Empty Nest

"Memories have a will of their own."

Hello, I'd really like to grow this email list. If you enjoy this newsletter, it would mean the world to Jola and I if you encouraged one friend/fellow immigrant/colleague to subscribe…Very likely, the the only thing you will get in return is warm fuzzy feelings, and if I can attribute it to you, I’d personally send you a thank you email.

Doctor Olabode Lucas woke up to the happy sounds from his neighbour’s first grandchild’s naming ceremony.

Their normally serene estate was taken over by the melodious voice of the juju maestro, King Sunny Ade, singing Iyayariya Kenke over loudspeakers. Their strict residents’ association had permitted it for the day.

Everyone agreed Chief Adeyinka had every reason to celebrate so ebulliently when his only son, Babatayomi, finally had a child after ten years of trying. He remembered the day an estate meeting devolved into anarchy after someone remarked that the reason Chief Adeyinka wasn’t supporting the construction of a playground was because he didn’t have any grandchildren to play in it.

The high chief had come himself with a bottle of wine to invite Olabode for the party. The sweet aroma of jollof rice and fried pepper sauce wafted into his nostrils now that he was fully awake.

He was unsure if it had followed the party sounds in, or if it came from the efforts of Belema, the young maid who had now been with him for two years. Sometimes he found his mind moving beyond her cooking to dwell on the fullness of her curves, but only for a fleeting moment before he caught himself.

This house was the temple to the love he shared with Morolake, and such intrusions within its walls felt sacrilegious.

The rhythmic vibrations from his phone drew him back into the room. In the otherwise dim room, the light from the phone reached every corner. It ignited hope in his heart, a hope that was quickly doused as soon as he turned to look at the phone. It was not the call he was hoping for, or even the text message he was willing to accept. There was no notification from any of the messaging applications on the phone either.

Rather, it displayed a reminder that sent him back to a cruise ship berthed in the port of a beautiful Mediterranean Island. It was the climax of Morolake’s fiftieth. And she had suddenly pulled him over as if to kiss him, only to whisper “three more years to jubilee, baby” into his ears. He planted that kiss and then on a whim, he set the reminder.

He had forgotten about it since then.

Now, as he read the words “Silver Jubilee, Baby!”, his eyes darted involuntarily to the other side of the bed, wishing that it would not meet only crumpled sheets.

He forcefully snapped his eyes shut, searching for a word to describe the feeling that washed over him. He was a world-renowned doctor of creative writing after-all, and words were his stock in trade. Yet, try as he did, though he felt its full depth, he could not find the word to describe it.

He tried to will himself to think of happier times. But memories have a will of their own. Reaching for a memory is like entering a time machine that has broken dials.

It will take you somewhere in the past, but you have no control over where you’d land. And now, his mind chose to not acquiesce to his will. It took him not to a happy memory, but to an argument ten years earlier.

He heard her voice and saw her beautiful face as if she was in the room with him. The grey had started to appear in streaks on her hair by then, while he still had jet black hair in spite of being four years older than her. He joked about it once and got a look that told him it was unwelcome. She was looking at him the same way as she spoke.

“Bode, we are in our forties, all our friends that japa’d left ten to fifteen years ago. We have built a great life here and our kids are a big part of that life. I want them here!”

She pursed her lips in the way she did whenever she was being serious. It always made him want to kiss her, and that’s usually how these episodes ended. But he knew this one was different. When it came to the children, Morolake was always clear-eyed. He had practiced his arguments a hundred times, and he was ready for this angle. He smiled. She had called him Bode, for effect, to show she was serious. He knew better than to do the same.

“Babe, won’t it be the same if these kids go to university here and stay on campus, coming home only on holidays? We can afford to go and see them whenever, and they will come home for holidays as well. See, I’m not saying we should japa. Most people our age are not uprooting and leaving everything they built in Nigeria behind to go and restart abroad again, except they are not doing well here. Thank God that is not our lot. But you and I know the country isn’t getting any better. A university education abroad will give these kids opportunities a Naija one cannot! And it is our duty as parents to give them the best we can afford.”

She sighed, and he sensed she was about to cave.

“You realise that once they go now, we have lost them?” she whispered.

“We are never losing our children, baby!” he replied. She raised her eyes to him, searching for some reason to disagree. She seemed to find none and sighed.

He drew her into himself, and she melted into his arms. He had mischief in his voice when he answered.

“Well, it means we’ll be giving them the boot out of our house a little earlier than we planned,” he responded.

She did not say a word, instead basking in his embrace. He leaned in and kissed her forehead. “You remember our silver jubilee promise?” he asked as he finally kissed her lips.

The scene dissolved from his mind, and it raced towards another.

It was their wedding night. They had just collapsed into the king size bed in their hotel room, after ensuring that their celebratory exertions had explored every corner of the room. As they lay entwined in bed, she put her head gently on his chest, as if listening to his heartbeat.

“Babe, I want a big celebration when we hit silver,” she said quietly.

“Silver? Did we buy a mine?” he asked, puzzled.

She gently knocked his head. “Silver jubilee. Twenty-five years, dumdum!”

He chuckled. “And we would have shipped whichever rascals we’ve brought into this world out by then. It’ll be just me and my baby, travelling the world.”

She joined him in the laughter.

“You and who will born rascals?” Abeg o! And yes, I want them out of under our roof by then. But I want them to always be a part of us. A big, happy, family. Who knows, maybe we may even have grandchildren by then.”

She quietened a bit, and then continued. “My own parents didn’t make it there, Bode, so I want to really celebrate it with my family, when we get there.”

“Of course, baby. Silver it is!” he declared.

He tried to linger in that memory longer, but it dissolved into a soft haze. He sighed, reached under the bed and pulled out a large family album. Perhaps it would help. He liked to have their memories printed like this. It gave the memories a solidity and specialness that the constant digital posting on Instagram and Facebook just did not give.

After the children went to university, he had opened an Instagram account because that became the only way he could see their pictures regularly. They seemed more eager to share with the public than with him, so he went to where they were sharing.

They had told him one day with noses up in the air that Facebook was not cool, and they could not be caught dead there. Morolake had joined them to tease him, so he finally gave in and joined their Instagram. He made a habit of screen-grabbing the pictures he liked from their pages.

Liked for real, not like the way they did by simply tapping a phone screen, he reminded himself.

He would then print the pictures and include them in the family album. Now, he thumbed through, reliving how they had grown over the years. Yosola followed her mother into economics and had gone on to be a busy investment banker in London, while Bode Jnr was a doctor training to be a surgeon in Texas. He paused at the picture of Yosola’s master’s degree graduation. It was the last time they were all together. A lone tear hit the page, and he quickly wiped his eyes. He would not give in to grief again.

The phone began buzzing again, shattering even that memory. This time, he didn’t make an effort to keep it. This time, he did not permit himself to hope for that call from his children, or a message.

They were not bad children, he reminded himself.

When their mother passed suddenly in her sleep two years ago, they had taken time off work to come and spend time with him. But even that had been short. They had their lives, in far away countries that they needed to get back to. They were young people who were just starting their careers. They did not have the flexibilities they might have been afforded if they were more senior or if they were working in Nigeria.

He understood. He accepted.

Within two weeks, they said tearful goodbyes and returned to their lives. And he returned to picking memories from their Instagram pages.

Silver had now come. And he was alone. No one else would remember it with him like his beloved Morolake. He had chosen not to post anything on Facebook or Instagram. People would scroll and see it and send in messages. People for whom it would be only scribbling a few lines of text. People who would not have remembered without seeing the post. He did not want to trivialise the weight of his silver like that.

If anyone remembered, he wanted it to be that it truly meant something to them, like it did to him. Like it would have done, to her.

He closed the album gently as if to shut the door on the many memories. He looked at the white kaftan and cap Belema had laid out for him to wear to the party. It was the neighbourly thing to do. But he shook his head, switched his phone off and returned to his bed.

He finally found the word he had been looking for. It was the same word that described what he pulled out when he first tried to find the word. And it was the word that described how he felt the best.

Emptiness!