Precious One, Beloved

It happens every year. I keep telling myself it will get better with time but after 23 years I’m not so sure anymore. It is not necessarily a bad thing, reminiscing and reflecting on the past to guide the future cannot be bad.

So this year, I chose to focus on the positives, as I am gradually learning to live in the moment. Twenty-three years ago today, I became a mother to a beautiful girl. Yes, I have a 23-year old daughter! Please don’t envy me, this young lady exaggerates in everything she does! Yes, even her birth was dramatic. I had two false alarms of labor in October 1997, so much so that on the D-day, we all took it as one of those false alarms until as the Gas say ‘f)m) esh3 lagban’ literally meaning the baby was crowning, before we all knew that was it.

Around 11pm on the said date, my mom realizing this may not be a false alarm after all, went to look for the resident midwife at the health post in town to assist with the birth as it was obvious we could not get to the Police hospital from Ashale-Botwe to safely deliver this child of mine. Being a Friday, we found out she had gone home for the weekend! My mom had to change tracks to find the Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA), in town to assist with the birth. All this while, I was by myself just ‘listening’ to my body and doing what I ‘felt’ like. Both mom and TBA came to find me squatting with baby between my legs. As experienced moms themselves, they just got into action to help deliver the placenta and clean both me and baby up. If this is not dramatic, tell me what is!

When she was about 4years old, she accused my mom, her grandma of not knowing how to cook the one pot dish of ‘mpotompoto’ simply because my mom didn’t add the almost ripe plantain I added when I cooked same meal the weekend before! Lol 😂 can you imagine? This child of mine didn’t know I was being innovative because that was all we had at the time!

Around the same time, one weekend, a few friends visited me and we sat outside chatting while she played with another girl. Out of nowhere, this huge cockerel just showed up and started to crow in broad daylight! My daughter just screams, ‘eeeiii mommy, look at akuko (cockerel in Twi)!’ It was the collective burst of laughter from all of us present that startled the troublesome cockerel to leave us alone! Some of those friends still tease me with that, many years on.

This young lady loved to watch Bishop Charles Agyin-Asare’s sermons on TV3 at the time And as a young mom, I used to think to myself that I was doing something right by raising her ‘in the way she should go so that when she grows, she will not depart from it’, until one day she showed me a ‘tally sheet’. This tally sheet had what was was explained to me as the number of times the good bishop used the words ‘precious one’ and ‘beloved’ throughout the sermon!

I was intrigued as my daughter made a declaration that from that time onwards, if she calls me ‘Beloved’, I am to respond ‘Precious One’ and vice versa. Ladies and gentlemen, I am glad to inform you that about 17 years on, we still use these terms as endearment for each other. I remember another incident when the school year ended and she was moving to from class 2 to class 3. My daughter came home and demanded that when the new school year resumed, she wanted to go to school with her little brother…I was like, what?!?

Well, she came prepared, so she calmly explained that her friends (more like mates in the same class), were coming to school with their siblings in the new school year, and of course, she didn’t want to be the odd one out, so, how ever I’ll mange, I guess in her young mind, to give her a brother, was her back case (as we say here in Ghana). Well, let’s just say I failed her at that time. So, imagine her joy when at age 16 and in SHS2, she got the little brother she had always wanted!!!

The diagnosis of the extra chromosome hit us all hard. We learnt and came to understand that the extra chromosome will require and demand extra from us as well: love, attention and care, effort, time, money and everything else you can imagine.

Although she dites on him endlessly, there was a time that she became jealous of all the attention that little brother was getting but who can blame her? For 16 years, she was an only child! We are still working on some of those issues

Beloved, my very own Precious One, at 23 years old, you are no longer a child, although you will forever remain my baby, you are responsible for your life choices now. As such, I want you to focus on the following three principles :

Impermanence – in this life, everything is fluid. There is nothing permanent under the sun! Things happen, just like emotions, people come and go, in fact, life happens. Once you know and accept this simple fact, you will have a healthy relationship with loss and gain and will never hold a grudge.

Non-self: this simply implies that no man is an island. This means that you will need people in your life and people will need you, yes, you. It also means that whatever you do, wherever, whenever and how ever, has implications on others and your environment, whether you wanted/planned it so or not. We are connected to everyone and everything like that. So, why don’t you resolve today, to live as conscientiously as humanly possible, for the sake of everyone and everything ?

Lastly, but definitely not the least, I know this may sound contradictory but please don’t run away from suffering. Acknowledge it and learn to get comfortable with suffering simply because it is part of life. I am learning that getting comfortable with suffering loosens it’s hold over us leading us to experience greater happiness because we know it is not what we want therefore we work diligently towards the happiness and joy we desire and deserve.

I know it has not been easy but to say I love you will be an understatement. We are and will remain a team. KEY may be my heartbeat, but you, are my Precious One, my only Beloved

God bless and Happy 23rd 💞