I remembered something today. I remember waking up early during the summer holidays from boarding school and creeping downstairs to my daddy’s study to find him alone and lost in pensiveness. We would sit soaking the silence of our home for a little bit before branching into quiet yet deep conversations on a myriad of topics. A lot of wisdom I found, I found in daddy. I remember at fourteen, my daddy said to me, “Nkem remember that what good men want is a woman with intelligence and independence”. At fourteen, the elasticity of my mind’s understanding was limited; my concept of the independent woman was fully shaped by what Destiny’s Child told me, but I wouldn’t tell him that! Lol. I wanted our magic moment to continue and so I nodded wisely and filed the information in a velvet box deep in my subconscious.

At twenty six, I find that those words from daddy and so many others certainly hold water.

It takes maturity and wisdom to fully comprehend the vastness of a father’s love. It’s depth and purity are beautiful. My father and I argue; he is incredibly wise and I am practical but sometimes irrational so clashes are inevitable. I love that despite our ram-horn-dancing, I have never, ever doubted the sincerity of my father’s love.

It came to me the other day while strolling down Memory’s fine lane, that as children my dad would ever so often, pick a Sunday morning and designate it ‘Daddy’s Making Breakfast’ day. My sisters and I would be inexplicably excited all weekend as we went with daddy to the shops to buy the groceries for this ‘special breakfast’. On those Sundays, my mum would laze about in bed while daddy and daddy’s Angels of Mischief buzzed about the kitchen squeezing fruits for juice, arranging slices of toast, the girls generally being a nuisance, chattering about daddy as he made breakfast.

I think of this as an adult and I have to say here that perhaps romance is not what we often think of it as. We often say Nigerian men are most unromantic but I’d pick real care and catering over candles and cakes. My mum would float down the stairs in her housecoat after we’d excitedly run up to her in bed to inform her, “Breakfast is ready!” She would majestically sail down the stairs and make all the appropriate sounds at the love feast we so proudly prepared, however horrid or otherwise. My dad’s a good cook so the food always tasted yummy. The food arrangement orchestrated by the girls on the other hand….

I remember my dad waking us up in the morning with a song sang in his morning voice “…Good morrrning, good morning to youuuuuuu!” and his many pet names for my younger sisters ranging from Biggie to a gruff bear cry of “Swweeeeddddd’heaaaarrtt” when he got in from work and spotted an already excited Ibiso on the nanny’s lap.

I can’t complain, God is good to me, I got a sweet deal on this family matter. No refund necessary. Lol.

It’s funny that as we get older, we begin to suspect that our parents are perhaps not always right however genuine their intentions. The tensions inevitably increase as we insist on carving our own way in this oppressive sphere of a world. On closer inspection, I realise that all that keeps my sphere in place is the guarantee that that love from my childhood, has matured like fine palm wine and today sends out a strong fragrance of love no matter how far apart I am from my parents, geographically and metaphorically. The fragrance of my daddy’s love still surrounds me wherever I go so much so that my actions often stem from the security of being loved, of being useful, of ‘mattering’ to someone.

But my father’s love had to mature with me as I grew and as he got older otherwise it might perhaps have become effusive, blinding, tangibly impressive. Instead, my daddy’s love is present and constant yet unobstructive, invincible yet invisible, like the trees it is always there…but never really noticed. A love like this allows me to leap boundlessly because my subconscious always reminds me that there is a net with my name lovingly etched on each twine. That’s my daddy’s love. It gives because it is. I don’t know how else to explain it, its purpose for being is to give of itself and so it does so without thank you’s, without returns, without understanding why it must. It just is.

To be loved like that, is the elixir of life. I once told a friend about my daddy and I and after my litany of praises, he said, “Now I understand why you are so confident.”

Perfect Love Casts Out Fear
-1 John 4:18