LISTENING

My daughter talks like Scooby-Doo. And gets angry when I keep handing her a teddy bear instead of the big, round garden egg on the kitchen table. Can you imagine? Tiny ‘Big-Head’ wagging a finger at me ‘No! No! No!’ (That one she says well). So, I snap back, ‘Speak in English, for God’s sake. Or Igbo.’ But my wife always says, ‘Listen.’ So, I did. Now, I know that ‘Ah-Oh-No’, means ‘I don’t know’; ‘Kak!’ means ‘Thanks!’; and ‘Ah-won-kpap’ means…well…‘I want pap’. So, we get along a lot better now.

Because everyone wants to be heard, even little children. It doesn’t matter to the other one that I’m trying to write, head buried in my laptop, tapping out my ‘masterpiece’. It takes a while for this single sentence, on repeat, to punch a hole through the fog of creativity: ‘But, daddy, you’re not listening to me!’ I could take that same sentence, delete ‘daddy’, and it would fit perfectly in my wife’s mouth. Not so funny now, with much graver consequences. To be honest, sometimes, I’m actually just thinking of my response; so I even cut in before she’s done. ‘I have the solution!’ Problem solved! But she only sighs deeply, as if I missed the whole point.

So, I’ve been thinking about it and you know what? If you take a deep breath and grow still, you could put your ear to a woman’s stomach and hear the child moving around inside her. It can be surreal. It’s even more surreal to think that that child has its ear against the soft lining of her womb and could be listening to you too. It is possible. Because when I was a teenager, I wrote a poem to the tune of a nursery rhyme I couldn’t get out of my head. Then I thought to myself, ‘When I have a child, I’m going to sing this poem to her’.

And I did – murmuring softly against her mum’s swollen tummy. When she was born, just days old, crying uncontrollably one night, I picked her up and began to hum it. She turned towards the sound; then she fell silent. And, now, three years later, she still puts her head on the pillow beside me – bedtime – and says, eyes closed, ‘Daddy, can you sing ‘Baby dear…’ for me’. And it does something to me every single time. I know, one day she’ll grow old enough to tell me (fully conscious of what she’s saying) that she loves me. But I don’t think anything she’ll say or do will ever make me feel more loved than knowing she heard me through her mother’s womb. She was listening.

So, many things make better sense now – why my wife sighs sometimes right after my technical treatise on a six-point-strategy for ensuring she has a better day tomorrow; delivered glibly, because I’m itching to get back to writing this. I’m slowly getting it - she’s not a child who can’t reach the garden egg by herself.  And the best stories in this life don’t roar forward in a straight line; they take their time, meandering like those enchanting bush paths. They don’t even have to make sense. But, to those who are listening, they always do.

Image taken from:

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TELLING LIES

There are two kinds of lessons that go on behind closed doors. Like when daddy wags a finger in your face, ‘Do not lie!’ But tells you to tell the person on the phone that he’s not in. How do we live this life? In truth, we are genuinely afraid of sending children out with too simplistic a view of how the world REALLY works. Not how it works in Walt Disney cartoons. Sometimes, you have to lie.

But when? When you’re miles away and say you’re around the corner? Or you tell your daughter not to tell her father that you gave his new Murano to your younger brother to go quickly and buy fish, but he rammed into a light post, so now you need to panel-beat it before he comes home – just don’t tell daddy, ok? Having become one, I now know that parents are neither all-knowing nor perfect. And, sometimes, they lie because they’re afraid of the consequences of telling the truth. BUT! Not all the time.

If you always insist on evidence that will hold up in a court of Law, then I have to tell you that there’s no real guarantee that being good will save you from bad things. And you know what? You could work very hard and not get noticed, not just for a long time, but EVER. It’s true, to me, you are the best thing that’s happened since the invention of the Yam Pounder, but the rest of the world will not borrow my eyes to look at you. Another thing - you may never find True Love. (Does it even exist?) It’s very likely you would end up with a job you don’t like, and it won’t be ‘just a phase’. I should tell you this - you can’t trust anyone, not even me, to be there for you ALWAYS.

Hard ‘truths’. So, now I can walk with a swagger for being blunt? Honestly, there are days when these things MUST NOT be said. Like when a pimply-faced, self-conscious teenager wants to talk about the future; or if she looks in the mirror and, in that voice that pretends not to care what your answer is, asks if she’s fat; when middle age approaches and the dreams we told you we would achieve by 40 are still dreams; if that young boy, on his way to War, calls at night to ask if you think he’ll come back? What do you say? What you know (stiff finger tapping your temple)? Or what you believe (open palm over your heart)?

We didn’t lie. We just answered the REAL question, the one they didn’t ask; the one hidden within the ones they actually asked. That’s what we do when we hold our children close and whisper, I will always be here for you; speaking faith instead of logic; telling fairytales and winding stories, not always bothering with Pie Charts and PowerPoint Presentations. Because while it is true that a seed is small, it is also true that a seed is big. Life is strange like that, littered with paradoxes. But this, undoubtedly, is the one I find most enchanting – that people rarely become what they do not already believe they are. 

Image taken from:

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SILENCE DOESN'T REALLY SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS

If there’s something getting married has taught me about myself, it’s that I think too much. I see a nice dress and I think to myself – she looks really nice in that. Or I glance over and think – Wow! Her make-up is flawless. But then I notice she isn’t smiling, hasn’t been smiling all day. So, I try to make jokes, but they’re all dry, falling flat at her feet. And when I finally ask- what’s your problem? I’m told that I haven’t said anything all morning. Did you even notice that I made my hair? I did. I’m sure I said something about it. That’s how loud and clear my thoughts are to me. So, we quarrel - because she insists I should have said it, and I insist right back that it’s more important that I felt it.

To be honest, I do have a point. Too many fakes out there saying things they don’t feel. But! No one is a mind reader. And the ears are still an important gateway to the heart. Especially when the negative stuff finds its way to the tongue readily. And, trust me, it does. Like in the middle of that quarrel, when the heat rises, sharpening memory, bringing back into clear focus all the unkept promises. I don’t think my little corrections. This food is a bit salty. Or, you left the lights on in the sitting room all night. No problems vocalizing thoughts then. So, it suddenly seems like a big conspiracy – to speak out on her faults and be silent on her strengths. And grunts substitute for ‘thank you’; a nod in the place of ‘this is really nice’. That’s what makes it feel almost adulterous (just as painful) when I hand those same words over to the girl that brings our order to the table, with a wide smile too. Just being polite. Till I turn back to my girl – the one sitting with me at my table - and she’s looking at me with daggers in her eyes.

So, now I know. Saying something nasty hurts as much as not saying something nice. And you should never get so familiar you forget to be courteous. Because, honestly, that’s where it starts, the process of forgetting; when something stays long enough in your head, never coming out, it becomes a memory. Suddenly, passion becomes a memory; the slight excitement at the thought of seeing her becomes a memory; the surge of gratitude at the voluntary sacrifices he makes everyday becomes a memory. And everything is taken for granted. Including how they feel. It’s taken for granted that they KNOW – that we find them attractive and appreciate everything they do. So, logically, we stop making the effort to show it. And that’s when it becomes clear that Love doesn’t run on silent thoughts, no matter how flattering.

So, now, when I begin to forget, I pinch myself and say it out loud – You are beautiful. And so this Love breathes.

THERE IS NOTHING GOLDEN ABOUT SILENCE

Maybe, at the beginning, when looking into each other’s eyes still elicits silly giggles. You don’t notice you’re spending time, but not really getting to know each other. Evenings together, but not really together; half the time you’re sitting in two separate seats, staring at a cinema screen; the other half you’re kissing or thinking about it. Not much meaningful conversation going on. But your feelings cast halos above each others’ heads. So, you think you’re compatible.

Till you get home from work. You are living together now. The TV is on and there’s enough space on the couch to sit without touching. You can eat dinner quietly too. And if there’s anything to say it has to be necessary­­; about house bills, can you pass me the remote, something needs fixing in the kitchen, and (when they finally come) the children. If you’re not talking about them, you’re not talking. Not even when you really can’t understand why he’s never noticed that you hate flowers, especially on anniversaries. It makes you angry; that he can’t read your thoughts and take you out instead; his inability to eat anything outside yam, rice and plantain is driving you crazy. But he’s frustrated too, because there are things he wants you to do in bed, but it’s all in his head. And he wishes you would just wait till half time before asking him about work.

But you’re not really asking him about work. You’re actually asking him to ask you about work, about your day, about anything. You just want to talk; talk about the girl in your office who thinks nobody knows she’s wearing body magic; it rained through the night and you lay awake listening to the clattering on the roof, it reminded you of childhood, how you would snuggle between both parents and how, sometimes, you would fight with your brother over who got the front seat. Nothing serious enough to warrant conversation. So, you keep quiet and watch football with him, again. Then, one day, he changes the channel without asking and you tell him coldly that he’s a selfish bastard. He looks shocked. Then, his eyes narrow. You’re not sure if calls you a witch or a bitch (because it’s muttered). Either way, you take off the gloves. But it’s inevitable; all your arguments end exactly where they started - in silence.

It doesn’t really matter how deep, pure, true or sincere your feelings towards each other are, neither of you is a mind-reader. And there are many things about each other you will not easily know or understand unless you talk. It’s like dancing together, no matter how good you are at it on your own, you still have to put in the effort to be good at it together. But it’s worth the trouble. If you can talk, you won’t have to hold things in until you explode. If you can talk, your house won’t be cluttered with pockets of tense silences. It’s small talk, more than anything else, that freshens the corners and airs out the house; that every day, meaningless banter of true friends. Maybe, what they should really say (at least when it comes to relationships) is that silence is golden, but only after a good conversation.

Image culled from
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