Aging Into the Questions I Still Can’t Answer
What does it mean to be settled when the world thinks you’re not?
I like to collect watches and recently started building my watch collection. I like to spend my waking moments listening to the ticking of a watch in a box at the foot of my bed. On some days, the subtle, constant sound of the hands sweeping from minute to minute reminds me that God is always at work even when I can’t see it. On other days, I am reminded that time is passing…
It is 3.39 A.M. when I write these words.
On Tuesday, it was 8.00 P.M when my sisters and I had dinner with my dad. If there’s one thing African parents have mastered, it is the art of pulling you aside for one-on-one conversations about the “important stuff”. If there’s another thing they have mastered, it’s the art of asking the “when are you getting married?” question without saying those words.
My dad never asks this classic question in a direct way. He prefers to ask “how is your social life?”, a question which has absolutely nothing to do with my relationship with fellow citizens of Lagos as much as it has to do with settling down.
Several times during the conversation, I caught myself looking at my watch, not out of boredom or mental fatigue for not having the answers. I really wished my watch could take me back in time to when things were probably simpler. I’m pretty sure the dating scene is nothing like it was in the 1970s. I really wish dating was as simple as running into a nubile doe-eyed maiden on the way from the stream and asking her to “tell your people to expect my people”. If I had more time, I would have talked my dad through the amusement park that is the dating scene. There are so many moving parts-japa compatibility, Snapchat streaks, talking stages, red flags, princess treatment, effort, love languages, first date conversations, plates with chocolate letters, intentional men and women, QR codes at Lagos restaurants. I just want to sleep abeg.
My problem isn’t time. It is answers. I genuinely don’t have the answers to the “When are you getting married?” question. “I don’t know” is supposed to be a sufficient answer. But when you are closer to forty than you are to twenty, an acknowledgement of ignorance can be a pointer to something being wrong. In a previous edition of this newsletter, I wrote these words:
“What is it about being single that makes people assume your life is plagued by instability, as if you emerge from a lice-infested bed of straws barely anchored to the bottom of the Lagos lagoon to go about your day?”
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I wish I could tell my dad that I have been angry enough at Cupid that defeathering him with a nail cutter would be an act of mercy. I wish I could say that I have bled, tried and failed and I wish I had the gift of being younger that allows you try and fail with minimal consequences. I am the older version of Wolverine. I don’t heal as quickly or easily so as much as I love love and all the benefits that come with the romantic mating dance, I have learned to choose my battles.
The irony is that this perhaps the most settled I have been in years. My life largely revolves around five cardinal points. Church. Friends. Volunteering. Work. Gym. God, my family and my friends are the greatest loves of my life. I get an insane endorphin-high from volunteering. Thinking about the positive ripple effects of carrying and tossing bags and boxes of food supplies at the Lagos Food Bank makes my face break into a smile. The post-Sinners conversation with a close friend is one of the highlights of the month. But for some reasons, this handful of joy will perhaps never be enough except I change the marital status I was born with.
The other day, a badly behaved police woman pulled social rank on me with the whole “I am a wife and a mother” spiel. I genuinely didn’t know what to respond with. I should probably have said “Should I tell the Igwe to organize an award for you?” But I digress.
I know that being a cool uncle will probably never measure up to having my own kid(s). I know that the endorphins I get from volunteering will likely never be as much as those I could derive from talking into the early hours of the morning with a woman I really like…and then to imagine those conversations never having a final full stop, My goodness. But this version, this version of Aloaye is a less-powerful Wolverine and he just wants to rest, whatever that means.
He also just wants to listen to his watch tick…
Photo by Eugene Shelestov on Pexels
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