Father Moses

It is Father's day; I know we hop on every holiday we find on this part of the world, I might just hop on this too. It is way past noon; I almost wrote nothing for my father, I did not feel like it. As the years go by, and I have to leave my father's bosom and set out on my own and all of those adultish things we do, I mostly miss growing up with him. I have probably said it a thousand times over that I wish I was twelve-years-old, but I am not, so I will not go into the details of all that right now. 

By the way, in the year 2021, my first full-fledged novel would be published, and it would be a story about my amazing father. But today, I can share some of my most cherished moments with him. 

Moses is the name my father adopted after he became Born Again, and he would write the name with such pride on every notepad he owned. 

My Sister and I, while growing up, were dad's eyeballs, it was so clear. Yoruba people call mothers "abiyamo," and I, unfortunately, do not know how to translate it, it is just something used to describe mothers, but my dad, Moses, was abiyamo, according to mommy. 

By the late 2000s, our parents decided they wanted my sister and me to travel every long vacation to parts of the country where our relatives lived. So, in August every year, for four consecutive years, Princess and I travelled to different parts of the country to spend the holidays with a family member. Dad would be the one to drop us at the relatives' house, wherever it was, and he would return home after about three days. He would call at the slightest, he would pray with us at the slightest. 

As kids, when dad came to wake Princess and me, he would stand by the door and shout, "kooku kuu Ku ki u Ku! The bird is awake!" And we would jump up, so eager to see the bird he always claimed was inside his enclosed palms. By the time we got to him, he would shout "the bird has flown away!" We never saw the bird dad claimed was in his palm every morning. As we outgrew the bird joke, he woke us up with the "Radio Nigeria, uplifting the people, uniting the nations" sound that blared off his radio speaker every morning. Eventually, as we left for secondary school, he woke us up with the tambourine. 

My dad, he keeps such big afro; it delights me that my eighteen-months-old afro would blossom well into old age. 

People around feared him, while I grew up, a rumour even had it he was a military man. We would laugh at such silly rumours because my dad works (always worked) in academia. 

We could never stay outside beyond 6 pm, and the day I stayed out till 10 pm because I went to braid my hair, my dad beat me silly and made me take off the braids the same night, I had a headache for 48 hours at a stretch and I could hardly eat.

As a boarder in secondary school, I once called my dad to inform him I was sick, and he drove down two hours later with a mosquito net and plenty of food he had bought from a restaurant because my mom had travelled and thus was not available to cook. And he did well, as hunger was the underlying cause of many illnesses in boarding houses.

My dad can not cook to save his life, I think that is annoying, and he doesn't allow my mom's true Yoruba pepper nature shine, small time, he would say, "Tiemjo (that's what he calls her), akoko is too much."

In 2011, things took a different turn, and we are only just recovering from it. I do not want to delve into all of that, I just want to journal about the man who raised me, my dad.

Dear Dad,

You are a beautiful man; you behave awkwardly when in a strange place (I think I took after you); you are the most protective man I know. You kept a tiny circle of friends, unlike mom, the life of the party. You are honest and loyal, and you taught Princess and me to imbibe those values. You never really said "look here, you must be honest and loyal," but we saw an example in you, and it has stuck. You are a worthy example and I love you so much. Thank you for loving the Lord, and thank you for giving us stability, you and mom. Thank you for giving us full, thick and dark afro hair, and the cheeks, and the long and beautiful legs. Thank you for not being an absent dad, it means a lot to me. Thank you for sometimes forgetting my birthday, and paying me the fine (in cash) for such sacrilege, I am grateful now, and always. 

Henceforth, I hope you take your evening walks more seriously, and stop telling me you bicycled for "twenty-minutes" when in actual sense you were only active for five minutes. 

I cannot wait to take you to your dream places and more, I think the time is here, shortly. In the meantime, I love you, dad, and I thought everyone needed to know that, in writing. 

Happy Fathers' Day, my Father, Moses.

Picture credit: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/8f/3c/54/8f3c54abbed332ce70799ab3cbd161f8.jpg