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| Enjoy, though because I want to write this down before it disappears:
My father, if you haven't known it before now, is Nigerian. My father is so fresh off the boat, his accent slams and digs right into the flesh of your face. With vowel bursting from his mouth, a pickax follows in its wake to pound you in the ears. His very laughter is recalcitrant, he laughs and it's sound roars across the room, ricocheting off walls. Everything about him reminds me of a furious and slumbering lion. Sometimes, if you're extremely lucky, you'll see him stretch and his claws extend and he opens his mouth and yawns and you catch a glimpse of thousands upon thousands of glittering, magnificent teeth. That's what my father reminds me of- a furious and slumbering lion.
This evening, I chanced upon my father in the kitchen. Besides his laughter, there are a couple of other daily facets of his personality that scream YORUBA with no patience whatsoever. His method of eating. I have never seen my father use a butter knife. I'm not even sure if he knows how to use them. He eats mostly with his hands. So, this evening, I come upon him slicing into a mango. He didn't learn it from the East Coast WASP's edition for Living the Good Life. He picks up a steak knife, his hands flipping it into the air and catching it deftly with a flick of his wrist and stabs it into the mango. I watch in fascination for a few seconds- watching my father eat has always been a kind of secret stage act that none of my other siblings are willing to admit to watching as well. He cuts cleanly halfway through the mango and pulls the steak knife around, around, around the mango, He places his fingers at either points of the mango and uses his fingers to bend the steak knife towards his thumb, resting at the bottom, waiting for the steak knife to slice through the skin cleanly at the top and meet his thumb back at the bottom. I watch minutely as he progresses and I find myself looking down at my own hands, twitching slightly as they want to imitate the culinary art that my father is creating. I notice that my mouth is dry. I, too, long for the tangy sweetness of the mango. It leaves a cool aftertaste that lingers for an hour and I think I need that right now.
I go into the refridgerator and grab a mango and knife eagerly and set upon imitating my father, only to discover to my horror that the knife came dangerously close to swiping off one of my digits. I turn to my father hesitantly, realizing for the first time in years, I'm instinctively leaning upon my father to teach me how to feed myself. It's an awkward transition, going from eager and rebellious seventeen right back down to the age of five, when I was hungry and wanted to teach myself and forged past my ego to rest upon my father's waiting lap and make him slice the fruit for me. But I'm seventeen. It's not as easy. I stare at the knife and mango for a moment, furious and ashamed in my failure and then...push it straight into my father's hands. He looks at me in surprise and then sees the look of frustration that it sits upon my brow. He chuckles and takes the knife and starts teaching me the position in which to hold my hands. I feel totally helpless, at one with the five year old that waits patiently to be fed within me. My hands feel stretched out as they try and accomodated the mango in the same manner that my father is able to. It's hard at first, my fingers whine and my wrist protest the odd angle but I watch in envy, as my father easily licks the mango slices off from his steak knife. My father finally laughs at me and tells me to go to my mother and have her teach me how to do it the American way. At this, I mentally balk and I can feel my fingers cutting deep into the ridges of the steak knife. American way? American way? I'll show him the American way. My father laughs and walks away, eating his mango slices from the steak knife, his mango a suavely Nigerian cut culinary masterpiece. Damn it, I'm gonna eat those mango slices, Amazon style, if it's the last thing I do. I don't know exactly why I want to bad for once to learn how to do it the Nigerian way. Perhaps, watching my father standing there watch me, I can feel the years of refusing to eat any yam or ochra because I felt it was too slimy and spicy. Perhaps it was feeling like I owed it to him- that if I couldn't be a Nigerian in all the traditional ways for him, I could at least be this. I can feel the unfamiliarity of my culture ridden name sitting on my shoulders. I am the oldest child, yet I was the first to reject Nigerian food. Maybe, by learning how to cut fruit, I could be a Nigerian again, instead of just an African American. I wanted to be a good Nigerian, rather than just a Nigerian's daughter. I wanted to find a way to be good again. Or maybe, good for the first time in a while. I found myself cutting and cutting and cutting and then finally...
my knife blade cuts strong and clean through the skin of the mango. The first full swipe, and the skin is one beautiful red and green peel that rests on the edge of my knife. I stare at it in raw triumph, my knuckles burning but my spirit blazing and race to show my father. He takes one look at it and looks right at me and nods. And then walks away.
There was never any hallmark moment that supposed to be made between father and daughter. I've never viewed my father is being the first man I ever loved, even though he is in the strongest sense of the notion. But I've always viewed my father as a sort of lion. And I was just the lion cub who never could. And for that moment, I became a lionness, a true hunter of my food. I hunted and cut through the flesh, determined to bring back salvaged food. And I thrust my morsel in front of my lion father and roared, "I know how to take care of myself! Look at me hunt and eat!" And my roar was shortlived, but how strong of a roar it was.
And my lion father smiles his beastly smile and turns on his tail and prowls away in the night. Perhaps because he knows I'll survive in the savannah. Or the world, as you may see it. I smile back, my smile shedding its American rooted veneer and stretching out into a gruesomely fierce, lionness smile. My teeth glint in the kitchen fluorescent lights. After all- I'm the lion cub who could. | | |
| Something just hit me:
If I had myself as a kid, as a daughter, I'd probably feel helpless as hell. If I had myself as a kid, I'd break my own heart all the time with all the rejection that I wear like a cape. I'd make myself cry after yelling myself hoarse to have my own kid respect me and once my kid finally ran away from me and I spent over two days looking for them, I'd be feeling so heart broken and broken spirited, feeling like my daughter absolutely didn't want me, that I really couldn't do anything for her, that she wouldn't accept anything I'd give her anyway.
I'd feel like I was the one who really had failed. Not the kid. Huh. Can you imagine parenthood for one second? We spend so much time thinking about our own lives, our own futures, the problems of being a teenager, that we never really think about it from the parental perspective. Because one day, believe it or not, some of us are going to be parents and we're going to be scratching our heads until they bleed because we won't know shit about our kids. And that is so inevitable that I have to crack a smile a little as writing this. I don't think any parent was ever supposed to truly know their kid. It's just not how life works. I think kids are like their parents in the most elemental ways, but that's where it stops. In all the other ways, they're not and it drives them nuts. And you know what the real kicker is? All our parents want to do is love us. All they want to do is teach us about the world and show us how to live in it, the only way they know. The only way they know how, you know? That's all they really want to do. They just want to love us so bad.
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| The question was: What's the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you? I can put it simply, and I wil always remember it because she did it without asking: She gave me a home. | | |
| Alright. So, I finally, finally feel solid on which colleges I am applying to:
1. St. John's College
2. Kalamazoo College
3. Hampshire College
4. Reed College
5. Evergreen State College
6. Temple University
7. Earlham College
8. Bennington College
9. New College of Florida
10. Smith College
and my runner ups are the following:
11. Goucher College
12. College of Wooster
13. Beloit College
14. Cornell College
15. Tufts University
It's been a long and torturous journey. One which has made me pull my hair out, kinda in my pursuits. But these schools seem like they would be the best fit for me, both academically and intellectually. I feel like I could be at home at these schools and find others that could challenge me in ways that I haven't been challenged before. I'm surprised by how much I want to go to St. John's, though. I'm really surprised by that... | | |
| MillionsOfMasks (7:56:37 PM): I get some hardcore I-love-life feelings when you're around I definitely smiled mucho at that. | | |
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