My Mum…

When I was growing up I knew my mum was a genius she knew everything, when you misbehaved she knew about it even before you got home and considering there were no mobile phones the flow of information was amazing. Mention any English word she knew the definition. All the subjects we were learning in school she could tutor us in the evening the only difference being hers was with a lot of fighting in the evening. How could she know so much and she was not the teacher and she never came to class when the teacher was teaching us, was a real wonder.

Mum used to make us write compositions but her marking were like personal vendettas because she was very mean with marks. She taught me pronunciation of many words, but there is one word she told me how it is pronounced and I have never forgotten. Every time I pronounce the word or hear it pronounced it reminds me of her and I go wow! Mum told me how that word is pronounced. I still wonder why that word stood out among all the other vocabularies she helped me add in my mental dictionary. Am sure by now curiosity is killing you about the word, the famous word is “naked” she taught me how it is correctly pronounced.

Now the scary message from mum. She told us playing with your navel causes stomach ache and my dad’s definition of stomach ache was eating anything with dirty hands. Those two gospels scared me so much that when I got a stomach ache, the first thing I used to do is elimination method to know the cause of the pains. At least I always knew I had not played with my navel so the cause of my stomach ache must be from eating with dirty hands or not washing my fruits before eating. For my mother the best medicine for a stomach ache was taking a lot of water and not medicine. At the time I did not think her prescriptions helped, but the stomach aches just used to go away after a good night sleep. Or was it that the body just decided it has no option but to get better because no sweet Actals that I used to hear from my friends were forth coming.

I always used to wonder why she never kept Actals like other mums, instead if one really needed to be given medicine it had to be the bitter Panadols pills which used to be crashed on a spoon into a nice powder, then some little sugar sprinkled on top and a few drops of water and you are told to swallow. I think to her the bitter the medicine the faster the healing. When you graduated from the sweet syrup your goose was cooked. It did not matter how the huge tablets were choking you, you had to swallow, it was either that or an injection. Yes, that's right, the choice was yours the patient. Democracy even when you are sick.

Nice Job Mum!