What Love meant…
By: Mariam Adedoyin Adeyeye
Tags: Relationships, Love, Violence, Marriage, Reconciliation

What Love meant…

Growing up with my parents always made me wonder what love should be and how it should be expressed. What could be more confusing than seeing two people that were obviously in love in each other but could never stand each other’s seeming excesses?

The days that they showed love were always fascinating - they would go on and on about the early days of their love life. They would repeat stories of how my mum, tall, elegant and beautiful daughter of the Omisore dynasty fell head over heels in love with a taller, smooth talker, high waist trouser wearing and highly cerebral boy from the city of the brown roofs.

My mother would giggle, reaffirm that she is still as beautiful as when my dad met her. Father on the other hand would reply that mum loved him because of the poems he wrote and also because he seemed like a good catch- father was the SUG president when they met.

I would laugh and then ask father why he, a lover of big assets(dad loved endowed women) settled for mother who was very beautiful but far from being as endowed as father fantasized and my father would reply that even he couldn’t fathom it.

The days when they both decided to be deaf to the reasons they chose to be one always annoyed me. It would start normally then slowly give way to chaos. Mum had always had a high pitched voice, she would start by humming incoherent songs ; these songs always signalled the beginning of fight. It was always so dramatic, they both always acted as if they knew the rudiments of drama, a build up of events to the climax.

Dad would reply every single thing she says and I would step in, telling them both to be calm. Mum would later burst into tears and dad, always telling me he had tried enough. I was always left with pacifying both ends, I was lucky on some occasions and on some, mum would either beat me for daring to support my father or father denying me care because I chose mum.

Anytime that it appears as if I was not on either party’s side, I was tagged as the opposition’s child. Mum would say, ‘I have always known that I gave birth to your father’s child’. Dad would angrily snap at me , ‘why is it so hard for you to tell your mother the truth? Why are you being a momma’s child?’

I remember the day I gave them both the shocker of their lives, it was a sunny day back in Ife. Exams were approaching and I couldn’t even concentrate. My father had earlier called to report mother, she called few moments afterwards and told her side of the story. I tried to wade in but it was too difficult to get them both to reason with me.

I got very angry and told them both to sort their differences and leave me out of it. I remember vividly that I told my parents, in tears, that my siblings and I would survive if they were not around so they should stop bringing us, me especially into their plenty wahala since I wasn’t the one that made them meet or fall in love in the first place. Mum wouldn’t speak to me for days, dad was shocked that I said that, but the message was clearly passed and I had enough time to focus on my exams- before they brought in a new case.

I look back now and I still don’t have answers, why would two people want themselves so much but refuse to see it? Why should love bring so much pain and anguish? Why was it so difficult for both of them to manage their differences?

Looking back now and seeing how they can talk about those days, or how each of them find a way to chip in past experiences with the other into conversations that should have been completely void of it, I find it amusing. It makes me wonder if love meant that you had to appreciate the other person when you both no longer have to see too much of each other. Maybe that is what it is, maybe it isn’t.