I AM MOTHER BY SEYIFUNMI

I am Mother. Well, not exactly. I guess what I am trying to say is that we are similar in such a way that it becomes difficult to tell where one starts and the other ends. Like the way our eyes crease when we laugh, or how our noses flare up; a tell-tale of anger. Sometimes I struggle to see myself in her yet she is a perfect embodiment of everything I am, was, and will ever be.

I am not Mother. I say this to myself scrubbing the back of our charcoal pot. I will not pretend to be calm as anger reverberates through my very being for fear of being called an angry black woman. I refuse to pander to beliefs and ideologies that require me to shrink myself subconsciously to fit into a box made solely for me. A box that says you can dream but don’t aim too high.

I feel that she can sense this unbecoming that has begun to unravel in me. The silent fear in her eyes when I rebel against the that’s how it has always been argument. The way she softens her voice to rebuke me when Papa and I engage in our shouting match which has become incessant these days.

Mother knows best or so I thought until I realized that in this thing called life, she’s just a girl winging it and hoping that things fall into place. I guess that’s what makes it easier to forgive her these days especially when I think of that young girl from Ije in a world that’s either or and never both.

Mother is kind to a fault. Her lack of boundaries when it comes to giving might be her undoing one day. I am learning to get used to saying No. No in a way that bounces off the walls and echoes in the room for fear that it might be taken as a suggestion to try harder.

Yet in so many ways, I am Mother. I am the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. I carry within me a generation of women who have struggled and fought for me to be here. I am my mother, my mother’s mother, and hers before that. I am an autobiography of stories, history, sorrows, tears, and pain all wrapped in one like a little ball of yarn. 

I am Mother.