Oh mama, I could write chapters to manuscripts on your life and how you navigated the world but I am on my way to shower quickly, I am late for drinks with the girls. I know… yet another distraction to stop me dealing with my intrusive yet necessary thoughts. I can hear my inner voice, the one with reason telling me to sit and write this meaningful letter to a soul contract that bonds like no other, a soul contract that bonds beyond the grave. That voice of reason I have named Moela, after you, because my life would have been emotionally chaotic had it not been for your omnipresence… How do you do it?

Do you remember that song by Emeli Sandé… “Somebody.” You asked me to put up the volume and sing the chorus out loud. You didn’t know it then but that was a vital validation. Profanity and all, I broke the chorus with my rusty voice and let the chills of my mother, telling me I matter, scorch my skin and zip my spine.

Prayer, it was prayer that interlocked me to you. I know that you prayed constantly, even while you had conversations with others, you simultaneously prayed for me. To find a husband who won’t fear my main character energy. That he will love my curves more than my impatience and perhaps that he will be too sated from my cooking to care that I’m a stubborn cry-baby. I don’t believe I deserve stream-like romance. I want it full of turmoil and disappearance just like my father, just like he gifted you and I his thorns. But you wouldn’t let me sleep on myself. You believed that what’s outside should translate to the inside. My beauty as you always implied, had a gap if I didn’t have a man to share it with. Well, I met a man.

Goodness, what would an all-encompassing letter be without the touch of romance or, in my case, a touch of the chaos that is my love life. Everything and everyone seem karmic. I must have been the witchcraft of the world in my past life for love to repel me this much in this one. Anyway, I met a man. A beautiful chocolate man with a skin tone that reminds me of a smooth tar road, the kind that makes a car hum beautifully, no bumps to the wheels, just rhythm. He brings out the quirky side of me. I am a child around him, free spirited and at home. He takes care of my spirit more than anything and I’m aware that I light up whenever he shows up. I become funny around him, I become suddenly beautiful around him. Naturally, I slept with him to know it was a mistake, it really shouldn’t have happened.

I think he’s a soulmate come to remind me of my core and purpose. He really inspires me. It’s not the first time that it has occurred to me that as people, we make the mistake of thinking that every person we meet ought to be a romantic partner. We never take the time to see if a platonic relationship is what the universe has planned. And so, we dive in and involve the wrong intentions to the wrong emotions and ruin a functional bond. I’m jealous though, over him. I think he’d make exactly the kind of father for my children that I deserved as a child. One that squeezes time into his busy schedule to spin them around, kiss and tickle them before sending them off somewhere else in the house without them picking up that they disturbed his schedule. I don’t think he’s the one. He’s definitely the one as a friend but I don’t know that he’s the one romantically.

I can sense his fear to let me close and so I question what it is that makes such a carefree and intelligent soul tense up, rather than love me. I’m afraid of that. You know, the way a man can love you with fear. It scares me because I dive headfirst, and I don’t want to discover that their intentions were never deep enough to embrace my dive. I have fears, mama, I have fears that slow me down in love. I am afraid that I might be a placeholder, that’s the fear that paralyses me and perhaps makes me think that romance is something I watch on the well-orchestrated Christmas movies and not in my chaotic life. I laugh as I write this but truly it makes me sad. You know I love love.

We argued a lot, didn’t we? They say opposites attract I don’t know how the memo missed it with us. You, the calm one and me, fierce to response, we repelled each other really, or at least I felt you should repel me. At times I didn’t think we loved each other, we were just bound by something beyond us. We were too different to pull towards each other. I remember thinking that the way we argued, we must have been die-hard friends in our past life together. I still don’t know though, what your soul was here to make amends for to deserve me for a daughter. A renegade, a beautiful woman tormented by questions about every morsel of her existence. Did I torment you too? I heard you and saw you trying to live vicariously through me. I wish I saw myself the way you did. You probably thought me a wasted talent and beauty. You would never say it though.

It’s torment, mama. It’s torment to be me and think I am achieving nothing like I dreamt for myself. That’s why I wept and yelled when you said I could have done things better given my opportunities. You forgot though that I was born into self-doubt and desertion. My confidence is a façade for those who don’t look closely. I find a thrill in those people. They don’t know what I would give to be what they think they are experiencing of me.

You broke my heart that day, sitting with your dress torn at the shoulders, where he held you up telling you that he owns you, owns us. You broke my heart. I silently plead to you, “mama, choose us, for once choose us.” You looked at me as though you saw past me. Tears welled your eyes but you blinked them back and stood up to cook dinner. Three months down the line you woke me up in the middle of the night after yet another quarrel and told me to take what was necessary. We packed fast, we packed small. I tried to go back for Nimmi my carrot teddy but you said we would get him another day. I thought you were lying but you went back with the police and brought Nimmi back along with the rest of our life. You had chosen us and this emboldened me. Did I embolden you that day when I asked you to choose us? I sometimes feel that I broke the temper scale around you.

I don’t know, did you think that through my display of temper I was healing through the traumas of this lifetime? I hated being the one holding you accountable or under blame for what went wrong. We have come through so much together; I should have been more tolerable of you. I want my soul to remember, I want it to remember why we chose each other in this lifetime, and why we chose a mother and daughter relationship. It’s bizarre, I wish you chose to be a fleeting romantic relationship. That way I can scream “men are trash” and feel full validation. I’ve been wrecking my mind all week trying to comprehend what lesson I was here to teach you. It is a hard one for me for all I wanted to do was hug and laugh with you but I was here, breaking your heart with all my anger.

What would you and I be without lessons. You always in a sing-song tune said that even when others show no kindness to me, I need never change my DNA to their level. This was one of many lessons and one where I sought retribution the most, refusing to be the bigger girl any more. Does it make sense though, that I can be so fierce and yet so kind and easily break to tears? It confuses me too because it’s hard to believe that beyond my hard exterior there’s a me who’s afraid of being hurt and so the only way I know how to keep hurt at bay, is through fire. Breathing it in, exhaling it, sinking it into anyone who might even love me. But something knew you would be good for me. It looked out for me through you.

Whatever is responsible for you and me having walked this journey together knew that we would not embrace a formal mother-daughter relationship. It knew that we would need a sisterly kind of bond, a friendship kind of bond. A mother-daughter relationship that is not restricted by formal bounds of tradition. You always said it didn’t matter how we fought, what mattered was how we repaired, that strengthened us. If it’s not clear yet, I am grateful that you chose to be my mother in this lifetime.

Random thought, I never told you this and by the time I thought about it, it was too late. Grandpa once asked that you buy him a chicken. He said you’re the only child with enough sense to take care of him. It was the afternoon I went to show him my new car. The heat of the village had driven neighbours to the shades of their trees but their curiosity left them exposed to the sun trying to see whose car had parked in the yard. Grandpa walked out with his younger wife, Mama Thobi, to witness my accomplishment. I felt proud, proud that I made it in time for grandpa to see the work of his hands. I remember though, trying to hold his hand in support as he was ailing, becoming more fragile because of that illness that would eventually take his life. I still say, diabetes is worse than cancer. It gives you room to underestimate it and the next thing you know, it is too late. I digress.

I tried to support grandpa and he gently smacked my hand away. I say gently because I think he was aware that I jumped to action out of care. I didn’t realise that I was emasculating him in front of his younger wife. He wanted to show vitality and here I was proving otherwise. It made me sad. To see a man who inspired empowerment in me lose his all because he reached far down his age. I remember making a note that had it been at grandma’s house, he would have welcomed my help because in front of grandma, he could be himself. Be his age. Anyway, I forgot to tell you that he asked for a chicken and now time is gone sans the chicken and I do feel bad.

Mama, this letter is one of bond. A letter where my thoughts of self are in vivid sticky colours. You have been a lot of things to me, and the role I appreciate the most is one of a cheerleader. The day we were listening to Emeli Sandé tell me that I’m somebody. I had been through a heartbreak. The job I’d worked hard towards had been given to someone external to the company. A show of no confidence in me. I felt low. Years of grit and labour, sleepless nights and mimicked motivation had resulted in a simple call from HR to say they hope another opportunity opens up. A humiliating spit to say: they know I work hard but it’s still not enough. I felt unseen. I called you between bouts of heavy sobbing, and you got on the highway and didn’t stop till you got to my bed and hugged me so close my tears stained your dress, you didn’t care, you held me even closer. I could tell your heart was breaking, I could tell it probably broke a little more than mine, and you wanted to burn our offices down.

You nursed me all weekend and on Sunday, you said boldly that we would not be doing church. I was shocked, you never skipped church let alone call it something we “do.” I realised you were a little mad at God. As you lowered the top of the car so that we were sun kissed and smiling, you asked that we take a drive to an ice cream parlour. Apparently, sunshine is dopamine too. Did you know that? Did you lower the sunroof on purpose to medicate my sadness?

There is a word that says, our souls sign contracts before coming to earth. In these contracts, we choose who we want to be to the souls within our soul families. We can choose to be lessons or comfort. I feel as though I was a lesson to you and you were comfort to me. I want to ask again though, since lessons aren’t always bad, in fact they are known to bring growth: did I embolden you when I asked you to choose us? Did I give you hope to know that we would be okay without him? I know that for me, with every hug and every silence as you listened, you made me feel seen, gave me confidence that only a parent can.

So, I wonder, mama, with our very colourful relationship, if we would also have grown apart but kept fighting to hold on because the world forbids a mother and child to ever part unless by death. Ha, death. Didn’t I wear you out with my questioning and larger-than-life persona? Do you think it fair that I was the child chosen for you and that you never had another to cushion the amount of falls and blows I sent your way? Through our differences (assuming our souls knew our future) I chose your womb. Coiled with nourishment as you fed me some of the food I’d grow to love.

They say souls sign contracts to grow and heal each other. They say God sends us angels on earth to watch over us. I say fate wove our destinies. Fate knew I’d need the water and wind to my fiery spirit. To blow abundance where I grow, and put out my fumes. I hope in the same way you smoothed into a shine my rough edges, that I sharpened your boldness. I love how eventually you were soft and nurturing but still knew to say NO.

I had hoped that one day when I’d be ready to come home, that you would tell me how you feel fate chose me for you. Loved you through me. But I guess mine is to read this letter out loud and hope you hear my heart. I love you, mama.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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