I'll Never Do This To My Child And Other Tales
Yo...
This is my 25th letter to you! In 25 weeks, I haven't gone a Thursday without writing to you (if you've been subscribed that long.) I stan a consistent Ops. I should probably write about consistency because I've been reading a lot about it. Maybe next week.
I had a conversation with my mother this weekend. Now it's important to tell you my mother has changed. My mother — who I was so afraid of as a child — has become softer and a lot more thoughtful. Early in the year, she told me I didn't need to get a Masters in Law, that I could do an MFA — not that I'd need her permission once I decided. It was nice to see that she had embraced my writing career. She's no longer hung up on getting me to learn how to cook (she believes a lot of mainstream Nigerian meals are boring and has been on an experimenting spree for a few years. Also she knows there's really nothing you can't learn on YouTube or the internet generally.)
Back to the conversation.
It was not a lot, but as the busy woman she claims to be, we only have such conversations once or twice in a year. It was about getting my masters and letting her know once I found a man (interestingly, she doesn't believe in having boyfriends. She says it's not Christianly. It's probably a nomenclature thing. Courting over dating. Brother/Partner/Fiance over boyfriend — but guess who is old enough to do anything she wants and can afford to leave Nigeria, get a new identity and start a family in say Maldives? Not me. But maybe me soon.)
I liked it for a couple of things.
She was able to take corrections from me over an issue without complaining or arguing.
She reemphasised the need for me to be financially independent as I am now, even when married — my mother's feminism has always bothered on financial independence.
The conversation and this episode of Family Reunion got me thinking about the profound effects of parenting on children.
A lot of parents overdo or don't necessarily make the right decisions in their attempt to steer away from the bad parenting choices their parents made. Remember as a child when your parent(s) did something you deemed to be awful and you told yourself, “I’m never doing that to my children?”
At some point or the other, we were so convinced our parents were so closed-minded and old-school — and that there had to be better ways to raise children. We decided we would find these ways. Here's the funny part: at some point in their lives, your parents thought the same of their parents too. It's an endless cycle, especially since “the natural consequence of life is to finish school, get a job, get married, have kids,” etc. Honey, there's no formula.
This made me think I've been too hard on my parents, perhaps I should cut them some slack; perhaps, I should be having conversations with them. They probably don't know this but, it made me realise I had to keep listening to them, and forgiving them when they err.
Even though…
One [mistake] I'm sure my parents made was with their protective parenting style. We were barely allowed to make our own mistakes and learn from them, or to move out of the comfort zone and to experience things. On my first trip out of the country alone when I was 13 — a trip to three West African cities — they kept making a fuss about whether I really wanted to go; in the next school term, it was an excursion to Greece and I wasn't allowed to go for that. This sort of stifled my desire to explore. Even when I was thrown into the world — starting university — I lowks expected that they would employ a driver for me, as they had done when I was in secondary school (my house was a 15-minute walk from school).
Traveling to Abeokuta for JAMB was an interesting experience. My mother's cousin picked me up from home. When we got to her office, her boss, a lousy, fat Yoruba man asked me why I couldn't travel on my own, that people younger than me travelled across Nigeria on their own. I was 15/16. As of that time, I'd never even entered public transport alone, so LOL. During the exam, my aunties had a few officials check on me. An interesting experience, I say.
A simplistic solution would be: let's try not to overdo as parents. Easier said than done. When I wonder what experiences my parents had in their childhood that they were protecting me from, I try to change the narrative. But then, there's me, an anxiety-ridden child in an adult body, who is skeptical about going out, trying new things and having conversations with new people.
A realistic solution would be: don't have kids, save yourself some money right?
I do want a child, even if they're adopted. Parenting is hard. Or am I overthinking it?
And speaking of forgiveness, it's a second thing I've had to deal with this week. Forgiving and forgetting is hard. I told myself, I'm going to forgive this person for offending me, then I saw their tweets and couldn't stand that they were not bothered about my forgiveness. It made me ask, what do we stand to gain when we don't forgive? Being human is funny sha.
Two for the road
What's your career story? Do you think you've got it all figured out? I want to chronicle some career stories in an interview format. Hmu if you're interested and read this #AdultingByZikoko story!
Shout out to Oshomah for the new signature! I love it.
Till the next Thoughts Day.