Lesedi Mbipha shares a snack of her thoughts on the importance of family in one’s life
Looking at life with an everyday-“I am busy” or “got to get this done” eye can cheat you of the pleasures and beauty that life offers in each day.
While I visited my parents I realised how I allowed myself to focus on all the things I thought were tiring and boring bluntly turning a blind eye to detail. I realised that as I grow there are things that used to irritate me that I miss about my family like those debates my little sister and I dearest used to have while mom drinks her 4pm cup of tea- the 12th time of the day if I am not mistaken. Tea also makes a great part of our debates.
“Technology has come to destroy our indigenous way of life” that is how it would usually start, with one incident on the television and there… my sister and I are at it. Poor Ma, she always plays the referee all the time.
She would start on social networks knowing very well that they are a great part of my everyday life. “People no longer read books let alone magazines, people think knowing how to operate computers makes them literate but..” and then obesity follows , seeing that our youngest sister is a little meaty that a person her age is expected to be.
I would defend our little sister by saying she is the most flexible and active kid I know-not that, it would cut the debate any shorter. The intellectual in her is starting to unleash and she is becoming more confident in her facts, I am glad I told her about the debate team when she started high school last year.
The ugly truth about life
They always say: if you want things done right, do them yourself but there are things that not even the highest sitting president in the world has authority over. This brings back the sad memories of a year after losing my father thinking I could have done something to stop him from driving that afternoon, well it’s only when I got to tertiary that I realised that when God wants his way no one can stand in the way.
When my mother remarried I felt she just wanted to replace the one man that I know loved us and respected us so much…after I got hurt a couple of times I realised love is what mattered, after all she had to hang to it after being granted a second chance at it.
I look back and to think one thought this man was a substitute… but hey substitutes are not bad after all, they just missed the first part of the game. However, they are still fresh and have the energy to run till the last whistle is blown.
My pillar of strength
Visiting home for a week made it all seem appropriate it just kicked into my head the courage that I think I had lost while trying too hard to be what I want to see myself as in the future. “You sometimes don’t have to try so hard, deal with what is in front of you to get to the other side” that’s Ma giving me one of her lines that seem to be engraved in my mind and always pop out when I need her.
Just like her mother, my adorable grandmother she has grown to be the glue that keeps the family together as clichéd as that may sound it’s true. If I could be half of what she is I would be happy. She deals with my not-so-easy to deal with dad who at times makes me feel like screaming, then my little sister who has the lately developed the “I will do it later syndrome”, and then my youngest sister who cries over every little thing and has the energy of an athlete…tiring if you ask me. She still has her job to still attend to the family and well, me.
This to other people is just another family but to me they are my source of inspiration, my rock. My friends have often called me a mama’s baby at times I am glad I am, and when they say I would kill myself if my mother was to pass on, I look at them and say: I would celebrate her life and take with me what she teaches me in everyday.
I do not blame them, my friends, they do not understand to me they are like people who come to console you after you have lost a loved one claiming they understand your pain yet they have never lost a thing not even a pat. I now treasure every moment for there is almost nothing that measures to the love that my family poses for me, except for those days when I am with the apple of my eye.
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