It is the wedding eve – Friday night and the whole street is buzzing with excitement. Every house is feeling the anticipation of the coming celebration. My dad loves to throw parties and given that he is a people’s person / crowd puller / “man of the people”, ? he almost always goes over board while throwing them.
The house at this point, is already full to the brim and by full I mean, all the bedrooms are occupied with guests, the chairs in both parlors are fully booked like a suite, even my mom’s precious kitchen is not spared for we have had to bring out the compressible beds and mats to host people there. We have also run out of bedsheets, blankets and wrappers to pass around to our guests. There are more than 20 of my mom’s friends and family around, each volunteering one essential skill or the other.
Some of them are skinning the meat, some slicing onions or carrots or condiments. Some have taken it upon themselves to sort out souvenirs while others are holding the usual vigils in the tents ; Vigils where alcohol and music are the holy anointing raining down from the heaven my father has created.
It is also a day of random dancing, where while moving from point A to B, I’d randomly stop halfway and dance to “o baby sawale, Sawa sawa sawale” before I catch myself and move on with whatever I have to do.
Of course, that amount of crowd and activity means one thing for me – endless errands. ??
“Biola, where do you guys keep this”, or “Biola, please get us matches or an extra knife or fuel or salt or tinned tomatoes etc”.
You get the gist.
Every volunteer needs something and I am being constantly tossed up and down the stairs, to and fro the garage and in and out of different storage rooms.
NIGHT
It’s night time, probably around 11 pm and I am exhausted to my bones. I sit up on my mat that I have managed to hustle for myself because yeah, I had to give up my bed too.
I am trying laboriously to fix my own nails myself when I hear the unmistakable footsteps that can only belong to my dad.
Something tells me that his visit is likely errand oriented and specific to me so I lay down and pretend to be asleep. ?? Pardon the sixteen year old crook that I am. (I’m sure you’d have done the same too)
My dad comes into the room, with his special smile that lights up his eyes, my moms world and literally the entire universe, wakes up the “sleeping” me, ( so much for my game of pretense right ??) and tells me he is hungry and needs me to cook his food.
I remember saying “Daddy, there’s food at home. Your sisters prepared pounded yam for you”. This persistent man says, “ I know, I want rice and I would really like to have your special white rice, the one only you can cook”.?
First of all, white rice is not special.?♀️ You literally toss washed rice inside water plus or minus onions and some salt and the rest is history. So why all this hyping of such a mundane food?
Second of all, what is special about my own white rice, what about it can only I cook? There are many people downstairs who would happily cook for him. Why come to bother a visibly exhausted and unwilling me. ?
Thirdly, what typical Ekiti man says no to pounded yam that was made specially for him only to come wake a teenager for white rice? ?♀️
Ko add up fa …
I grumble on the inside and reluctantly stand up, begin the laborious journey down the stairs and all through the while, Oga is hailing me, calling me all my pet names and so excited that I am actually going to cook for him. Like I have a choice? ?♀️
I don’t understand it really. In my head, I’m lamenting the nail polish I have poorly applied on my nails that would definitely get smudged while washing the rice.
I’m also lamenting the time I could be spending relaxing and getting my beauty sleep in.
??
The night passed, the wedding came the next day and by Sunday, my dad died peacefully on my thighs, right in front of my eyes. Read more here.
Selah.
Naturally, a crowd gathered in our house again, not to celebrate this time but to mourn.
As a part of grieving process in a bereaved house, people tend to verbally reminisce on memories of the departed. I remember walking past a gathering of people doing this when I heard the words “I trust Biola to take care of me, she always does.”
Upon hearing my name, My ears prick as expected and I listen super closely.
One of the commentators happen to be my aunt so I call her aside to inquire further what the discuss is about.
She says, “On Friday evening, we offered your dad pounded yam and he rejected it and when we asked him what he was going to eat in place of it, he told us not to worry about it and boasted that his baby doc (which is me, last time I checked) will have something special planned for him as she always does”.
???
Wait! Did I just hear “as she always does”??♀️???
Phew !!!
Thank you Aunt.
Phew again.
Upon hearing this, I run into my room, close the door and cry out a fresh amount of tears.
Why was my father boasting of me taking care of him?
“As she always does”??? — What is that supposed to mean and how am I supposed to feel about that?
Why did he reject that pounded yam and come up for my rice that I had not even yet cooked?
Why did he boast saying I always take care of him, when in essence, what I did in place of that was grumble from my room to the kitchen and back about little things like my nail polish and my being tired?
I’m crying and crying and crying and I realize somethings.
That my dad genuinely knew and actively basked in the knowledge that I loved him, enough that he could boast about it behind my back and especially without having approached me with his request.
And that he loves me wildly – Loves me enough to choose me and my grumbling exhausted company over something “special” made by a stranger,
Loves me enough to stay with me while I cooked the “white rice” and cheer me up,
Loves me enough to have boasted back and forth about little and big things about me.
As these thoughts come to my realization, I start to feel that I have done something right in my short life. And by so doing, I have given myself closure. I have done right by communicating verbally and via my actions to someone I deeply care about.
I have gifted them the “gift of knowing”
Knowing just how much they mean to me.