By
Obododimma
Oha
Some people
think that showing love to your child, or to your trainee and mentee, is a
matter of the huge sum of money given or amount invested in the relationship. Indeed,
if there is any other special use of language among humans, it is that it is
used in lubricating (i.e. servicing) relationships. Some linguists would
identify this also as the use of language as a tool. You use a tool to fix
things and not as a weapon, even though
we know that some people can get angry and turn the tool into a weapon,
for instance, turning a car wheel spanner into a cudgel and breaking somebody’s
head with it! But we can use language as an ideal tool to maintain and repair
relationships. In a father-son relationship, you see just that. And I would like
to use my talking sessions with my late father for illustration that we can, in
fact, discover another related use of language: actually enjoying talk, which
could be the music of the other person’s voice!
But when my
late father was trying to make me understand what he was doing with language
with our relationship, I did not know it and did not appreciate it. The old man
often chose the little hours of the morning when everywhere was calm to amble
into my room for a talk. I did not like it, for this was the time I thought
sleep was sweetest. He would be insistent in knocking at the door; so, I was
forced to open. He would wait at the door briefly, as if trying to make up his
mind whether to enter. Obviously, he was using this interlude to allow the
sleep to clear from my eyes and to signify that he was not in a hurry! Then, he
would enter, sit down, and rub his snuff bottle or tap it and open it.
Thereafter, when he had taken a pinch and had cleared his head a bit, he would begin with a very ancient
proverb. Sometimes it was: “A sị na ufu na egbeleke bụ n’ehihie, ma iruro bụ
n’anyasị” (It is said that all manner of joke and play belong to the daytime,
but putting heads together belongs to the nighttime).
Sometimes, he
may need to explain some ancient usages and carry on. But the talk may enlist
any strategy: jokes, stories, legends, myths, etc. He just went about it
craftily and in a roundabout way, but
must eventually come to the main issue. Even though I thought that he was wasting my time,
he wasn’t. Apart from making me enjoy talk with him to lubricate our
relationship, he was training me to choose to remain awake for my family to
sleep and when my family was asleep. He was quite at home with being what
Bentham calls the “panopticon,” the observatory that monitors things and takes
care of the homestead. He was training me to form the habit of staying awake,
but did not say so.
Indeed, he
was my first professor and did his work with dedication. AS he often put it in
a proverb, “Onye zọrọ ụkwụ n’ala, mara ụkwụ ya (Whoever steps on the ground
should try to be familiar with their footprints). He wanted me to be him.
Already, I am him, as DNA would show, even to the point of copying (without
knowing) the way he rubbed his two hands together, as if washing his hands.
Even up till now, I sometimes catch myself (or some of my siblings) doing this and remember the old
patriarch. It was as if he wanted to put off his garment so that I would put it
on! And I remember that one night, he expressed a regret over his own father
not allowing him to go to school but he taught himself to read and write without
enrolling in any school. My consoling words surprised the old man: I told him
that he was me, that that is what “reproduction” means! I told him that I had
gone to school on his behalf and that all my degrees were his! It was as if a
heavy weight had been lifted off his shoulders: I saw his face light up and he
heaved a great sigh of relief, looking at me as if I was new to him, his eyes
carrying that strange light!
Yes; I
enjoyed talking with him, even though initially it looked like a disturbance to
me. It was a talk of a different kind, so different from talking with my
mother. Indeed, the time and training a father gives his son is not available
as a course at school; cannot be received from books, and is obviously
different from what a mother dispenses.
My father
made several trips to my room, just to reasure himself that he left a lasting
impression on me. He had several children and I am sure he tried his best to
reach out to their ears. Now that he is gone – gone to obodo ahụdebe (Place of
the unseen forever, one of the local metaphors of death), I try to reconstruct and imagine his presence from some
relics I could retrieve – the piece of cloth of his easy-chair, on which he
used to lie, a recording of him talking about his life (which I was lucky to
have made), and, of course, his grave itself (a special place for me).
Those that
have fathers that are still alive may not know what they have! Didn’t the dog
say it in proverb? Ndi nwere ike amaghị anọ ọdụ (Those that have buttocks do
not know how to sit down). I guess the dog’s tail is a problem! If I should
phone my father now (there was no cell phone around when he was alive), he won’t
even answer. He may have forgotten that he came to this galaxy, to our village,
and that he had a name, a label! He may not not even recognise me or realise
that I am related to him. I am only writing this because I still believe that
part of him lives in me.
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