THE SPACE BETWEEN EXTREMES

I will not forget that day. We had just graduated from Secondary School, my friend and I. I think we were on our way to his guardian’s flat, because Lamara had said it was a walking distance. Anyway, that’s not the story; this is the story. You see, normally, these things are done covertly. But I was at that time in my life when hormones were all over the place. So, Lamara, with his unparalleled capacity for both mischief and bluntness, after observing it all for a few minutes, turned to me and asked - ‘Why are you staring at that woman’s (and this is the sanitized version) bum?’

Well, I consider it the blessing of melanin, this genetic incapacity to truly blush. So, I kept a straight face and flat out denied it. Yes. I was still a few years away from mastering the art of the ‘side-eye’, but my awkward ways had already earned me the slightly annoying label: ‘prude’. Meaning? Someone who feels too embarrassed to admit he enjoys the view.

Let me explain. Maybe, I was fifteen or so; my mum took me to see a friend of hers, one of these Europeanized types, she grabbed me by both shoulders and kissed one cheek after the other. Honestly? I considered it assault. And barely restrained myself from executing a hip throw. It made my mum laugh, the ‘fight or flight’ look in my eyes. But, anyway, that’s just to tell you where I was coming from.

So, teenagers being teenagers, I found friends at Uni who made it their mission to ‘fix’ me. And, at first, it was excruciatingly irritating; a group of girls constantly interrupting my reading to ask, ‘Seriously, seriously, are you gay?’ But after a while I relented; tried my first arm across shoulder, my first hand in hand, my first side hug, my first full hug, my first ‘let me sit on your laps’, till I finally got it – repression is one thing, self-control is another.

Yes. Usually, it’s the very people who pretend that the sight of a woman’s behind does nothing to them (when in fact it does) who are in imminent danger of misconstruing a handshake. And even after you’re married, you could continue to find it all very troublesome – a partner who interprets physical intimacy, of any kind, as some sort of foreplay. Honestly, it’s not so funny then, when you can’t cuddle, or play wrestle, or just tickle each other under the sheets for fun. My brother, it’s a bit like missing all the colors between black and white.

But, don’t get me wrong o; there is really no progress in exchanging one extreme for the other. True! The person who can’t see it, marvel briefly at how much work God put into it, and move on with life is really not much better than the person who cannot even admit he just looked at it. And, you know what? For that special person sitting on the other side of your table, there will be days when even that brief glance will be a glance too many. Yes. Love can be funny like that. But just know it; no matter how long it’s been, there will be moments in every relationship when you will need to let them see it: ‘In every way that counts, you are the only one I have eyes for’.

So, yes, as I’m sure you can already tell, I am still quite prudish. And, if a woman swings by now, I still won’t gawk. But if you catch me glancing ‘codedly’, I will shrug my shoulders and laugh with you. Just don’t think it now means we can spend the next hour trading obscenities. True. And it’s not for lack of either imagination or appropriate metaphors on my part. It’s just that, honestly, there is a point at which this whole thing, no matter how we spin it, fades into the objectification of something that is actually quite precious. Yes, that’s what I still think. But feel free to draw your own boundaries wherever you will.

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PICTURE PERFECT

I consider it the great equalizer, the humble toilet, because we all have to sit on it, no matter how brilliant or beautiful we seem. Ah!  Don't let Mary Kay fool you; until you've seen the blemish, you have NOT seen the face. So, when you're day-dreaming, think not, who would look best beside me on the red carpet, or dancing up the aisle in our Sunday best?

 

No. Think of staring at your computer after a long day at work; you have one of those bosses skilled at calculating the speed with which subordinates scramble to 'help' her with her bag. So, understandably, you're tired – the inner tiredness that is always inversely related to the amount of meaningful work you've done that day. Now shut your eyes tight and imagine it – not being able to really look forward to going home.

 

Or an empty Saturday afternoon. No light. No Dstv. It can be scarier than not knowing where the month's rent will come from, having to sit down in a small space and discover that neither silence nor conversation is comfortable. So, let me say this; Love is not a feeling, just because there is a difference between not being in the mood to talk to someone and not being able to talk to them. But, believe me, you can go years before finding out which one you've actually got. It's the way it works when you've settled into a routine, and perfected communicating in clichés.

 

So, imagine kissing playfully. Because it's a lot easier to fake an orgasm; but a long cuddle – with meaningless chit-chat and the occasional tickle in between, falling asleep in each other's arms, waking up with the lingering memory of what you were talking about? You will struggle with that one unless you truly love her. And by that I mean you've taken the time to find out that having a bit more space for her clothes and shoes means a lot more to her than sexy lingerie. It's one of the things you only see when you're looking, only hear when you're listening; for there are people whose only way of expressing intense dissatisfaction with life is turning up the volume of the football game on TV.

 

Yes. But it is how most of us are wired, to hide our deep inner feelings and behave properly in public. So, imagine if you couldn't come home and take the mask off. Where will you breathe? I know, in this Life, there will always be roles to play and, truth be told, you may only learn how to act like a parent by experimenting with your first child. But imagine if you started calling each other 'Daddy' and 'Mummy' (to teach that child) and never stopped.

 

This thing called Love. And that's the confusion; it's not the only thing that could generate feelings. So, if you have feelings, how do you know it's Love? My sister, what can I say? In your day-dreams, wipe the make up off. And, if you can, that Yanni playing in the background? Turn it down as well.

 

For, if you KNOW that people don't smell like fried dodo in the morning, and you still want to do this; that there are habits they will struggle with all their lives; that we don't come with spaces in our hearts custom-made for anyone else; and no one is so straight-forward you could love them on cruise control. If you KNOW all this and you still want to do this, then, yes, I'll be more willing to vouch for you. But, honestly, it still wouldn't mean that much, not unless they knew it too, about your picture-perfect self.

 

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I DO NOT COME FROM A BROKEN HOME

My parents were divorced when I was 5. And, to me, there was nothing worse. It didn’t help either, people always saying – children whose parents are no longer together come from broken homes. So, I carried that phrase, like a corrosive, inside me. Broken Home. And, on some days, I despised those who inflicted it on me. Why didn’t they just work things out? Isn’t that what everyone does? And even if they couldn’t, why didn’t they just stay together, because of us, ‘the children’? Isn’t that what everyone does?

But my mum only smiled, the quiet smile of someone walking the road others are judging. Then reached out and held me close, so we could cry together. It took me a long, long time to really understand, but she waited patiently, loved me unconditionally, till I did. It was she who taught me to say, I do not come from a Broken Home. It’s the people who wake up and walk past each other, sleep shoulder to shoulder, but never say a word to each other; who stay only because they are afraid of leaving, afraid of what other people would say, afraid of starting all over again at 40; the people who use their children as proxies for cloak-and-dagger wars, and let them grow up believing that what they look like to those watching is more important than who they really are inside.

Ah! Let me not do this. I’ve been judged too many times, felt too much fear, been a coward too many times in my own life, to stand up here and judge you too. So, yes, it is true; staying together regardless demands its own sort of strength. But, Life may happen to you that way. Yes. It may bring you up against things you can only get past by digging deep. And if it does, you will discover this Truth; that being true to yourself, as critical as it is to fulfilling your destiny, will threaten all but the strongest relationships in your life.

But, if it happens, do not be afraid; True Love WILL survive the journeys you MUST make. Ah! How did the poet, Gibran, put it? ‘There must be spaces in our togetherness’. Yes. Know this, there is a lot more to being family than coming back to the same house every single night. And, let me tell you, if you have a father who will not miss a day – the school concert, your inter-house sports, the middle of the night when you wake up afraid – of your life; and a mother who smiles, without a single trace of bitterness, and tells you Love can conquer time and space; if you have a sister who still looks up, with that half smile of hers, when she senses you need picking up; and brothers who will break their backs to shoulder your dreams; then – as mum always said – you have all the family you need.

So, please, don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re doing me a favour just by staying. Honestly, I am afraid of neither the darkness nor the silence; what I truly fear is to live a lie. So, hear me out. When you find Love, be grateful for it. Appreciate those who give it, for it is the only way to pay them back. Don’t love with cheesy smiles and meaningless rhetoric; show up and be there. For, no matter how well or how long we spin this thing, it is actually not real if we’re dying inside. Yes, my friend, there is no family picture hanging on my wall. But, trust me – there is nothing dysfunctional about where I’m from.

AS GOOD AS YOU GET

Once upon a time, I worked for an Iranian businessman. Let's just call him, 'Kam'. Kam lived in the West End. So, I rode the Overground to work, a few times a week. 'Work' was a room in his flat; it was in one of those apartments, on one of those streets where you could walk past a few parked Porsches. But Kam liked to sit on the floor, on a comfortable rug, dictating notes, in between short drags on an intricate water pipe. Then he would wave me off into this windowless room, just space enough for desk and desktop, to type out his letters. Yes. It was a low point in my life.

 

But I had met this girl, you see. And she'd sort of changed 'The Plan'. 'The Plan' had been to turn in my course essays over the Summer, and be on the plane back home by the end of September. But, well, a girl like that can do that to you. Walking past, smelling just right; standing there, looking just right; she can have you thinking to yourself – I'm not going home without you. So, I stayed.

 

Still not sure what she saw in me; spending hours filling out applications for a better job, while she was driving to church in her own car, and dropping me off afterwards. But, one night, I looked at her and said, 'You know what? I will take care of you.' Not that it made much sense then. It's just that, sometimes, when it's all you have, you clear your throat and speak from the heart. But, truth be told, it made no sense at all, not when I had just created a separate folder for rejection letters. Still, she smiled and said, 'I know'.

 

Ah! Regardless of what these preachers say, you really can't predict Life. See, if you had told me, at my Call to Bar, that that was how it was going to be, I would have laughed. But the day after I got married, the car parked outside wasn't mine. She was the one with the regular income, the type we needed to sign the lease on the first house we lived in. And she was the one who got up in the morning and went out, then stopped at Asda, on the way back. Tell me, how can you forget things like that? How can you wake up one day and pretend it never happened, or that, even if it did, it wasn't that big a deal?

 

No. On the first day, Love is a promise. I'll give you that. But if you're waking up every morning and making new ones, then, I'm not sure what you have anymore. Because, on Day Two, Love is a good memory, the kind that remembers what you said yesterday. And that's what it is on Day Three, as well. So, these conversations make me laugh now. You know the ones: 'Eh? Your wife knows how much you earn?' 'What? You have a Joint Account?' 'Jesus! You trust her with ALL your money?' My brother, what can I say? Every relationship has its own dynamics; but, at the very least, you should give as good as you get. Well, in my case, I got everything. And if, in my heart, I knew, when I was getting it, that I couldn't give it back, then I really shouldn't have taken it, should I?

 

You see, this thing is not like setting a weekend aside to volunteer at a homeless shelter. No. In these matters, you will NOT find 'selflessness' so rewarding, trust me; giving will leave you with a simmering desire to receive. And, if you at the end of the day, you wind up sad – no, not just any kind of sadness; but the kind you don't talk about, that one that festers underneath the mascara, beneath the cologne, behind the mechanical routines we use to prop up the semblance of love, long after its substance is gone – if you end up sad like that, it will almost always be because you looked at the other person and knew, deep down in your heart, that you will never get as good as you've given, or – and believe me, this can be just as heartbreaking – never give as good as you've gotten.

 

So, what can I say? Take your time with these things. For happiness, like everything else on this blue planet, hangs in a delicate balance.

 

 

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YAGAZIE...

The first time I saw my wife, it was through a window. And, at first glance, it looked like that; like there was a lot more than a couple of meters between us.  Yes. It's one of the decisions I remember most clearly from those 'Umunna' meetings, the ones they held around that time when the same people that had warned us, all your lives, to stay away from women were now asking when we were bringing one back. They were the ones who drew our ears and said - Marry a girl 'from home'.

 

There are practical considerations, you see. Let no one deceive you; Love (if that's what you call what you feel when you look out the window and see someone who takes your breath away) won't last the journey from Abuja to Leru Junction. Because, underneath the make up and body spray, everyone carries habits and hungers rooted in the unique course of their own up bringing.

 

So, if you're like me, you wake up some mornings whistling, 'Chineke nke Igwe, I n'aputawo m, mgbe mmuo mu no na nsogbu; a ga m enye Gi ekele.' And, truth be told, it can be frustrating if the person lying beside you can't sing it too, just because she doesn't understand the language. Or your craving for 'iwu ngo' either. Yes. Some people grew up in homes where there were presents under the Christmas tree. And New Year eves were spent around the dinner table. Now, you're married to man who is rushing to attend an 'Umunna' meeting on New Year's Day.

 

Honestly, these things can break hearts. So, I understood my father's concern when I told him who she was, because English would have to be the primary means of communication between us. These sorts of things gain weight slowly; these things you said didn't matter on your wedding day - whether they believe in this God or in that one; whether they think a woman should kneel down when handing a cup of water to her husband's mother or not; whether they see the value in spending holidays in the village or not; what socio-cultural values they think your children should be immersed in. Honestly, things like these can break hearts.

 

So, sometimes, someone still comes up to us and launches into a flurried conversation, and when my wife smiles and says, "Ehm, you've lost me", they turn to me with a frown: "She is NOT Igbo?" Yes, but – I tend to add very quickly - she's learning. And – I also tend to add very quickly, especially after I get 'the eye' from her – it's my fault, seeing as I like speaking 'beke' so much at home. But some people don't know when to drop things. They begin to pontificate and wave fingers around the air, molding bricks out of their consternation and preparing to pile them on my woman's shoulders. So, I lose the polite smile and tell them – Igbo-speaking or non-Igbo-speaking, she is my wife, eh? Leave her for me.

 

And I'll tell you why. Because she got up this morning, and carried our two children (still sleeping) into the backseat of this 406. She held my hands and we prayed together, against the many things that can go wrong on these roads of life. And I got behind these wheels and drove her to this place where people eat things she never thought could be eaten. And even though we sat for hours in solid traffic – at Abaji, at Ajaokuta, at the madness that is 9^th Mile Corner – and a journey of seven hours stretched to thirteen; we talked, we laughed, we quarreled and made up, looked out of the windows and marveled at life together.

 

So, say what you like, but I've come to see that in this life the REAL test is always the journey. Yes. Not just in having things in common, but having the right kinds of things in common, the kinds of things that will hold when you come (as you must) to those speed bumps of disagreements, the long, windy paths of conflict, the spirit-sapping delays in everyone's path, where you choose either to throw hands up in exasperation, or roll up sleeves, get on knees, and patiently grow the things that are still missing.

 

And, even now, I can assure you, that of all the things we commonly nit-pick about – from tribe to language to faith to state of origin of prospective suitors – it is this one thing, Love (and by this read: a deep, cultivated and enduring RESPECT for each other, AND a willingness to ACT OUT, in the days that follow, the things so eloquently professed in the heat of passion) that brings with it the highest probability that we will overcome everything we meet on destiny's path, including the fact that you and I do not come from the same place, and reach the end of this enigmatic journey in peace.

 

True. It is my own wish for this year, dawning as it is with heavy clouds in the distance; that we will all remember, that even in the most difficult socio-cultural intersections, True Love is still able to forge the most stable homes. Yes. Yagazie. (Don't you see? How I say it is really irrelevant, it is what it means that matters. Yagazie. Let it be well with you in 2014, on your path and in all your ways.)

 

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