{"id":3900,"date":"2019-07-01T11:39:01","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T11:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/?p=3900"},"modified":"2019-07-25T11:11:02","modified_gmt":"2019-07-25T11:11:02","slug":"an-ode-to-my-pops%ef%bb%bf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/2019\/07\/an-ode-to-my-pops%ef%bb%bf","title":{"rendered":"An Ode to my Pops!\ufeff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n


<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deoye Falade<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1995, a few months after my brother\u2019s birth, our home\nwas attacked by a band of robbers. I was just about leaving for school and my\ndad was in front of me, only for us to step in front of a gun as we opened the\ndoor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He pushed me back inside as the robbers went in on him,\nhitting him and asking for our landlord, a Customs officer. I was inside when I\nheard the gun go off and abandoning all reasoning, my sister and I ran outside\nto look for our father, crying our eyes out. We didn\u2019t find him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost an hour after the horrifying ordeal, our dad and\nanother tenant, Dr Oke walked through the gate. Apparently, the robbers got\ndistracted and they both found a way to escape. The gunshot wasn\u2019t for them but\nthe landlord, but it wasn\u2019t a kill shot. Nobody died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That experience kicked my overactive imagination into\noverdrive. What if my father had died? This train of thought wasn\u2019t helped by\nthe ton of grace to grass Nollywood films at the time where a family gets\nruined once the breadwinner dies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thought about this a lot and concluded that if I was\nto lose a parent, I didn\u2019t want it to be my dad. I simply wanted to be well\ntaken care of and while those were pretty dark thoughts for a nine-year-old but\nI couldn\u2019t help it. Another tenant had lost his wife a few years prior, but\nthey seemed fine, grief notwithstanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once my brother was six-months-old, my mom went back to\nschool in Nsukka for her second and final semester. She was still pregnant with\nhim when she did her first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s always been that way since I was four. Every now\nand then, she\u2019d take a study leave to pursue her degree, so a good part of my\nformative years was punctuated with having just our dad running the home. We\nmissed mom when she was away, but we were fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father wasn\u2019t just a parent, he was our source of\nfinancial security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between 1998 and 2000, that financial security hit the\nrocks. My dad\u2019s business struggled and my mom, a civil servant had to pick up\nthe slack\u200a\u2014\u200aadmirably so. We\nmoved from our rented apartment in the pretty decent New Oko-Oba to our then\nunfinished house in Iju just to stay on budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My pretty sheltered existence was suddenly overtaken by\na new reality. For kids who watched cable TV and had played every video game\nmanufactured till date, we now had to live in a house with no power supply\nwhile we walked some kilometres away to fetch water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes, my dad had to borrow transport money for me\nto go to school and I suffered academically. We all did. I even had to repeat a\nclass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things took a turn for the better towards the end of the\nyear 2000. Dad took centre stage again and all was fine with the world till I\ngraduated. He wasn\u2019t home often as he worked outside Lagos, but my school was\nin the same state. If I wanted something, all I needed to do was ask and I got\nit\u200a\u2014\u200awell, most of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I\u2019ve failed to mention in between was our strained\nrelationship. My dad had a temper and could be critical with his verbal\nexpressions. I on my part felt I was failing to live up to his expectations of\nme as his first son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I became avoidant. Thankfully, spending the\nremaining part of my secondary education (and my university education) outside\nLagos helped. It was simple: if we rarely saw each other, I couldn\u2019t piss him\noff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, he showed up whenever I needed him. He always\nfound a way to spend time with his kids (we preferred him when he\u2019s had a beer\nor two though\u200a\u2014\u200ahe was more jovial\nthat way). Sometimes he\u2019d come home and\ntake us interstate to work and back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During my third year at Olabisi Onabanjo University, we\nwere studying advertising law and ethics. We were given an assignment on\nadvertising byelaws at local government level. My dad drove me round Ijebu-Ode\nas I gathered materials for the assignment. He usually made himself available,\nbut I was the one who wasn\u2019t talking\/opening up\u200a\u2014\u200aI was still too wounded to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, we barely understood each other\u200a\u2014\u200aor he didn\u2019t understand\/know\nthe young man I\u2019d become. Rather\nthan ask me what was up with me, he\u2019d ask my mom\nbecause I always had the default answer\u200a\u2014\u200a\u201cEverything\u2019s fine\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was I still dating the girl who used to call his phone\nto speak to me when my Motorola broke? Was I happy at work? Did I need money?\nWas I being hassled by cultists? Were my grades good?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEverything\u2019s fine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We just didn\u2019t talk. I wasn\u2019t talking. Or more\nappropriately, I didn\u2019t talk till I needed something, and he did his part. On my\nown part, I was quiet, had few friends (before social media) and rarely lost my\nhead to warrant getting talked about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything was fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then I grew to not need him anymore\u200a\u2014\u200aat least the part of him I\u2019d considered valuable since that robbery attack in 1995.\nHe on his part was winding down his active career as a veterinary doctor and\nwas contending with existential issues of his own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can a man still be called a father when he can\u2019t really\nprovide any more or his family doesn\u2019t need him as they used to?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was ugly but he rolled with the punches. He pissed\nus off, we pissed him off, fought both verbal and silent wars. He\u2019d wonder if\nwe were only bold to disagree with him since we now had our own money. We\u2019d\ntell him money had nothing to do with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It didn\u2019t help that mom had a while before retirement\nand he was mostly home. As always, she was the other shoulder to rely on, but\nthis bruised his ego and he felt undermined, sad and at certain points,\ncontemplated death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he got over it and it wasn\u2019t till he did before I\nbegan to understand what he\u2019d gone through. My dad only had two things\u200a\u2014\u200awork and family. He had very few friends and outside\nwork relationships, we were the only friends he had. He was back home; I was\nback home and we finally had to deal after years of a one-sided avoidance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the day, money didn\u2019t matter. If you ask\nme now which parent I wouldn\u2019t like to lose, I\u2019d say both because I consider\nmyself incredibly lucky to have them alive. The wheels have turned now and\nwe\u2019re the ones sending money home but having my dad bombard me with WhatsApp\nprayers daily is not something I\u2019d give up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t usually the best of moods or circumstances,\nbut my dad has always been around when it mattered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve had to take a long journey to loving my dad. I went\nfrom fear to avoidance to tolerance to forgiveness to respect to acceptance and\nthen love. I\u2019d rather not have gone through this, but we were both on separate\njourneys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess perspective helps; I\u2019d always thought you had it\nall figured out if you\u2019re older but seeing my dad go through the years made me\nrealise he\u2019s had to find himself at every stage, just like I\u2019ve had to\u200a\u2014\u200aconstantly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ageing doesn\u2019t just give you answers;\nit poses new questions as well.\n\nWe\nstill don\u2019t talk much but like everything else, we\u2019re \n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Deoye Falade In 1995, a few months after my brother\u2019s birth, our home was attacked by a band of robbers. I was just about leaving for school and my dad was in front of me, only for us to step in front of a gun as we opened the door. He pushed me back inside […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3900"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3931,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3900\/revisions\/3931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}