag, he repeats as if incredulous. He cannot believe the disrespect they have shown it. The porter apologizes and tries to beat the dust off. I am distracted.
The lady ahead of me in the queue to enter Michael is the type of woman 15-year-old me hoped I’d grow up to be. She is fair, too. She wears a pink dress and a belt made of stringed pearls. Her weave is real human hair, I think. Dark, curly, shoulder-length. She wears heels. Elegant. I wish I could be elegant. But I’m also content with who I am. The one who wears flats almost all the time because I want to be that person with silent footsteps.
I am afraid of flying. As I enter “Michael”, I wonder if today is the day I die. It would be ironic if I did considering my last blog post. Would readers who misunderstood it hold me up as an example of what happens to people who don’t criticise the government at every turn? Are you that superstitious?
I think I should blog my thoughts but all my notebooks are in my checked-in luggage. I have a pen but no paper in my handbag. I panic.
*Suggestion to Arik: if it’s not too much trouble, could you leave a blank A4 sheet in each seat pocket?*
The hostess looks aggressive. I’m afraid to ask her for paper.
I’m in a middle seat. My seat mates are a Nigerian woman in a business suit and the obligatory human hair extensions, and an Indian in jeans and trainers. I guess she’s a banker. I guess he’s in IT. I disturb her getting to my seat. I disturb her again to retrieve my phone from the laptop bag in the overhead locker. It is on and I’m afraid it may ring mid-flight and everyone will give me the evil eye. They won’t know it’s my bag, will they? I’m not sure.
I find an old bank teller in my phone’s pouch. I begin to write on it.
I run out of space.
I flip through the complimentary magazine to see if there’s a blank page I can tear out. I’m slightly relieved there isn’t. I mean, what would my seatmates think about me tearing the magazine?
The plane takes off and I don’t hear the briefing. Almost immediately, we fly into clouds and the banker starts to chant “Jesus” under her breath. Over and over, like a mantra. I want to tell her he probably heard her the first time. She doesn’t sound so cool anymore. Was it just ten minutes ago she was chatting to someone on her phone in a fake British accent?
The kids in the seats behind me are laughing as the plane mimics a roller coaster ride.
My colleagues and I, we had a discussion once on how it might feel to die in a plane crash. They said, if the plane free fell to Earth, everyone on board would be dead before they hit the ground. The shock, see? The shock would kill.
I thought it would be nicer that way. To fall and just have your brain fudge up, the way it feels the last ten seconds before you fall asleep. Aww, I’m falling.
Darkness.
We make it through the clouds.
The hostesses serve muffins, water and juice. I test if I can write on the serviette.
The banker whips out a Kindle Paperwhite. I feel the first sense of kinship with her. She reads for a bit and then gets out her make-up kit. I lose the sense of kinship.
I don’t look stellar. My afro is pulled up in a weird updo, my face is oily and I have a pimple on my chin. I am not wearing any make-up. I wish my hair was neater and I could reach my lip balm. I’ve lost weight, my blue chinos are loose. My blouse keeps coming untucked. I touch the gold heart pendant at my throat.
For the longest time, I debated hitting “Publish” on this post. Until now, only my closest friends had any idea about how my pregnancy progressed, and it all felt too deeply personal to share. I was only able to tell it by writing in the 2nd person. I am immensely grateful to all the women whose pregnancy stories helped me make sense of what I was going through and gave me hope that it would all be okay. And so I’m telling this story. Because there’s another mom out there frantically Googling, and if I can somehow help, then it would be my greatest privilege.
When you find out you are pregnant, you let yourself feel only the slightest shock and panic. After all, you’re a veteran at this thing, right? Yes, you aren’t in the best of health to begin with. Your iron levels are low and you are borderline underweight from the stress of school. Still, this is your 3rd pregnancy. The first two were relatively smooth, you don’t expect this one to be that much different. And so you power through the morning sickness. fatigue and random aches, wrap up your MBA, accept a job offer, go on holiday and swim in the ocean, move your family back to Lagos and celebrate your birthday.
And then one October afternoon, in the middle of your second trimester, you notice the slightest bleeding when you go to the bathroom. Your OB-GYN arches an eyebrow when you tell her you have just resumed exercising, and she advises you stop while you figure out what’s going on. You comply and the bleeding seems to stop. Yes, there’s the odd smear now and again, especially when you’ve been driving in Lagos traffic but you mostly ignore it. One Sunday morning, however, you wake up to bright-red bleeding. By evening, you can see small clots, dark red and terrifying in their implications. Clots are the last thing you want to see when you’re pregnant, and so you make a beeline for the emergency room.
You spend the night in the hospital as the doctors struggle to identify why your body is acting unusual. The sound of the baby’s heartbeat on the monitor evokes a prayer of gratitude from your lips. But there is also no mistake about it. At 22 weeks pregnant, you are having contractions. No, not harmless Braxton Hicks contractions. Proper contractions. The doctor says it’s probably a threatened abortion. You know, like a miscarriage.
It’s hard to explain the bond that forms between a mother and her unborn child. To the rest of the world, the mother is still one person, right? Yes, with a baby bump. But she’s still one person. But she knows that she is actually two people. She has spoken to her child, prayed for him/her, shared jokes, hummed songs. She has imagined a future with them, and as time goes, she grows more protective.
And so when the doctor casually (but firmly, as if she’s trying to prepare you for the worst) says, “It’s a threatened abortion,” it feels like a punch to the chest. For good measure, you see a different doctor, who identifies a potential placental previa. (And oh, by the way, your baby is transverse i.e. lying on his side, instead of head down). There’s not much that can be done. Here, some Cocadamol for the pain of contractions (pain begets more contractions begets more pain). And here, Nifedipine to stop the contractions but mostly, you need bedrest.
As a true millennial, you lose yourself in Google rabbit holes, piecing together WebMD articles and Babycenter posts till you have some idea of what’s happening. But it’s not enough. There is no respite. Nothing can be done except to stay still. But how? How do you stay still when you have two other children, a never ending to-do list to complete before the baby is born and a fulltime job? One day, you decide to make some moi-moi. The next day, your bleeding resumes. As the baby grows, you feel his weight on your pelvis in a way that compels you to hold your belly in and pull up your pelvic muscles as you walk, lest the baby falls out. (You feel as if he really could). Weeks of bed rest and “taking it easy” stiffen your joints and worsen your pubic pain. You need crutches. That’s how bad the pain is. But you also know that it would alarm your loved ones to see you so debilitated so you put on a brave smile and power through the pain.
You continue working; thankful that your job is fully virtual. The doctors can’t seem to make up their minds on what is actually causing you to bleed. Some doctors maintain it’s the placenta being so close to the cervix that’s the cause. But the contractions have other doctors convinced that somehow your body is really working to expel your child. It tastes like betrayal and you feel uncertainty and a loss of conviction in yourself. How can my body do this to me?
You learn that the weight of the growing baby is putting pressure on your cervix/placenta; a potential cause for more bleeding. You also learn that as your uterus expands, there is a 95% chance the placenta will grow away from the cervix. You binge on Babycenter threads, sending your husband snippets of remedies. Nifedipine. Lots of water.
You open up to a few friends about what you’re experiencing and that’s when you discover it’s a lot more common than you thought. A close friend has lost her twins because of placenta previa; she haemorrhaged and had to spend excruciating weeks in the hospital. You hear of someone in the US who literally bled out in the car as her frantic husband raced them to the hospital. Someone else had woken up to a wet bed, thought she might have had a bladder accident only to turn on the lights and find her bed as red as a murder scene. You try not to let the fear overwhelm you; instead you pray. God, you gave me this child and have kept him so far. Please see him through. And keep me alive, especially for the sake of my children. Your oldest son pretends but you see the worry in his eyes. Your younger son bursts into random tears when he remembers your hospital stay. You focus on transmitting to them the calm that God has placed in your heart. It will be well, it will all be well.
You do something stupid.
After 3 weeks of taking things easy and noticing no bleeding, you decide to resume some level of activity. The first thing you do? Take a 30-minute walk to stretch your legs. Yes, incredibly stupid. Because that same evening, you start bleeding again.
At this point, you give up all activity. No driving. No cooking. No playing with your sons. No leaving the house. It is a blessing to be working from home and you show up everyday to MS Teams with a bright smile and your usual jokes. You snuggle with your sons on the couch and read stories together. You pray and ask your family members and friends to join in.
There will be more bleeding and hospitalizations as the days wear on. The very last one happens when you are 30 weeks pregnant. It is the worst episode; you feel every single contraction and you bleed so profusely, you fill a pad in an hour. When you get to the hospital, you are wheeled straight to the emergency labour & delivery (L & D) ward. Your doctors are convinced that you are going into premature labour. You are given steroid injections to mature the baby’s lungs and then an IV of magnesium sulphate to stop your contractions. For the first time, you cry. This is so hard and sad. It’s so unfair. The nurses try to console you with thoughts of, “Hey, maybe you’ll meet your baby.” But you don’t want to meet him like this, not 10 weeks early with him probably having to be in NICU for at least a month.
The ultrasound scan shows that your placenta has moved away from your cervix but they can’t determine why you’re bleeding. Thankfully, the contractions subside. The doctor discharges you with strict bedrest instructions. “If you have another bleeding episode, I will have no choice but to mandate you spend the rest of your pregnancy in the hospital. You could lose litres of blood in minutes and it would be fatal for you and your baby; we would need to monitor you round the clock.”
In addition to the Nifedipine, you are told to ensure you never get dehydrated. You drink 4 litres of water a day and only leave your bed to use the bathroom. The contractions slow down, lose their intensity. The bleeding stops. You have such severe pelvic pain that standing upright is a battle. But the baby is fine. He kicks. He rolls. You love him so much and can’t wait to meet him.
Christmas rolls by and you manage to have a great holiday with your family and friends. At one point, there are 6 children and 7 adults under one roof. It is proper chaos but it is exactly what you need to stop worrying.
You make it to 36 weeks without any more bleeding. At this point, if the baby is born, he will most likely be okay. Besides, your other children were born at 37 weeks. Your doctor is delighted and relieves you of bedrest. You start the countdown to labour. You are thankful; God has been kind.
I’d meet the mom of my son’s classmate and as we shook hands a band on her wrist would flash: 4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. A disembodied voice would read out the reviews left by all the previous people she’d met and interacted with. For instance…
Pamela ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Such a great friend She’s my daughter’s godmother and has a wonderful habit of taking my kids out to play every month so I can have a weekend off. If I could give her more stars I would!
@LagosTroublemaker ⭐️- Can’t take a joke She blocked me on Twitter because I made a harmless joke about Igbo people. Poor sense of humor.
Of course, each person would be oblivious of her own rating. I wouldn’t know what my rating was, and neither would you. I don’t know how possible that would be, but since we’re here imagining things, we might as well continue with the fantasy.
You do agree that the reviews would make our interactions easier and help us identify (and avoid!) unpleasant people. When you walked into a room, you’d instantly gravitate towards the 4-stars and 5-stars. Or maybe not. Because if someone only has 5-star ratings, that would mean that they’d never annoyed another person before. Would that be a marker for spinelessness and being a doormat for others to walk on? So maybe we’d gravitate instead to the 3-stars, those people who seem to have perfected the balancing act of pleasing some, and pissing off others.
Knowing this system, how would it influence our own behaviour? Would we try to game the system by being super nice and pleasant, knowing that people would be more attracted to us if our ratings were high? Would introverts do their utmost to get low ratings in every human interaction so they’d be left in peace? Would the average of our parents’ ratings be our default rating, or would everyone be born with zero stars? Would every generation decide for itself what a perfect rating is? So for instance, Victorian society with its emphasis on propriety would highly value 5-star ratings. Present-day Warri, on the other hand, would place a premium on 2 to 3-star ratings. Warri no dey carry last!
And if we had the perfect rating (5 star or 3 star, depending on society’s perspective), would we then suspect every friendly overture? Would our friendships be more transactional? Is she really trying to be my friend because she likes me or because she likes my 5-star rating? Would the ratings themselves become grounds for discrimination? Who would want to work in the same team with someone with one-star ratings?
If you’ve been meaning to cop great books at a giveaway price, here’s your chance.
I’m donating dozens of books to a book drive for a good cause.
It’s a strange feeling giving away my books. My heart is beating really fast in an anxious way. Lol. I’ve never done this before.
But I volunteer with this awesome center and we’re raising money to support the good works being done. We thought it would be a good idea to have a book fair where we sell books in really good condition for way less than they actually cost. And I’ve got a nudging in my spirit saying, “It’s time.” (Possibly inspired by rearranging my bookshelves).
So if you want to get really great, fairly used books at less than N1,000 each, you should totally come hang out.
Venue: Afara Leadership Center, 25 Thorburn Avenue, Yaba. Date: November 2nd, 2019 Time: 12 noon – 4pm
Please come (with a friend!) and please spread the word. Great books. Low Price. For A Good Cause. (Or just share the flyer below 😉)
If you have to choose between three pairs of shoes of okay quality, and one pair of higher quality, pick the latter. There are few things worse than cheap shoes that fit badly.
You don’t need anyone’s permission to do or not do anything. You don’t need other people’s experiences to validate your own.
Self care is hard. It is not always self-indulgence. It is not always splurging on spa treats. Self-care is often about trading immediate gratification for future well-being. It’s investing your money. It’s putting your phone down (is there anything more ephemeral than the latest Twitter scandal?). It’s getting your 10,000 steps per day and drinking water and sleeping well.
“Give people the same energy they give you.” Nope. “Treat others as you’d like them to treat you.” Yup.
Sunscreen is underrated, especially in Nigeria.
Sometimes, the most loving thing you can do for the people you love, is let them make grave mistakes.
Beware groupthink even when the motives seem sincere.
Anti-fragility is a concept worth exploring, especially when it comes to raising children or framing one’s attitudes. Being a snowflake (tender, fragile, delicate, easily offended, sore) puts too much power in the hands of the external world (society).
I once read somewhere that happiness = reality/expectations. If your reality vastly exceeds your expectations, you’re happy. If your expectations exceed reality, you’re not happy. It implies that to find the most happiness, we should either seek to increase our realities, or lower our expectations. It doesn’t work in many situations, but it does in some.
That said, I believe in seeking peace first. Happiness is harder to pin down in the present. It’s best recognized when we look in the rearview mirror of our lives. i.e. Wow, 1989 was one of my happiest years.
We don’t fully understand anyone. Not their motivations and not their problems. So instead of acting on assumptions we make, it’s best to ask. (That’s if you’re really interested. Sometimes, we’re not. And that’s okay too.)
It’s great to read a lot. It’s better to have all that reading translate into practical actions. You’d expect that all that new insight would somehow influence how we act and treat each other. But it’s not automatic. Everything requires intentionality these days.
Mercy is no longer mercy if it is deserved. Undeserved mercy is tautology.
Nigerian parents get a lot of flak, these days. It’s sensible to remember that there’s a difference between “Nigerian Parents” as an institution, and your specific Nigerian parent who thought nothing of sacrificing new clothes so you could go to a decent school.
“Envision your best self, and then show up as her/him”. This advice is meant to be taken literally. Sit down and ask yourself, “If I was the kind of friend I wanted to be, what would I do?” You might decide, “I’d call one friend for 15 minutes every week.” So schedule that task in your phone calendar and just call one friend every week. It’s actually that simple.
Lots of people like to make it cool to not care about anything. It’s okay to be counter-culture and actually care.
*This post was inspired by ruminating on turning 31. Happy birthday to me. Can’t believe it was just a few years ago, I wrote about turning 23.*
Because I tried to do that Instagram thing of arranging according to colour, and it was an epic fail. I mean, it looked pretty. But it was perfectly useless. To find a book, I had to remember if it was a yellow book, or a red book and my books ended up with Jodi Picoult sitting next to Jordan Peterson. It did not make any sense. Another reminder that sometimes, social media trends don’t mean much in real life.
This time, my shelves are arranged according to themes. Career. Fiction. Childcare. Interesting Non-Fiction. Husband’s mish-mash of books (because his taste is eclectic). The boys, bless their little souls, have one section of the shelf for their 5 Books of The Week. (No, I’m not a mean mom, but I simply cannot have dozens of children books in my living room. So they’re only allowed to keep 5 in the living room).
I have boxes of books to give out.
The first idea I had was to exchange them for vouchers at coffee shops. Maybe this is me projecting my desired future on my favorite cafes but I really like the idea of having a mini-library in cafes, where I can eat a muffin, drink great coffee and read Wuthering Heights in peace.
What do you think?
I’m on the look out for what else I can do with all the books. I have at least a hundred to give away. I wish we had public libraries I could donate to. But people don’t read these days, right? Asked my little cousin (15) if she’d like to borrow a book from me (people who know me know that I hardly ever offer my books to be borrowed) and she shook her head, “I don’t like books.”
Let me know if you have any ideas what I could do with the books. I’m partial to anything that encourages young people to read more.
What do you do when ghosts from your past darken your threshold?
It’s the call from an ex that you don’t expect. First, incredulity. Then recovery. A stab at politeness, at small talk while all the time thinking, “What the bloody hell? How did you get this number?!”
It’s the social media message from an old friend. Mutually probing. Tentative. Wondering. “Are you the same person I knew all those years ago? Has adulthood drowned the kindred spirit I once knew?”
It’s chance encounters with people who you knew before. Before. And again the small talk. But not before awareness passes between you and you know, you recognise in them the missing of what was.
It’s old diaries, pages musty with age, in longhand script that you no longer use because we type everything these days (gosh, I still love, love, love writing longhand!). It’s gibberish that, at the time, was everything and this time is nothing.
What do you do when something calls an old name that you no longer answer to?
Sometimes, you answer. It might take a while to find the will to answer. There are so many reasons not to. The past is the past. Onwards always, backwards never. We move. You’ve grown past that. etc. etc. But then all of that crumbles in the face of your truth. The truth that the call wakes something buried. Nothing ambitious. Just the faintest of stirs, really. And that’s enough for you to explore, to understand why this moves you, in this way, at this time.
That said, some things are better left dead (dormant, mothballed etc.) Not all calls from the past should be answered or returned. For instance, it is not considered best practice to take calls from your ex. Exes, by definition are unpredictable creatures (i.e. if you had predicted how it would end, they would not be exes because you’d probably have never started). And so why, at this big old age, would you want yet more complexity in your life?
I don’t remember what sparked the thought. Maybe it was a random tweet that showed a clip of Gorillaz’ “Feel Good”. Or it was my Apple Music subscription renewal notice. Or the despair at checking Google Maps and seeing, yet again, an 18 minute’ drive to my sons’ school, when it should’ve been five.
Whatever it was, I found myself fiddling with my phone. Searching for a playlist I knew must exist, the playlist of all the rock/pop songs of the 2000s. The songs of my university days. Isn’t it wonderful how the sound of one song can take you back to a specific moment?
For instance there’s Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles”, which takes me straight back to 2004, my first year of Diploma in Unilag when we all still texted like this, “Y r u nt n class? Shld I sign 4 u?” *shudder*
2nd year was Ciara’s!
Wande Coal’s Bumper to Bumper was the anthem of my final year. Every single party played this song. I cannot hear this song without seeing my classmates gyrating. Thank you, Wande Coal!!!
NYSC Camp. We danced to Donae’o’s “Party Hard”. I’m thankful I have those memories behind me.
NYSC Year 2010 to 2011. The year I started this blog 😀 Definitely MI and the Chocolate City gang. Will I ever outgrow Ice Prince’s “Oleku”?
2012. I was being actively toasted by the Mister. 🙂 So yeah, there were a lot of love songs. The first song he ever sent me? Rita Ora’s “RIP”.
There was Labyrinth’s “Beneath Your Beautiful.” I like to play it for my son and tell him his Daddy sang it to Mama. It’s worth seeing him blush. 🙂
2015. My first visit to the US. Favorite memory: driving from Houston to New Orleans with KISS FM for company. You know they had Vance Joy’s “Riptide” on repeat.
2016.
Waiting for Daniel to arrive and enjoying my baby-moon with the Mister. Things were so leisurely without children, gosh! Adele had my button.
2017. It was Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do”. Waiting for Alvaro to be born. Driving around Houston with Daniel in the backseat. He loved mouthing, “Look What You Made Me Do”. I guess it just stuck.
And 2018. I don’t have a song. Yet. There’s still time, I guess. I have a number of favorites, though. “This is America” by Childish Gambino is very much in the lead. I’m sure he’d be shocked but many nights, I nursed Alvaro to the sound of that song. Weird, I know. It was only for a few months.
The journey to 30 starts weeks, months before September 15th.
There is brooding involved, as expected. I brood with books for company. Too many to count here. But there is “Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine”, and “Love Lives Here”, and a book on peak performance whose name I don’t remember (and am too lazy to google right now). This book convinces me to take the plunge and delete my social media accounts. I start with Facebook. Then Twitter. Then Instagram. 11 years of memories and identity carefully archived, and then summarily removed from the Internet.
It doesn’t bring the catharsis I hope. But it is a good first step. An old friend reaches out on Google Chat (who uses that?!) to ask how my writing is doing. I tell him what seems like the truth. That it’s dead for now. But even I don’t believe it.
****
In 2017, I followed a colleague from work who volunteers with St Vincent De Paul to the Island Maternity Hospital. She was going to check on a young woman, a new mother without resources to care for herself or her newborn. I had heard stories of what it is like to give birth in a public hospital. That day, I saw the stories live. And what I saw forever changed my outlook.
I have a goal to one day open a shelter for young women who get pregnant and have no means to care for themselves or their children. I’m thinking 18 months of housing, feeding, childcare and skills acquisition. This is, of course, an expensive and high-effort venture and I simply cannot work on it right now. But what I’ve learned this year is to start from where I am. The intent is to help young women. Well then, how about helping them with the resources I already have?
The notice is short, less than a week. I send Whatsapp messages to my friends saying in effect: My birthday is on Saturday. I’m having a small tea party at home. But first, I’d like to go to Mass and then visit the Island Maternity Hospital to support the poor mothers. Can you help me?
My friends come through. Some send money enough for a dozen care kits (toiletries for mother and baby). Some bring baby clothes. Some show up to help at the hospital. And some send money to pay hospital bills of 3 mothers. (Did you know that if you don’t pay your bills in a government hospital, they don’t discharge you AND they stop feeding you?)
We go to mass (first time in a while I attend mass on my birthday. It’s the feast day of Our Lady of Sorrows. Figures). And then we go to my apartment to eat all my favorite things (jollof rice, Kitchen Butterfly’s cassava salad, and all the small chops).
It’s not exactly how I’d have planned to celebrate my birthday, surrounded by only women save for my two sons. But it just happens that K. has travelled for work and it’s the perfect excuse to do a female tribe party. It isn’t a fancy do. But I can’t explain how happy it all makes me. To be surrounded by the women who are some of my closest friends, doing things I love, eating food I like and with little or no fuss. Sitting there in my sitting room eating my birthday cake (homemade by Ozoz) and drinking zobo (homemade by my housekeeper, Becky), I realize that this is who I am. At 30, I am a woman who loves the simple things. This is not who 10-year-old Osemhen thought she’d be at 30. I swear I thought I’d be sophisticated.
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What good does the brooding do? A lot. I make my peace with a lot of things from my past. I make resolutions to enrich my life by subtraction. Yes, subtraction. What/who else can I say No to? Turns out there is a lot.
We’ve met. You know we’ve met. I know you know we’ve met. You know I know you know we’ve met. We met when your brother introduced us after mass many months ago. Or we met when our toddlers both reached for the same toy at that group play date thing we go to every other month. Or we met way back when our parents used to attend the same rotary club meetings and we stood behind them, silent teenagers, as they discussed random things.
We sha met.
But Acquaintance, you seem to have forgotten we’ve met. Last month, I caught sight of you as I hurried towards church. I looked at you, ready to smile and say Hi, but you stared past me stonily. It would be embarrassing if it wasn’t so frightening. You frighten me. Your indifference reminds me of mean girls in secondary school and I thought we left such antics in 2003. Have I offended you in the past? Do you regret us meeting? Would you rather I pretended that we’d never met? Are you incapable of being an adult?
Because proper adults recognize that one chance meeting does not mean we have to be best friends. But at least, surely, we can make eye contact and smile at each other, right? We can nod. We can mouth a quick hello. It doesn’t diminish either of us to be friendly, right? Right?
See. This is 2018. I don’t do drama, I don’t do malice, I don’t do awkward impasses. So whether you like it or not, dear Acquaintance, I am going to call you by your name (I hope it’s the right one!) when you walk past me, pretending not to see me. I am going to call you and I am going to say “Hello!”. I am going to smile so hard, you will probably freak out a little. And you deserve it, you impudent elf. Since you cannot be civil, you will have to deal with what appears to be your biggest fear. Me trying very hard to be the best friend you obviously need to loosen you up.
I’m kidding. I don’t have the guts for that either. But I will try to catch your eye and smile, and wave a little. Because I don’t want to start/continue one of those awkward things where we end up studiously avoiding each other because we’ve made a point of ignoring ourselves for so long.
So what say you? Will you join my cause? Will you commit to eradicating awkward social interactions, one mutually shared wink at a time?
Congratulations! You have either convinced a naturalista to become your wife Or your wife has decided to stop putting relaxers in her hair. Either way, you have become a member of a club few know exist until they join it. Welcome to the Husbands of Natural Haired Wives Association (HNHWA, pronounced huhn-wah).
You will meet your fellow HNHWs at the natural hair meet-ups your wife might on occasion drag convince you to attend. You will also meet them in church when the wives step aside to discuss twist-outs and salon recommendations. And maybe, one day, you’ll meet a fellow HNHW in the hair product aisle of your neighbourhood supermarket. You will recognize his bemusement at the difference between Cantu Shea Butter and Shea Moisture. You will recommend he buy both to avoid “trouble in his marriage”.
Here are a few other helpful tips you should know.
No, your wife is not haemorrhaging from a huge gash on her scalp. That red/brown stain on your pillow case/white tee-shirt/car head-rest is henna that has bled off her hair. It is the same substance that has dyed her palms and fingernails orange. Yes, it will take a while to wear off.
If you live in Lekki, your wife will spend a small fortune on drinking water to wash her hair. Because everyone knows the Island has hard water and it’s bad for hair. Try not to think too much about the cost. Console yourself with the thought that it is one of the sacrifices you make for “peace in your marriage”.
I don’t even like avocados but this is gorgeous.
That bowl of avocado/banana/honey/yogurt mix in the fridge is not dessert. You may not eat it in spoonfuls straight out of the jar. It is conditioner. Yes, her hair eats better than you. No, she will not attract ants into your bed. At least, not on purpose.
Washing her hair is a full-time, all-day chore. Let’s break it down, shall we? Detangle – 45 minutes. Hot oil pre-poo treatment – 30 minutes. Wash and rinse hair, section by section – 30 minutes. Co-wash – 25 minutes. Deep condition – 45 minutes. Rinse – 10 minutes. LOC (you should be used to being confused by acronyms) method – 30 minutes. Twist/bantu knot – 30 minutes. Dry – all afternoon/night. She will not go out. She will not cuddle with you. And at the end of it all, her hair will look exactly the same way it was before she started. Don’t argue. Just take it like that.
Her hair is not short, it’s shrinking. They are not the same thing. Statements like, “Why is your hair short after all this time?” are not welcome. Her hair is armpit length. Yes, she measures her hair not in inches, but by where it stretches to on her body. Don’t show her that meme that says “eyeball length”. It’s not cute.
Is the bathroom counter looking a bit crowded? Before you say it, know that there is no such thing as too many hair products. You never know which one will be the magic potion that turns her hair into Teyonah Parris’ kind of gorgeous. Besides, you need a new house with a bigger bathroom.
Coconut oil heals all ills. Stop complaining about the oily headrests in the family car. When last did you polish them?
“When will you make your hair?” is a question guaranteed to start a fight. Her hair is made. It’s called a twist-out. You’re welcome. 🙂
