Remember your first

 

They say, “you always remember your first”.

This has been proved true times without number. I have encountered firsts, both good and bad, that I remember to this day that make some other firsts seem like child’s play.

However, there are firsts and there are firsts!

This was a first! This colorful first, was soaked into the neurons responsible for long term memory and will stay with me for a long time to come.

If I remember correctly, I was about twelve or thirteen at the time and actively crushing on Ugo’s younger brother. I had memorized his routine (think Marinette from Miraculous) and would run to either the window in my room, the swings on the front lawn or, if available attempt to strike a nonchalant but elegant pose on my parent’s car (imagine attempting to do this after running down a flight of stairs? The struggle was real mehn) to gaze upon him in all his light complexioned, hungry looking, gangly teen glory.

This was also the season I discovered mixed berry jam.

I could not seem to get enough of that oh so delicious nectar. It wasn’t like I had never had jam before, weird. As a matter of fact, back in Degema some parent or older kid was always organizing an activity or exercise among which was jam making.

There was the time we learned to make various items with annoyingly tiny beads and finger poking wires, used elephant grass to weave baskets and bags, there was the butterscotch/coconut candy making and buying (mostly buying in my case), the kuli-kuli phase, the licking nnzu (native chalk) addiction (I think I was the only one I knew that was into this) and the waiting for agbalumor/udara from Nnamdi their village (it counts as an activity). There was also practicing for assorted performances with CRAB people/some education student group/a church and nursey people coming ever so often to give some vaccine or the other, ask us to close one eyes and read aloud then proceed to place a ruler over our heads to see how much we had grown (this made me think of the witch in Hansel and Gretel – they had to be fattening us up for something).

Then, there was jam making! Of all the fruits we turned to jam, guava, mango and pineapple were my top favorites.

So yes, I was familiar with jam. Yet, the way I went through jars of this one in particular was alarming. Like instead of me to go to the window and wait for Ugo’s brother to walk by, I would sneak into the pantry to look for an unopened container of mixed berry jam to replace the jar I had finished on my own then scurry up to catch a glimpse of his receding shadow.   

Mum usually went shopping once a month, twice if it was a full house. She brought items in bulk which normally lasted until the next shopping day. She was quite alarmed when she found out I had gone through about five medium jars of mixed berry jam in less than two weeks.

She removed the remaining jars from the pantry and warned that if I did not slow down with the jam consumption, the stuff was going to come out of my ears sooner than later.

Did it listen? Nope!

Soon after she gave this warning, I waited for her to leave for work and for my sister to go do whatever it was older sisters did when they are not watching their little sisters as they are supposed to be doing and dove into the jar of jam. This time, I was on an exploratory mission.

I was trying the jam with different things to see which it paired best with. I had tried it with cabin, homemade cookies, bread, yellow garri (not a good match), coaster biscuit (a no for me), left over pancake and was moving to try it with popcorn when my tummy started to ache.

My mum was still out, it was just me and my sister at home. Not wanting to admit I had been eating jam since morning and have her act all older, condescending and tell me how wrong I was, I went to the toilet with the idea that if I was able to evacuate my bowels, I would feel better.

This worked.

I pulled my pants on and washed my fingers (no, I was not washing my hands and singing “the birthday song at the time” - curse you CoVID!!). I had taken only a few steps towards where I hid my stash of “jam experiments” when I felt wetness in my underwear.

I stopped and thought to myself. Did I forget to wipe my bum? Was that poo? Why did it feel gooey? Rather than waste time wondering, I decided to go check it out. It was possible I sat on some jam and missed it. So, I turned around, went back to the toilet pulled down my panties and screamed!

I heard voices coming from outside, it sounded like it was coming from around my bedroom window. It was probably Ugo’s younger brother talking to my sister about basketball. He played basketball, she played basketball. It seemed everyone but me played basketball.

I. Did. Not. Care.

I was dying!  

Right there on my panties, looking like karma in a shade of I told-you-so maroon were clumps of mixed berry jam. My mum had warned me this would happen, but did I listen? No. Now here I was leaking jam.  

I was prepared for mixed berry jam to come out of my ears, just like I was prepared for the bubble gum that was going to glue my intestines together and the orange seed my uncle promised would take root in my tummy and grow out of my head.

This? This was different. My hands felt cold, I was shivering in fear. I was going to die, and I would not know what popcorn and jam tasted like.

I tried to plug the leak with a wad of tissue and clean the horrid jam from my panties, but it in the time it took to get a clean pair of underwear and return to the bathroom to wash the soiled one, the one I wore would be jam filled again.

It was relentless and continued to drip on.

I was running out of clean underwear and numb with fear. Not caring for the consequence anymore, I called for my sister, the sound that left my throat was a feeble whimper.  

So, this was how I was going to die? As a last resort, right there in the bathroom, I got on my knees and began to bargain with God. If the jam would stop leaking out of my bum, I would never again eat, lick, taste or even be in the same room as mixed berry jam.

Although it seemed like forever, I was in the bathroom for only about twenty minutes. My sister had noticed I was not at the usual “brother watching spots” and came to check in. as soon as she opened the door, I lunged into her, wrapped my arms around her waist and started proper bawling.

Through hiccups and ugly crying, I confessed I had been eating jam and narrated how mum had said it was going to come out through my ears, how it refused to come out of my ears and how it would not stop coming out of my bum.

Till today, I do not know how she was able to refrain from laughing out loud when she realized what had happened.

My first period.

To spare my young child from going through a similar experience, the day she noticed and asked about the crimson stain that spotted my clothes when I had an accident, I told her it was from my body trashing the special decorations it had put up to protect and feed a new baby.  Although her brother heard this and warned me to keep the waste from my expired decorations from his clothes and property, we all agreed that if decorations were there to protect and feed a possible baby in the tummy, then it was important to get rid of the bad decorations and have the body put up new decorations every month.

Do you remember your first period?

 

 

Not the man

 I was married to the man for a little over 3 years.

I was happily married like, pinch-in-me-on-the-butt-cause-it-has-to-be-a-dream deliriously happy.

I was basically one of those Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) wives, waiting with much excitement for the return of my man whenever we were apart.

Be it an hour or weeks, as soon as his feet crossed the threshold, I would be on him – bathing him with kisses, choking him with hugs, eager to catch up on lost time (must have been super tiring for the man).

Before the man, I did not see myself as a forever kind of girl. The longest I had been in a relationship with a “son of Adam” was all of 9 months. In my opinion, when it came to having a relationship with members of the opposite sex, the whole affair was best handled like seasonal fruit.

We worked together the man and I. we tried to build a home.

We were friends, we were a couple. We argued, we made up. We mourned over losses, we celebrated wins. We had our highs and our lows.

(Once we had an argument on a very hot night. This man had the audacity to not only go to bed but appear to be sleeping soundly while I simmered in anger. I was livid!

Rather than do one of the 3 things a rational human would do, I went to the freezer, filled a bucket with ice cubes and proceeded to pour it over the sleeping man.

This beautiful man, he woke up with a start. Mouth foaming in rage, instinctively reaching for a weapon of sorts and looking ready for a fight to the death.

The way he switched from ‘stark raving beast’ to ‘mild mannered lamb’ when he recognized that I was the culprit is a sequence that will forever remain with me. After swearing in a dialect I do not comprehend, he brushed ice off his pillow, picked it up and went to continue his sleep someplace else.)

No matter the issue, whether I was right or wrong, my personal rule was ‘never go to bed fighting’. There was no offence a few strokes from the cane could not absolve. It was a-an ah, erm… quid pro quo.

I was hormonal one day and got wildly upset over a flimsy issue. It was not a big deal but, it was important. I was convinced he owed me an apology.

Hours after our fight, this man had still not texted or attempted to call. Well, two could play that game. Personal rule or not, I decided it would be that day. It would be first time since we were together that I was NOT going to be the “bigger man”. 

I was going to assert myself and stand my ground.

I would not call, I would not text, I was not even going to look at the images he sent previously. I was supposed to be the man’s bloody Queen! So, this time I was not going to be the first to communicate.

I went to bed.

I was in my third trimester – a little over 8 months pregnant and marinating a grudge.

The first thing I did when I woke was check my phone. I had forgiven the man hours before but was still waiting on him to make the first move. After we had ‘kissed and made up’, my plan was to bring up this incident at every opportunity I got. I was going to have so much fun reminding him of our childish fight – being petty was going to be so much fun!

I needed to run some errands so, I was distracted for a bit. I returned, ready to give in and make a move. My musings were interrupted by a notification on my phone. Relieved, I jumped to grab my phone in a hurry to see the message. I must admit, being mad at the love of my life was exhausting.

The message was not from the man. It was a message from a dear friend (who cut me off later – a loss I am yet to get over). It was an image with the caption “is this your hubby?”

The image was a picture of a man.

He bore a striking resemblance to the man, but I could not admit it was my man.

This person was wearing outfits that seemed familiar. He wore the same brown khaki’s I got from a PEP store I discovered while wandering one day. They were my favorite shorts because it had a somewhat large 34’ waistband with just enough wiggle room for slipping in a mischievous finger or two. The yellow polo shirt this man wore looked like the one I brought from the Sports Direct at the Birmingham bullring shopping center. I intended to gift the brightly colored shirt to my dad, who had habit of losing his sense of time and got hard to spot when he visited his backyard garden. I later decided the shirt looked better discarded in haste by the foot of our bed and gave it to the man instead.

I had a jolting memory of getting my man to try on the same pieces of clothing and laughing my head off at the terrible strip tease he tried to do afterwards.

The clothes looked identical, but they were all wrong.

The yellow shirt had blood on one side of the man’s body. It seemed to ooze out from him.  Starting from his chest and spreading out like tendrils of a bad rumor, blocking the truth of the bright yellow beneath. It was red, angry looking and all over the place.

The brown khakis were mud stained. It had a darker shade, it was dirty! The shorts were mostly on the floor, covering the lower half of an inanimate, static person. My man was a neat freak, he was a force to be reckoned with and always in motion.

My hubby? Nope, that wasn’t him. I had mixed feelings of fear, anger, and dread.

I was calling the man nonstop now.

Why wasn’t he picking up my calls? I badly wanted to talk to him. There were a lot of things I needed to say.

I wanted to be the first to apologize for the silly argument we had hours before, I wanted to let him know he made me happy and that I believed in him. My man was alive and well and getting on my nerves. I willed him to return my calls, I needed him to call or text me. Being petty or right was far from my mind. I only wanted to hear his voice and hear the words “I love you”.

My man was stubborn, sweet affectionate and human. With all his faults and perfections, he is a memory. Alive, well and not returning my calls. Living forever in my mind. The man in the picture was still, fragile looking and lifeless – he was not the man I knew.

Here to stay

You win world, I give in!

I try to stand, you push violently harder
I'm winded, I'm hurting, the darkness calls.
Your force is savage, my spirt is weak
I am done fighting, I give in, you win.
I hope you are happy now.

Hush now, listen,  begone you!
See? I'm up again, this fight is far from over.
I have been down this path, its familiar
Hard as you will, I won't. It's all coming back
The end of this tunnel is dark, tumultuous and horrific
If this is your gift, I reject, return to sender!

Your notorious pattern is one I recognize
Hopelessness, helplessness, craving an end
I remember this, I remember you, I remember me
You forgot who I am, for a time, I did too.
I am a builder, I am a believer, I am powerful
Say my name! You will respect me or rue



You need me as much as I need you
It's possible,  I might a little more
Quit your beating, my soul is a fighter
I'd get back again and push right back
I'd scream, I'd claw, I'd come at you in rage
I've earned my keep, now make your peace.

Still I Laugh

20 minutes into the chat with a new acquaintance, the name of my offspring slips out in an anecdote. This is usually followed by ‘the awkward question’ which over time, I have learned to answer with a flick of my hair. 

The response to this is a gasp, an incredulous look and the stuttered question “how are you still such a cheerful person?” without a pause I often retort “would you rather I sit on the floor with a bell in one hand and a bucket of ash in the other? Would you feel more at ease if I ring the bell every 30 seconds while pouring ash on my hair and wailing as loud as is permitted?”

Over the years, although I have been blessed, lucky, favored and charmed, like a lot of people, I have also encountered traumatic episodes with 'the usual suspects' variety. Ranging from bullying, intimidation and molestation to being suppressed, isolated and vilified. 

Thing is, I survived.

Heck! I believe I am a better person as a result of some of the experiences.

For all the wins and losses, the event that shook me the most was the time I lost my ability to laugh. When the saying “you don’t appreciate what you have till it is gone” became too bloody relatable. 

To miss hearing my laughter, to try to laugh but instead, begin to choke – struggling to breathe because at that instant, I was drowning. 

Water that I could not see filling my lungs with my insides being pricked by a thousand hot blunt knives. Using whatever strength I had left to focus and remain on my feet and not give in to the oh so alluring darkness.  

To helplessly witness the reality I knew shatter and fall around my ears and secretly wish I’d just die along with my past. 

To cry until I was only able to wheeze because I ran out of tears and lost my voice, to need to cry but refuse to give in to the urge to do so because some persons I accepted as kin had held a meeting and decided my heart wrenching sobs was an act to seek attention from unsuspecting folks.

As a young adult, when asked what I believed my best feature was, without a thought, I’d say it was my smile. 

I had an expressive smile that was inviting, corroborative and mischievous at the same time and boy, I could smile for days!

When I heard my laughter again after craving it for so long, I thought of recording it so if I was unlucky to lose it again, I’d have the sound for reference but I decided against it. Instead, I threw my head back and laughed. 

I laughed and laughed and laughed. I laughed for the pain, I laughed for the sign that some healing process had begun, and I laughed because I now knew the value of my laughter.

If you are lucky and do get a chance to chat with me, I’d try to make you laugh and I hope you do the same. 

I do get sad, I do feel helpless and often I spot the dark cloud of depression looking sexy as sin and promising an oh so sweet escape but yes, I am a cheerful person and do relish the vibrations of laughter. 

I’d laugh because I can, I’d laugh without reservations, I’d laugh with my whole being and I’d laugh because I enjoy the sound.

I’ve got just this life to live and I choose to laugh my way right through it.