At the Abuja Airport on his way back to Lagos, he thought of going to the international wing instead, buying a ticket to somewhere improbable, like Malabo. Then he felt a passing self-disgust because he would not, of course, do it; he would instead do what he was expected to do. He was boarding his Lagos flight when Kosi called.
"Is the flight on time? Remember we are taking Nigel out for his birthday," she said.
"Of course I remember."
A pause from her end. He had snapped.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I have a funny headache."
"Darling, ndo. I know you're tired," she said. "See you soon."
He hung up and thought about the day their baby, slippery, curly-haired Buchi, was born at the Woodlands Hospital in Houston, how Kosi had turned to him while he was still fiddling with his latex gloves and said, with something like apology, "Darling, we'll have a boy next time." He had recoiled. He realized then that she did not know him. She did not know him at all. She did not know he was indifferent about the gender of their child. And he felt a gentle contempt towards her, for wanting a boy because they were supposed to want a boy, and for being able to say, fresh from birthing their first child, those words "we'll have a boy next time". Perhaps he should have talked more with her, about the baby they were expecting and about everything else, because although they exchanged pleasant sounds and were good friends and shared comfortable silences, they did not really talk. But he had never tried, because he knew that the questions he asked of life were entirely different from hers.
I relate to this so much. How do we account for such things? That people are just different? At a different frequency? We should always attempt to bridge connection with anyone, right (shouldn't we?), but as I grow older, I also grow more cognizant of how differently I perhaps see the world. My current internal struggle involves having to square with this very fact: that most people don't see the way I see the world, and that I can't fault them for that. I can't get angry that some people don't get it. Actually, don't we all see the world differently? I don't know. It's all very confusing, and leaves me a heartache.
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