As a child I adored my parents. I loved my father for his dark handsome features, his quick smile and the musty smell of cigarettes on his jackets. I loved my father’s taste of TV shows, the 8pm soap operas and the Bold and the Beautiful. He taught me to fill the crossword puzzles. I loved his handwriting especially how he wrote the letter A, with a squared cap instead of a sharp one. He also taught me how to play poker. He was so much wonderful not to love. My father also loved to eat snacks. He would buy us Mandazis in the morning and Chips on Sunday. Those days, my siblings and I, attended a public school where we had to shave our hair off. My father took us to his favourite barber, named Willy, who gave us a clean cut. The barber shop was filled with posters of men in cool haircuts and the air was filled with a mix of cigarette smoke and spirit which was rubbed on our head. My father was a gentleman he would hang around and wait for us, take us to the posho mill and buy us sweets. We would then rush home to catch the soap Opera.
My mother was quite different from my father. However, she was pretty and well organized. Unlike my father, she hated too much TV and loved books. She would interrupt our TV time by switching off our favourite movies. That time, we did not have a DVD player, so if you missed a movie, you missed it for life. I did not like her for that. I forgave her though, when she made us our favourite meals and told us funny stories. She sung to us very complex songs and her voice was sweet (at this point am crying as I write this as I understand how much love it takes to sing to another person). My mother had so much love in her heart for us and our father. I do not recall a day that passed that she did not hold any of us. Until today when I visit home, she touches my cheeks, hugs me and asks me to sit near her. She holds me like a baby and pats me like a kitten.
I recall smelling my mother’s clothes whenever I snuck into her room. My mum was a clean woman, she had nice clothes, being a high school teacher and a respected member of the community. And God did I love her voice, especially as she taught. My siblings and I would go to her staffroom to wait for her at the end of a school day. As we stole chalk and pens from her locker, we would hear her teach her students. She did it with love and commitment. She was also bought us nice clothes and toys. I think my favourite thing about her was her presence. Whenever, she visited our school to check up on us or take care of us when we were sick. She was an angel.
It has been 30 years of being my parent’s child. My perception of my two wonderful parents have evolved. I now see them as two flawed adults’ 80 percent of the time. I see the wrong decisions they made along the way. I judge them for the toxic friends they held on to. I judge them for their flawed personalities. I judge my mother when she plays along to her bullies. I feel like snapping at my father for his lack of industriousness. I judge him for his smoking and alcoholism. I judge him when he says he has no money to cater for my younger siblings. I judge my mother for holding on to a marriage that is in shambles. I snap whenever they ask for more money that I can afford to send to them.
Hope one day, I get to judge them less.
