MY FATHER, MY FATHER

I spoke or rather chatted with a friend of mine on a certain day and as we reminisced about the way her day

It wasn’t hard to tie that imagination to an event that just happened recently when I went to visit my parents. I sat at the dining table eating and my dad who was a bit indisposed, walked passed me and said, “You are enjoying o!”

“Am I?” I asked in reply, as a broad smile stretched across my face.

I thought about my dad saying that and I wondered whether he was reminding himself of when he was free to eat just like me or was he counting the pieces of meat I thought I had carefully concealed with red stew. My thoughts rallied one around the other and the next thing I heard myself say was,

“It is the privilege of having a father”.

He gave a limp smile and I continued eating. I didn’t know where that sentence emanated from but I know it was true. My dad is a tough one when you need money or when things needed to be replaced at home or the satellite television was due to be recharged. He was strict, a disciplinarian and he always wanted things to be done right not minding the cost implication. I could call him economical but his family never lacked the essentials.

I grew up hating the way he administered his household, I thought him to be too meticulous for our comfort, mine, most especially. Yes I was ambitious but how was that to be my fault? If God didn’t see me as an integral part of that family, He wouldn’t have sent me. He even placed me as the third born, so strategic. Yessss! I felt I was a strategic part and my whims were always to be responded to but my dad thought differently. He was the head and he was the leader. Did he lead well? Then, it was a No. now I can say he was excellent.

For me, growing up around my dad wasn’t so much fun, he had branches of Nchanwu (Efirin) shrub tucked out of sight in the curtain boards and once I derailed in one aspect or the other, he would use one or two and reroute me.

Then if I look back again, I would say it was great fun. We were on the same team when we had to kill rats on Monday evenings or was it when we played Chess on Sundays or had one or two electrical fittings to install. We were both technical and we never clashed on that respect. Did I mention when I had a good result? Or when I corrected a mistake in his handwritten letter. My dad respected his family a lot.

My dad has hugged me once, if I remember clearly but it was strange. Telling him I love him or him telling me was like speaking a yet-to-be-formulated language. He didn’t have to say it and I never expected it but we both understood that our love flowed freely on to the other.

He may not bend to my demands. He may not be very touchy. He may not have let me watch all the channels on the television but now that I am grown I know and have come to value what he sowed in me. I learnt morals. I learnt to live right even before I met Christ Jesus. I knew what It was to be responsible before I overcame my childishness. He taught me more from his life than his words, I watched his daily practice and I could see that he was a hard worker, he was disciplined, he was academically inclined, he was research based, he was funny, he was strict, he was introverted, he was many things and if you must understand better who he is then change the “was” I have used all along to “is”.

My dad was and is a very big influence in my life and I can see a lot I am grateful for.

I have friends who have lost their dads and many who grew up without one. I could count them in tens off my fingers and I know they all wished they had one around. We who had them don’t seem to really appreciate their presence but as the days count I see my dad frail by age and I know that he spent himself for us and somehow for me most especially.

Some dads drink, smoke and flirt around but they are still dads. We shouldn’t compare dads. They are humans and we must honour them. I don’t know what it takes to be a dad but I can say no parenting role is really easy given what I made my parents pass through. I lied to them, stole from them, deceived them and even cursed them under my breath. I disobeyed them and even tried to run away from home. I proved to them that I was cunning and used my knowledge of things to make way for myself especially where they even trusted me. I was not a good child despite the best they did. But the seeds they sowed never died and my father knew how to love his wife and kids and that love prevailed over my stupidity.

Today I have a firsthand practical knowledge on how to be a good father and if my father succeeded then imagine what manner of success I will effuse, especially now that I am saved and born again. I am eternally grateful to him for living his life the way he did. He may not have been the best dad to discuss “schooling abroad” with or the one to encourage you to go into business that his friends have failed in but he was always real and I never heard a lie from him. I truly cannot remember even one. He was black and white.

We as children are expected to live better than our parents and I wouldn’t forecast less. It was in that light that a group of us gathered in our final year in school, all young men. We decided to hold on to values that many men have toyed with. They were about seven (7) values in all.  The values all started with the letter “F”. One of which was FAMILY. We bound ourselves to be family men, real family men and come what may that bound will hold as long as our quest is righteous.

Your dad may not have been the perfect example or the hero that mine was and is to me but if God made him your dad then there is a lot of wisdom in that decision. We are to learn from their greats and their slides, their highs and their faults alike and no matter what manner of seed is sown, it is only mortal to expect more at harvest time.

To those who never had the dad figure, to those who had alternative, to those who never had even an option. Your life wouldn’t be worse off for many had and have yet they wished they never did. Different tales for different folks but I can assure you that nothing just happens under the watchful eyes of our Omnipresent God.

I have a father I am proud of. My children wouldn’t say less of me because I am gearing to be spent for them. For me it is one more mission and that mission is family. If I fail there, I would have really failed for I know that nations would birth from me and generations would learn of me. I try to tread softly and carefully, not for any special reason but that the labours of our “heros”, past and present in families shall not be in vein.

The Scriptures would buttress the point more.