Youth Interrupted...episode V

My earliest memories of my father were a collage of good and bad. As I ponder this piece I suddenly realise how understandable this idea is…this collage of good and bad I mention. As a young child, it was rather difficult to reconcile the two faces of the man I called papa. It was normal within the confines of our modest bungalow to call him that, note the pronunciation was European against the conventional African version cornily portrayed in Nigerian movies of recent. Of course, we often had to explain this to our friends, why we didn’t just call him Dad like everyone else; and why we kissed him on the cheek every time we saw him. Perhaps that is what made him so complex and yet so simple. On most Saturdays, he would sit in our airy lounge clad only in sparkling white y-fronts whilst he read Saturday vanguard; an action that earned him the nick-name fela after the late afro beat legend who fancied the same wardrobe ideology, something we only dared mention behind his back of course! But a well deserved one at that, considering how he would un-ashamedly chat with the old man next door through the fence or even greet visitors to my mother’s dismay. Perhaps this also spoke of seeming fearlessness, for my father never denied the opportunity to show this virtue when the time called for it. Jagunlabi loosely translated to mean “the fighter we bore”, is what we called him. Perhaps if he wasn’t so much so a fighter, we would have known how much pain he was in?

I was speaking to Sean yesterday and we spoke about regrets. Without thinking about it, I offered mine to be not having the relationship I wanted with my father. What is it about spilled milk that is so alluring? We often think of how we could do things properly given the chance again, yet we bungle our first times without thinking about it. Regardless of this truth, I wish. I wish I had the opportunity to tell my father how much I loved him….love him. I wish I had the opportunity to thank him for all he has given me, this priceless ness that is my talent, my looks and my life. He personally taught me to read, making me take in Abraham Lincoln’s letter to his son’s teacher in an afternoon; only confirming my absorption of this by making me recite this off the top of my head. I still remember it now. He taught to me love all culture regardless of geography, from Chopin to sunny Ade. He gave me my love for books and quest for knowledge which serves me well today. Perhaps if he had not put a switch to me when I misbehaved my story would have been different today, I am glad.

As I sit here listening to Adagio by Amici forever, I feel the great pain one would only feel when a great opportunity has passed one by. Not in the sense of issues of a mundane nature like an appointment, a bank loan or a job. No. I mean as one would feel when you hesitate to say you are sorry, or when you find out someone you have always loved has married someone else. I wish I had the one opportunity again….to see him again. To tell him everything! To thank him, to bless him, everything! I wish…