COOL SCOLDING

We grow up in different times and conditions. Then it was a commanding and obey-before-complaining system of upbringing. Our fathers were meaningfully mean. Why wouldn't they? When they were forcibly conscripted into the army to fight in a civil war.  They were not asked whether they were 'good-to-go' or whether they were properly motivated. So once we sighted our fathers from our playing fields, swiftly we ran up and take covers like in a run-for-cover drill. Woe betide you if you failed to see him before he gets close to you. A knock or just a mind troubling rebuke would suffice. Not that they hated us but their experiences shaped their understanding. Most of them were whisked away to the battlefield or their fathers into slavery. So they didn't want to see us suffer a similar case. Even 'ndi nto' (kidnappers) were really living up to their name tag; Kid napping.

So we grew up avoiding the wrath of our 'mean' fathers.  We always heard their voices of rebuke in our heads so we would refrain from some mischief we would have otherwise committed. Our mothers served as buffers to our fathers loving 'harshness'. They would plead against beating but not after our fathers had given us a required beating of correction. The rod was not spared. And we didn't spoil. We grew up and understood the scoldings  and the beatings. Our fathers and mothers became our best of friends. We now sit on the same tables and crack jokes about the yester-years. 

We now sit and dialogue our way into the future.  sometimes, they even call us to seek for advice and solutions. Traveling to see them, we always think about the best of clothes to buy, the Benin bread and banana to show gratitude for those years of impeccable parenting; those sickness days, when mum would be trying to pet us to adjust for an injection and dad in one corner will scold: " c'mon turnuoooo ka agbaa gi ogwu.  Ubochi uzo iyakwa ahu,ooo?" (c'mon turn let nurse give you injection.  Another day fall sick again, ooo).  We buy good wrist watches in appreciation for those years when we were made to attend churches and school early enough to settle down before the teacher comes in. We buy dry gins in recognition of the fact that they are now old and that communion with the gods and ancestors in Igbo tradition is better with a green bottle. We still need their prayers and blessings. So they would let the content of the dry gin trickle to the ground thereby making those sacrifices which we consider too archaic to make ourselves. 

We look for expensive gold watches and necklaces for our mothers in appreciation for their timely defenses from our fathers manly beatings. We love and cherish them so much that most times we require their approval of our fiancées to ensure we have in our wives an attribute of our mothers; obedience,  love, great love, greater love and above all understanding. 

We love you mums and dads; dead or alive.