BORN THIS WAY #WOMANDLA

It’s officially still Women’s Month right? Allow me to tilt the spotlight onto the eternal bliss that is a mother- daughter relationship…if only to help us move on from the heaviness that came through this column last week; because women are great for raising loud, expressive and opinionated women right? We are born this way and we are nurture this way ori kanjani?

‘Oh my word, you look exactly like your mum when she was your age’.
‘My mum is my best friend, I tell her everything’.

For the longest time I went about life not understanding the depth of these sentiments. There was actually a time when I’d convinced myself that these aliens who said this were spewing absolute green lies from Mars.
See, I’ve had a story book happy life – at least on the outside.

Mum and dad happily married upper middle-class second generation graduates, pictures of us on family holidays, picket fences and everything people think they need to make themselves happy. Plus, I’m an only child, biologically, and one would have expected that I be treated like a faberge egg; so fragile and so precious. Instead, Mum and I have always been at loggerheads. I’ll be honest, I often fantasised about what my life would be like if she wasn’t in it, and the answer would always come back as ‘pretty darn perfect’. I own that.  Judge away, but I know there’s at least one person who understands exactly what I’m saying.

Mum and I have always fought over big things; like the time she turned people away from my 18th birthday party because the sound system was too high (I’m still embarrassed whenever someone mentions that big day). We’ve also fought over small things like my addiction to thick, heavy eye liner and big gaudy earrings. One time she refused to let me ride to church in the family car because she deemed my earrings inappropriate. You can imagine how angry this would make a 16-year-old. This pattern carried through well into my 30s. 

Writing this right now, I feel her hovering, trying to censor every word because although I took after her outspokenness, she’s always believed being vocal was okay only when she does it and harmful and irresponsible when I fearlessly and shamelessly express my feelings. In fact, if you ever tell mum about her outspokenness, and how opinionated an imbhokodo she’s always been, she’ll go to great pains to explain that she’s not.

Disagreements

I turned a corner though when I realised that at the heart of our disagreements was a simple difference in temperament. The weirdest discovery of all was the intensity with which she loved me.

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