In the Absence of Kerosene: A Memory of My Mother
For our stove, my mother and I would take woven sacks to the sawmill opposite Samuels Street to collect wood waste. In the evenings, I watched her build a fire between three bricks, adding lath strips and sawdust before balancing a pot of cocoyam over the flames. She would rub palm oil beneath the pot, then smile and laugh as the fire caught. After dinner, we sat on the floor in our room beneath the fading light of a battery-operated torch. I told her what I had learned in school: the wind, human teeth and bones, and the states of water. When it was time to sleep, we sang worship songs together. I would tell her that going to the sawmill had been fun and that we should go every day. She would laugh again. Now, almost 11,000 kilometres separate us. Looking back, I understand that her smile carried grief and hurt too heavy for words. I once wished I could take that smile from her face, grow into it and learn how to hold pain with the same quiet strength. Some dreams arrive whole and pure, while the bright dreams we carry for years come late, broken or changed. Still, we smile. Still, we laugh.
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