Letter to my Child

I have a deep love epistolary writings. This love was primarily ignited by Alice Walker in the wonderfully written text Color Purple. I’m worried To My Children’s Children was part of my A Level set-books but accessibility made my early romance with epistolary fiction delayed. I’m looking for a copy of this if anyone is willing to sponsor me this permanently or temporarily.

So how is this connecting to today’s issues. I hear long ago there were platforms where talks were made between female elders and daughters as well as male elders and the growing boys. Now that they are no longer there new cultures and platforms should be erected. I choose for the epistle. I choose to initiate continue the day-to-day conversations of novel citizens with real people including my children if ever they choose to have me

Interestingly my first composed story that I still remember was about an aborted baby writing a letter to the parents complaining about the murder they committed too late regardless of the baby’s will to leave by escaping the condom during numerous pleasurable explosions and even the morning after that is the after explosion measures. Anyway the story died a still birth. It is yet to see the paper or screen.

Anyway that is basically not the business of this piece. This is precisely in the interest of dialogue a letter to

My Dearest Child.

These days life is so fast and hectic my child. I am not so busy at the moment. I have no girlfriend. Your mother is still out there maybe hanging with her true love somewhere waiting for me to pop up and we lie to each other before making you. Or I am her true love. Who knows? My worry is not basically on how true or not love is. It is on the lack of our time together to discuss about life.

But I know the habit of communication between you and me should be nurtured at all cost. Nothing should be allowed to cut the communication lines. I am initiating it through this letter.

I sometimes run out of words so allow me to bring this conversation between Obinze’s mother and Ifemeluana the girlfriend to Obinze as recorded by one of the novels you should not allow yourself to finish school before reading

“‘Ifemeluana, please come,’ his mother said, turning to go inside.

Obinze got up, but Ifemelu stopped him . ‘No, she called me’

His mother asked her to come inside her bedroom, asked her to sit on the bed.

‘If anything happens between you and Obinze, you are both responsible. But Nature is unfair to women. An act is done by two people but if there are any consequences, one person carries it alone. Do you understand me?’

‘Yes.’ Ifemelu kept her eyes averted from Obinze’s mother, firmly fixed on the black-and-blue linoleum on the floor.

‘Have you done anything serious with Obinze?’

‘No’

‘I was once young. I know what it is like to love while young. I want to advise you. I am aware that, in the end, you will do what you want. My advice is that you wait. You can love without making love. It is a beautiful way of showing your feelings but it brings responsibility, great responsibility, and there is no rush. I will advise you to wait until you are at least in the university, wait until you own yourself a little more. Do you understand?

‘Yes,’ Ifemelu said. She did not know what “own yourself little more” meant”

Image: Pinterest

This what your father or mother wants you to know. You are wondering what I mean by referring to myself as mother or father. That’s what it is in our world. I can be both depending on circumstances and the one who reads this letter. My own blood is my child, my sister’s child can call me mother and I can be both to anyone the size of my child. I am deliberately paying less attention to your gender. I want this to ring into you as a person more than anything else. The battle against unfairness towards the girl needs all of us.

I took this excerpt which I think is one of the most cherished conversations by a mother and daughter in the books I have read. I will praise the heavens if you were to understand the world through reading books in a world where you young ones have a lot to entertain you.

I cherish this conversation because it ushers you and me into a new dimension of relationship as parent and child. It made me realize that we cannot wait to have a conversation on this important subject as me and my parents did.

Now is the time to warn you so that you will not have to unconsciously trapped by experience and painfully live with the pain of experiential entrapment. I’m of the view that there are stages that cannot be avoided but there are certain injuries we can avoid.

Obinze’s mother could be deep for you. I will help you to understand, hopefully. It’s not a crime to go through certain stages in life. You are going to think that love is in your midst. Respond to but never excessively entertain the thoughts. Never ever allow your life go to ruins at this stage. Don’t allow the time to ruin your potential and the possibilities invested in your veins and brain cells.

What I am saying is if possible abstain from sex. If you fall into the temptation of eating the fruit please protect yourself. It’s not easy to be a child with a child. The idea of HIV and AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases is still with us. Now that I have mentioned this please protect yourself from being a new infection, but care and love those who might be with HIV and AIDS in the way you care and look at any other human being. Never ever segregate any human being for whatever reason.

Like Ifemu you will struggle with the idea of owning yourself a little more. It means at the moment you’re the owner of yourself. Our rules and regulations as parents are only meant to guide you to realize full or more ownership of your body. This is the time for you to dream. It’s the time for you to lay out your plans and go for the skills you think might be needed to realize who you want to be. It will be a rough path but at least don’t allow it to be rough when you are not yet at University if you are to reach the level, or you are not yet persuing any other career of choice. Having a career is I think an important step in owning yourself more.

I can go on and on but I want to emphasize this before going: never allow yourself to only learn from experience. If ever it happens that experience comes never think it’s the end of the world. Learn from it and move on towards achieving your dream. If you were to have scars of experience caress them as you take on the following chapters in your life