Many are the letters that I have written to my father, some in my head and some on paper. Letters that he will never receive. Letters that I will never send. Letters that he will never know exist.
I do not want to torture you with the details about me and my father’s relationship. All I can say is that ours is a sad, pathetic, painfully numbing tale, one that would make my therapist call her therapist. Not that I can afford a therapist. For now, my therapy plan includes cat videos on Instagram, the ever-chaotic KOT and occasional strolls at Karura forest. This combination works as erratically as KPLC.
I digress. I was talking about the letters I write to my father, these letters that he will never read. Today, I wanted to write another letter to him and have you read it on his behalf. I wanted to ask him many questions; questions from a child to a father.
I want to write a letter to my father to ask him why he stopped singing. You see I like sleep and ever since I was little, I always woke up to the sound of my father’s voice. At first cock crow, every day and without fail, my father’s voice would travel across the thin walls of our home’s many rooms. Booming, he would sing and worship in baritone. And we would all cover our heads and go deeper in our duvets to block his voice out, in vain attempts to enjoy the last minutes of that sweet morning sleep. The bravado of his morning devotions were akin to the Nigerian Joyous Celebration concerts on YouTube. In those days, we did not have YouTube, we had my father. To top it off he would pray, loudly too.
‘Si aombe kimoyomoyo!’ My brother,Brown, would whine.
Our choir master would then arise and go about his duties in the home. He would be outside trimming the hedge and you would hear all about Joshua and the walls of Jericho in song. He would be carrying jerry cans of water into the house from the storage tank and you would hear all about the 12 disciples in song and whistling, hitting all the right notes. These songs are still loud in my head. Now that I remember, the only times I ever saw a calm or merry expression on my father’s face are the times he sang in the morning. Somewhere along the line, he just stopped singing. And we did not notice. We also did not care. We got to sleep better in the mornings. We did not notice that he had stopped singing. And now, I want to know why he stopped singing.
I want to write a letter to my father to ask him about the church, his church. You see, my father had his own church. He built it himself, from five members (himself, myself, my mother, my brother, and his best friend) to a large congregation. I cannot remember much of how he preached. I was too young and church services always seemed too long, dull and boring. They still do. Now that I think of it, I never attended any of them despite being in the church compound for most of them. The only reason I went to church was because every Sunday, my mother would dress us up and take us to church. Brown would disappear immediately after the 30 minutes Sunday school session. I would have to wait until past 3 pm, long after the service was done and father remained to counsel and talk to members of the congregation who wished to call upon his spiritual guidance. I would wait long after my mother and the rest of the congregation had gone off to their homes. I would wait for my father. When he was done fulfilling his pastoral responsibilities, he would carry me on his shoulders and we would go home. He would buy me soda on the way. My father was my hero and first friend as a child. In my eyes, he could do no wrong. But that was before I got to understand who he really was.
Then the church began to crumble. Slowly and slowly, the congregation waned. Soon, he had only a dozen believers in his congregation. Shortly after, the church closed down and our home’s choir master lost his first love- the church. He had lost his faith in people long before that. This was at the same time that I was discovering that our home was quite the jungle and living there was like walking on a forest full of landmines. Many of these landmines exploded. There were many casualties, multiple times. It was at the same time that as children we learned that avoiding the master of this jungle was key to our survival, at least some of the time. We did a little dance every time he left home for he travelled a lot. We did not want to hear him. And surely, we did not want to see him.
I want to ask him how it felt losing his first love. I want to know if it hurt. Did he cry? I want to ask him what it felt like walking every day past the building he had called church for so many years on his way to the town center. Did he look at the building every time he passed or looked on straight ahead as though that building did not exist? Did he take another route instead? I want to know what it felt like having to look at what used to be church benches now being rained on and rotting away in the compound of our home. It would be some time before he ordered us to use the wood from these benches as firewood. Maybe it was at that point that he quit holding on. Maybe that is when he stopped singing for his heavenly father.
There are many questions that the child in me wants to ask my father. There is a bluebird in me that wants to forget the past and come out and sing, merrily like my father used to. But I cannot let her. There is a little girl in me that wants to be carried again on my father’s shoulders on walks home. A part of me wants to go back to a simpler time, a time when my father sang in the morning. But too much time has passed. The trauma has taken root and we have learned to live with it. We have embraced the silence and grown attached to it. And so I write these letters to my father. Letters he will never read. Letters I will never send. Letters he will never know exist.
Lately, my relationship with God has been on the rocks. Estranged, just like the relationship I have with he whose last name I take. I am constantly questioning and unlearning. I am torn and I feel lost. I cannot pray because heaven seems closed. God seems so far away. Worse, he is becoming unreal. Plagued by all these Christian girl troubles, I want to write another letter to my father. I have questions.