On Thanking Mom

If I speak of her, the people with me will listen. But I must first thank her; even though there are no words in English or any other language to express the depth of my gratitude.We give gratitude to God that our mom has seen these many years in servitude to Him. Baaba comes from […]

If I speak of her, the people with me will listen. But I must first thank her; even though there are no words in English or any other language to express the depth of my gratitude.
We give gratitude to God that our mom has seen these many years in servitude to Him. Baaba comes from a stock of centenarian Methuselas: Babba Dilolo, her immediate elder sister, was the only one to have died young—at the relatively young age of 93! Babba Kubura, her other elder sister, died in 2011 at the age of 107, while her elder brother, Mallam Buba, died in 2003 at 115. Baaba was born in Katagum on 17 Rabi Awwal 1333, which makes her 103 years old according to the Islamic calendar, equivalent to 100 years on the Gregorian. But today, a strong woman, she can pass for 70-year-old; and she always insists on cooking my favourite natural-chicken meal any time I am in Azare.
And I used to go to Azare on a weekly or biweekly basis; but this time other concerns had seen me away for the whole of ten weeks. When I arrived, I was told that Baaba hadn’t eaten for two days, and I had luckily, I had come with two bottles of the fresh mixed-fruit juice she always welcomed; but taking that was as far as it would go.
“Baaba, please eat something,” I said.
“No,” she answered. “There is no desire for food in my heart, no appetite for it on my tongue and no hunger in my stomach; so, why should I eat?”
It is difficult to argue with that, but body and soul need to be kept together; and I have the reputation of being one of the only two people who can force Baaba to eat—the other is my kid brother Umar—but last Friday I failed. The struggle continues.
Even though shriveled and slightly bent with age, she is still in full possession of every bit of all her faculties. Her sight, her hearing, her power of reasoning and her reflexes are almost perfect. As a child, I had often sat transfixed and fascinated as she gave solutions to problems for some complicated, knotty arithmetical computations that people always referred to her—and they still do, and she still answers them with confidence and with accuracy. When I was in secondary school, I had to resort to employing simultaneous equations in order to solve the problems to which she always gave correct answers offhand.
I wanted to write English the way I saw my father did and be able to solve mathematical problems the way I saw my mother doing. Perhaps this was why these two subjects, along with the mathematical sciences, were among my best subjects in school. Otherwise, except for this engrained love for numbers, I cannot explain why, as a trained accountant and a practicing writer-journalist without need for mathematical competence, I would go so far as engage the services of a professor of mathematics at Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, eight years ago to help refresh my differential calculus.
Baaba is my first school: and I owe everything to her—and I have nothing; and though I am nobody, I owe what I am today to her exhortations and counsel—from my religious impulse, my fascination with numbers, my insatiable curiosity to know what is within reach and knowable, to my indifference to this world.
She often used to say that every human desire or temptation is temporary, while the consequences or shame of yielding to it can be permanent—and permanently demeaning. She taught that giving is the highest virtue provided it is done out of legitimate earnings; because nothing distances a person from the race of God more than the consumption of illegitimate earnings. And in any case, whether you give or not, in the end, you must leave both what you give and what you withhold behind. She also taught that kara is not kara until the doer has inconvenienced himself for the convenience of others.
I was one of those children who tested her precepts and her truth to them. I was told that I was a problem child who would wake up—and wake everybody up—at 2:00 am, hollering for kunu-—and God help Hawwau, my elder sister, if there wasn’t any at home; for, kunu must be procured there and then wherever it was and howsoever it needed bringing. This manner of disturbing the peace and sleep of others went on for almost two years to the time I was weaned. And the labour continued after I was weaned.
And then there was cleansing and toilet training. There was bathing. There was feeding. There was 24/7 nursing. There was character training and there this constant being there for. There were many other things besides. And before all that, there was the drudgery of pregnancy, the pain of childbirth, hypertension, eclampsia and even death. If this was the only aspect to bringing up a baby—and it is not, how on earth can that be paid? Who, besides mom, can do this and still unconditionally love you? Who is there other than mom to accept to nurture a being from the state of utter helplessness to adulthood with such utter selflessness while giving such unconditional love?
Here then is mother, than whom a personality greater in esteem is not known—in her heart is that kind of unconditional love only the heart of a mother is capable of giving; at her bosom is the first and best of foods; on her shoulder a niche where tears of sorrow are shed and every manner of pain is soothed; on her lap, protective security that, if need be, can lead to self-sacrifice; in her hands, everlasting reassurance that never falters; and beneath her feet lies the House of Paradise. Woman is love writ large, or she is nothing. For, love is the essence of womanhood and marriage its raison d’être, while childbirth is its fruit, no matter how painful the statement of this reality to those who have exchanged old certainties for a new fad.
And whether conjugal, platonic, filial or motherly, love is universally measured on six different scales—as to its intensity, its extensity, its purity, its legitimateness, its duration and its adequacy; and on each of these scales, mother’s love leads the world. For, motherhood is the fulcrum on whose axis the world rotates. Who else is there of whom such can be said? As for the reward one woman said it all: “Being a full-time mother is the highest-salaried job in my field, and is there any reward for love other than love?
And the Great Teacher had said: “The world and everything inside it is valuable, but the most valuable of all things in the entire world is a virtuous woman.” And where is that being, who of proximity is closer, in love dearer, as to labor of love more selfless or of feeling more compassionate, and to the child as utilitarian, especially during the ages of vulnerability?
Mother relinquished the center of her universe for the pleasure and convenience of her progeny; she contented herself with hunger to ensure the satiety of her offspring. She spent entire nights without a wink for the nightly repose of her young. And she cheerfully accepted every difficulty so that her children might have ease. In this world, there is no slave of whom this much has ever been asked.
But indeed, in commitment, fidelity and loyalty, motherhood enjoys primacy over slavery: for, a slave only obeys an order given, a mother obeys wishes not yet expressed; and we must not forget that a wish is an order not yet given. Mother is the slave of love and the object of her love—and everywhere the world speaks of it.
The order seen in the night sky which in fact conceals ferment invisible to the naked eye—the cataclysmic explosion of supernovas, the drama of the extinguishing of the fire of red grants, the birth of red dwarfs, the pulsating of quasars, the dance of neutron stars—and the gyration of yet undiscovered proton stars and the return of matter to the Great Bottomless Pit of black holes—is but the cosmic representation of mother’s love. It is a ferment at the centre of which is perfect peace. Fire may burn in the heavens, stars may explode in the skies, matter may contract and even disappear—and be recreated in the ultimate Unseen, of which no one has knowledge—but the bond of mother’s love will remain intact in spite of every manner of tumult.
And therefore woe onto him the tablet of whose heart is not ablaze with the fire of love for his mother; woe onto him whose entirety of being has not been blasted in the furnace of the steel of emotions for the woman who gave birth to him. And he who doesn’t love his mother doesn’t deserve to live; for, he cannot love anything.
May the grace of God be upon mothers. Day in, day out, mother labored with diligence and loved with complete acceptance and without conditions—she clothed her child with the cloak of tenderness and armed him with the armour of amour and set him on the world as an example of what love can do—transform a fetus into a conscious, sensitive, moral human person. May the choicest of God’s blessings be upon my mother at 103, and upon all mothers who bore, bred, and nurtured young for His sake. Wishing them all the best of whatever is good—here and hereafter; and on them also be peace—till the break of dawn.