Black mornings made beautiful

Life can be tough. I wake up some mornings to find that there is literally nothing to smile about. The kind of mornings when the alarm goes off but only the birds hear it, meaning that the day is off to a late start even before you realise that the power is out.

No electricity means that you have to boil water, which will set you back maybe another 10, 20 minutes. When you get to the stove, you find that you are out of gas. You call the gas guy and he says he’s in the CBD. It will take him 20, maybe 30 minutes to deliver.

So you gather the odd bits of charcoal that you have lying around and set about lighting the jiko. An hour later, you are still fanning a few scraggly flames, trying to set the embers ablaze. The gas guy still has not arrived.

When the jiko is finally lit, the lights come back on, and it becomes very apparent that on this day, life is not beautiful. It is as ugly as a gargoyle. With big, bulging eyeballs and a stupid grin on its face. Just like the gas guy when he finally casts his shadow across your door, acting like he just saved the world from destruction.

Its mornings like these that make you want to crawl right back under the covers and remain there until night fall.

Sometimes, I give in to the temptation and go back to bed for about five minutes, just to create the illusion that I could stay there if I wanted to. That I can do as I please and to hell with what anyone else wants, thinks or feels.

Last week was a particularly “bad morning” week. I suffered all manner of daybreak misfortunes like for instance, finding there was no milk for cereal, and better yet, the cereal itself had expired.

With those two discoveries, I shelved my healthy eating plan indefinitely. I mean hey, surely that must have been a sign from the gods that I should stick with muffins for breakfast. Not only are they delicious, but they require neither milk nor cereal.

On Monday, my mood was blacker than the odd bits of charcoal I had tried to light the jiko with. I was pacing the living room, mumbling unintelligibly to myself when Adoti, with her usual flair for the dramatic, put one hand on her face and began to laugh.

“Haa-haa ... ahaa-haa!” she chortled, her mouth open so wide that I could see her freshly-minted pre-molars. “Haa-haa ...ahaa-haa!”

I could not help but laugh. It was obvious that she was mimicking my laughing style, even as she had a wee giggle at her Mama’s expense.

It struck me right at that moment that life is never that serious. If you cannot laugh at yourself, then your 16-month old will do it for you.

So we laughed together and life was beautiful again. As beautiful as the broad grin on my little girl’s face.

But yeah, she is not so little anymore. The child is growing fast. Every morning I notice a change.

Gone are the days when she would rather have spent time doing anything else other than hanging out with her Mama.

These days, she cries when I leave the house. And when I get home, she seems genuinely happy that I am back. The young’un will actually sit next to me on the couch and engage me in a conversation — she’s still speaking “Chinese” but somehow we have learned to communicate.

I am also noticing that she’s beginning to observe my reactions, almost as if she is getting to know me as a person and not just the vessel through which God gave her life.

She mimics all my expressions and very often, I am horrified at some of the faces and gestures I make on a day-to-day.

She is also learning how to stay out of trouble. I know this because we have not had any water-dispenser episodes recently. The child is learning how to get on Mama’s good side. When she is touching something that she knows she should not — like a paper punch or a can of Doom —all I have to do is call out to her and before I even say her name, she is running towards me with the offending item in her hands, hands outstretched as if to say, “Here you go Ma’, I know I’m not supposed to touch it!”

But the one thing that gets me every time is her sense of fair and unfair.

Whenever I shout at her and she knows she does not deserve it, she bows her head, looks up at me with her brow furrowed and gives me a look that says, “Y’know that ain’t right Ma’.”