Member-only story
My Mother is Growing Old
And it is tough coming to terms with that
“The doctor says I am going deaf in one ear.”
She said it so casually, that you’d think she was talking about a headache, or a mild pain. I broke down as she explained how widely varying her readings were from the average, and what the ENT specialist had said about her condition. I crumpled in the driver’s seat and listened.
This woman, who had been through thick and thin with me and my two brothers was aging, and there was nothing we could do about it.
Oke Ayo Street
There were 4 of us, living in our upstairs flat on Oke-Ayo street, where the toilet never flushed by itself and the kitchen walls were darkened by age, sorely yearning for a new coat. At the time, my brothers and I were 9, 7 and 4. Her room was at the end of the corridor that barely saw the light. It was always untidy and clustered and filled with books — that weighed heavily on sagging shelves, sat idly on dressers, spread-eagled, dog-eared strewn across the floor and piled into a reading heap, yay high by her bedside. These are my fondest memories of a woman that took the leap into singleness from an unhappy marriage and bit so hard on the taboo that her teeth bled. Yet, she stood strong and waded through it all.
