Reflections
July, 2020
1st July
Mahogany
I would like to acknowledge all dads whose sacrifices are taken for granted simply because “It is a man’s job to provide for his family.”
2nd July
mixed bag
She keeps to herself, careful to avoid meeting anyone she knows lest they discover the secret she’s desperately trying to hide: the growing baby in her belly. The covid-19 pandemic is the perfect excuse to keep people at bay and her boss’s decision to let her work from home is an added blessing.
When her due date arrives, she calls a discreet midwife to come and deliver the baby in her house. After hours of painful labor, she delivers a healthy baby boy with a powerful pair of lungs. She grimaces at the sound of his cries and instructs the midwife to take him away and dump him by the roadside.
He is a painful reminder of a night she would rather forget; when a gang of robbers carjacked her and did unspeakable things to her. She would have terminated the pregnancy but her faith forbade it. Her faith, however, did not dictate that she had to keep the baby.
The midwife swaddles the newborn baby in a towel and quietly makes her exit. Once inside her car, she removes her phone from her bag and makes a brief phone call.
“It is done. I’ll be there in half an hour,” are the only words she utters before ending the call.
She glances at the baby lying asleep on the backseat and smiles. Her other client would be relieved to finally discard the heavy pieces of fabric that she had been wrapping around her waist for months. She had fooled everyone that she was pregnant and her charade would end today. She was about to become a mother.
4th July
Amen
15th July
Curtain call
Encore! Encore! Shouts the heart while the brain cowers in silence.
23rd July
Silent intruder
She often sneaks into my thoughts and never utters a word. I will draw her till she speaks.
24th July
Patterns and clarity
28th July
Black and white
The older I grow, the more complex life seems to get. The grey areas also seem to grow larger with each passing year.
29th July
Escape route
“A child is no reason to marry someone.”
I heard these words years ago from the ex-boyfriend of a childhood friend. They were our teenage couple goals. Then she became pregnant and he immediately withdrew his affections. I ran into him at a house party a few years later where he uttered those words to me.
Gone are the days when a man was marched down the aisle to marry the woman he had impregnated. Courts have supplanted the traditional roles of religion and the family, and couples can now rely on courts to settle paternity and child support disputes. Marriage laws have been enacted to regulate marriage and the institution has thus been spared loveless gunpoint unions.
Unfortunately, the problems bedeviling marriage seem to be more complicated than envisaged by our laws and this calls for a national conversation.
When will we address the rising cases of domestic violence and murder-suicides in families? Why do these tragic events persist despite the seemingly progressive laws that have recently been passed in the country?
31st July
Layers
Make an effort to peel away the layers and maybe you’ll uncover the treasure that’s hidden underneath.