LETTER TO DADDY

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Now that this has come before you read and enjoy and probably learn but under no circumstance should you feel obligated to show this to the man it is entirely about.

LETTER TO DADDY

Daddy, I LOVE YOU!!! But……

That’s really not how we roll.

For us, “I love you” is a feeling not a statement, which is precisely why I would be opening this letter and ending it with I love you since that’s really not how we roll. I cannot tell of the day you first set your eyes on me and all your dreams came to life and you called the prayers into my ears to welcome me into this turbulent existence we all hate but live nonetheless, I know nothing of those times involving diapers and Cerelac and Peak milk. What I know of and do remember is literature, insufficient funds, curiosity, a love for solitude that exists alongside an exuberant character, a sense of humour that borders on insensitivity, a devil may care attitude to life and maybe a ridiculously big handwriting and an unhealthy relationship with sugar which fortunately or unfortunately I seem to have inherited and of it I shall write.

Your ridiculously big handwriting on my brown paper wrapped textbooks and storybooks made me the envy of my little classmates, and I who will forever bask in attention, loved every bit of it .and would refuse to write my names on my books unless you were there to do it. An early memory comes to mind now. I was in Primary two. It was lesson time in the red bricked walls of my close to aristocratic primary school. I had exhausted my lesson notes and my teacher had handed me a new notebook to write in. I refused to write my name on the notebook and submitted my maths classwork in a notebook without name. Of course, this was a time when maths was still a blossoming maiden worthy of my affection. I remember my teacher scolding and flogging me in the presence of my classmates and this made shed tears. I don’t know which was more painful, the scolding or the fact that I cried in “public”. I loathed any form of tongue lashing before you made me immune to them (I still do just that I’m better at retorts now) and I always tried to be the perfect student and the perfect human being which I have learnt might not workout sometimes.

Aduke the kind mother, that’s surprisingly the only title I can recall at the moment. Yet I recall so many times of me kneeling or standing next to you and reading aloud whilst you corrected my pronunciations. As I write, on my right is a stack of books that look really beautiful and impressive. I call it “my library”. But every member of our family knows the foundation was laid by you. Many of these books originally belonged to you, many more were given by you, to me and my sisters. I remember, my uncle saying you were nicknamed library in your days in school and I can’t help but think nothing could be more apt. But now tables have turned, you have successfully passed on your love for books to me and I have taken it a notch higher and created an addiction for which I refuse any form of treatment but welcome any form indulgence for.

Your unending questions can be nerve racking sometimes. But it comes from a curiosity of the world that is enviable and one that I try to emulate. You are so genuinely curious about the world around you and your vast pool of knowledge about things is what turned me into this google obsessed individual. I try to match you, fact for fact, history for history, politics for politics and I must confess it would have been hard to keep up if not for google which I believe you don’t quite understand yet. Old man. Haaha

Unpopular opinion: You should apply some of that curiosity to the internet and other tech tools and maybe at least in the act and art of taking pictures. That way we’d have more pictures to post on your birthdays and father’s days and Tomi especially would have to stop answering your questions on human anatomy.

At this juncture, can we take a moment to agree on something, Dad? Leave the practice of medicine and pharmacy to the real doctors and pharmacists. You really should stop telling people what is wrong with them by listening to their complaints and people really need to stop asking you questions about their health. You are fucking Sociologist Dad. You do not become a doctor or a political scientist or a lawyer vicariously, you actually have to go to school again to become either of those things.

Speaking of Sociology and Psycology, I like how you can tell what someone would do before they do it but can you stop doing it to me please? I hate how right you are most times. But at least there’s one part of my life I’m damn sure you would never be right about. My very possibly existent sex life.

Here’s a memory I really hate but would share nonetheless. I’m in primary three. I have a petite fair skinned class teacher who seemed to like her job at least a bit. I can’t remember what term it was but I remember my fees were really late. The founders of my school meant business that day. They had arrived at the school really early to stand at the gate and drive away students who owed fees, their parents would be taking them back home that day. The school would not be responsible for them in any way. You had driven us to school that day. Up until now we had never owed fees and I kind of took it for granted that my fees would always be paid. That day was a rude awakening that things go wrong. I can’t remember in specific details what it was but I think the poultry farm had done really badly that year and we were behind on a lot of things. I cried my eyes out that day. I don’t know which made the tears flow faster, the embarrassment I felt at being among the so called ‘debtors’ something that was entirely foreign to me or the aversion I felt for the condescending manner in which the school owners addressed you while you asked for a time extension. You could have simply driven us back home but you would not have us out of school even for a day on account of being unable to pay school fees, so you begged even though you are a proud man. In retrospect, I think what I learned that day asides the fact that life just happens at times, is that being a parent is mostly about being vulnerable, mostly about putting the needs of other people who might not even appreciate or understand the sacrifices first. I had been so ensconced in the way you protected and catered for us that I did not realise that we were not rich, that we were not even close to rich. I still didn’t fully realise this until I entered Uni because that’s when I realised that my father’s salary was just about some students’ monthly allowance. How you managed to pay for our education at one of the most high-performing schools, academically, in the city is a puzzle I would never be able to solve.

Now I feel shame at myself. For all those times I asked for the extra things that were supposed to make me cool (mind you I was still cool but more of a question of cool by association but that’s beside the point). I remember how I would rage and storm until you found a way. It is only now that I allow myself to think of what you had to forgo for yourself every single one of those times. Sometimes, actually, a lot of times I wonder what you eat the five days of the week you spend away from home because I know for a fact that you never leave with more than enough money to cover your transportation. I think my aversion for debts and just owing people generally comes from you. However, in spite of your deeply held principle of living within your means and generally living a modest life, I watch you take on financial risks just to insure our futures. To us black tax is a reality we crave sooner. We can’t wait to pay back. I really can’t.

Side note: Fuck civil service.

It gets on my nerves, it really does. The questions. Why? Where? What? How? It shouldn’t but it does anyway especially when those questions involve locations and friends and movements I’d rather you didn’t know about. But I’ve come to appreciate this as well. Now I try to rationalize it because I now realise how much of that comes from fear and love. Fear of something going wrong in the life that you have so perfectly planned and executed for us. But it’s really okay to let go now Dad. You have tried, we would be fine. We would not do anything to disgrace you. We might embarrass you from time to time, I especially with my choice in fashion but we’d be fine. I promise.

Nigerian parents or I dare say African parents have quite a number of things in common. One of those is how they punish their kids for characters they themselves possess. You are no exception. I grew up hearing people call you Baba Alaye a sobriquet that was an attestation to both your deep understanding of human nature and ability to talk people in and out of a lot of things or at least get them to agree with you in the moment and your unbridled bluntness. You always said the darnest things and stood by them. If #IsaidwhatIsaid were human he’d bear Boladale S. I. but to my consternation, I always got punished for having a sharp mouth. Till this day I cannot understand it especially since I caught the most intriguing and insulting similes from you. I always heard it from you first. Yet, you in conjunction with your wife felt justified smacking my face each time I said what I said, those beatings might have taught me how to filter things with strangers I still haven’t learnt to do that with people I care about but thanks to you, I can make a good first impression (most of the time).

Ladies and Gentlemen this is the part where I reveal all the dark secrets. Daddy got me hooked and now I can’t stop. That was a clickbait or scroll further bait or whatever. So yeah, You got me hooked and now I can’t stop. We have an unhealthy relationship with Sugar. I used to really fear for diabetes because of this addiction and seeing my grandmother sick from it was one of the most devastating events of my young life but many thanks to family members in med school - not self-proclaimed doctors like you and your brothers, I know for a fact that diabetes isn’t caused by excess sugar- this doesn’t mean you can abuse it though, I’m just saying.

Where was I? Yeah, you got me hooked and now I can’t stop. You almost always had packets of sweets lying somewhere and then you’d give it to us in twos and threes and I being the person that I am would hoard mine just so I could watch Tomi’s eyes pop and Tolu’s filled with anger while I consumed them. Now, you pay more attention to your health and while I love to see you moving around the compound in the mornings exercising your body, those movements are also a reminder of a painful fact; that you are getting old. I hate to see it but it’s the way life works. While I love doing the monthly visits to the pharmacy to get your Amlodipine tablets and Timomed eye drops, I loathe what this visits represent. It is a constant reminder that roles are about to be switched somehow. That you who have taken care of me all my life would need to be taken care of and it scares me to death that I might fail at this task. It really scares me.

There is so much to admire about you but if there’s one thing I really hope to get from you is a strength of character. The type of inner strength that you display even when everything seems to be happening at once. The type of strength you showed when the Nigerian government decided it didn’t need your services anymore and you were let go. How you managed to hold the family together after that is something that should be studied in Uni. To be honest, I actually think there’s more content there than there is in my land law class. No shade intended, Dr. A but shade thrown nonetheless. Although, sometimes it’s frustrating that you never show any form of weakness or vulnerability, beneath all that layer of stoicism, there is a part of you people don’t see. The part of you that is compassionate, the part of you that makes us tea and serves it to us whenever we are too ill to do it ourselves. The part of you that irons our school uniforms even when we were more than old enough to do it. The part of you that acknowledges our efforts and very easily says to us “I am proud of you”.

Sometimes I’m grateful for that hardened exterior, it keeps the really stupid boys in the hood away. You’re my first filter, (we’re not going to talk about my resting bitch face) And when people assume you are a professor or that you are in the military, I’m more than happy to just let them believe it because you are both to me. My educator and my protector and it doesn’t matter that all you know about the military is mostly from office talk in a barracks where I’m pretty sure you’re just another bloody civilian but its fine daddy, you are my soldier. You’ve set a really high standard for the men that would be coming into my life and I can’t wait to see the man I choose beat the standards just so I can tell people who say to me that everyone cannot be like your Daddy, or you don’t know your Daddy well or men will always be men and all other rubbishes, "I told you so".

And I love you and will forever be grateful for the gift of you.

PS: I have a younger brother who I didn’t mention at all. He’s a sweet boy and can be very annoying too.

Tosin, I know you’re the son of my father. but it’s not my fault you were at least six years late to the family, blame the makers of Gold circle. I do anyway

Amal🍒

Overawww best in Letter writing.