By Osa Mbonu

I am overwhelmed by the number of people who send me text messages and emails telling me how they love reading me and the great lessons they learn from my writings.

It makes me to remember something my father told me one day while I was in my pineapple orchid in the village around 1986. We were quarrelling and arguing over whether I was going to be useful in life or not. I told him I was going to, in feature, write all that were happening then for everyone to read. Out of anger he said: “Who is going to read what you are going to write?”

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That was where the quarrel ended for that day. My father was a state attorney who wanted all his children to follow his success trails immediately. But we were too stubborn, preferring to goof around and waste our time. My father, even with all the love he had for us, did not tolerate such nonsense. He did everything to impress it deep down us that education is the key.

I loved Papa so much. Sometimes we would engage in war of words which often became spectacles for neighbors in the village. One day as people gathered to listen to their lawyer and one of his stubborn children quarreling  and causing grammar to fly like missiles, I described a man in the office of my father’s friend over whom we were quarrelling and everyone, including my father burst into laughter.

Out of anger, or mere carelessness, we all say a lot of things we don’t really mean. My father is not the only one guilty in the way we talk to our kids when they infuriate us. I am also guilty. And I know that a lot of people reading this now are guilty too.

It’s my wife that always cautions me over things I say to my kids whenever they made me angry. However, whenever a father or mother shouts “you are a fool” to his children, he wants them to be wise. Even when we raise our hands and beat our children it is because we love them and want them to turn out well in life.

But all that not withstanding, I would have loved it so much if my father had been alive today; alive today to see that his son is actually telling the story of his life and a lot of people are reading it and enjoying it. I am sure he would have been happier for me than I am for myself. He probably would have even been happy that he had challenged me to work hard to do what I said I would do.

What can we learn from this? One, no matter how angry we may be, we should not curse or discourage our children. Even when we fight with them, we should not hack them down. Words are too powerful. They can harm or bless. When we apply words to our children let the words be words that will bless them, and not words that will curse or discourage them.

Another lesson inherent in this story is that no one is God. Only God has power to write one off, and yet, God hardly does that. That’s why he made forgiveness available. People change, for good or for bad, though. Things change. Situations change. Circumstances change. Anything, mostly good things, can happen tomorrow. The person you wrote off as “never can” or “never will” can can or will will one day.

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For quite some time now, I have tried to guide my life based on 2 scriptures from the Bible: “Don’t use bad language. Say only what is good and helpful to those you are talking to and what will give them blessing.” (Ephesians 4:29).

The other scripture is similar: “Anyone who says he is a Christian but doesn’t control his sharp tongue is just fooling himself, and his religion isn’t worth much.” (James 1:26).

The sin of the tongue is one sin we frequently fall into. But whenever we do, there is another scripture which is a remedy: “Love covereth all sins” (Proverbs 10:12). It means that any time we fall into the sin of using foul words against our children, or another sentinel being for that matter, if we can genuinely apply good doses of love on that person, that sin will be covered and subsequently cleared. If it is a curse we inadvertently laid on them, the love we have for our children will not allow those bad words to stick. My father has sufficient doses of such love for us.

I remember later, after all those quarrels, when I began to study in the university at Ile-Ife, my father would drive me to Ogbaku whenever I was going back to school. It was usually early in the morning when he himself was dressed to go to court. He always went in the company of one of our town man, Mr. Hygenius Ekeh. After I had boarded one of those luxury buses going to Lagos, my father and Mr. Hygenius would still sit inside my father’s car waiting for my bus to depart. I would be watching them from the window sit where I sat and they would be watching me and discussing until my bus would depart before I see them drive away.

In 2015 when my mother died and I went home, Mr. Hygenius gave me some hints of what he used to discuss about me with my father in those days while sitting inside his car waiting for my bus to depart. I had performed one of my songs the day my mother was buried. That evening, Mr. Hygenius, who was not in the habit of much talk, came to me in our compound. He said he came to see me. I became curious and took him to our sitting room.

He told me that he listened to the song I performed in the afternoon after the burial; that my father loved me so much and appreciated my efforts but he had wished I had studied law or something else better than music. Mr. Hygenius, who was our closest neighbor in the village and a witness to many of our quarrels, said that my father would have been so happy to see me sing the way I sang; that he (Hygenius) was happy that my father decided to give me all the support I needed to become whatever positive thing I wanted to be. Seeing the performance and hearing that song,  he said, told him that all has ended well.

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Mr. Hygenius did not know the story of “who is going to read what you are going to write”. But he was right in some other ways. Today, everything has ended well. At least, people are reading what I write. It is a win-win outcome for me and my father. My prayer is that all our children shall become whatever good things they aspire to be in life in.

See you next week by God’s grace.