My mum makes me scapegoat for her past mistake

Dear Agatha,

I’m 19 and a 200 level student in one of the universities. My boyfriend has just finished his youth service and is yet to get a job. He still stays with his parents who are still picking his bills.

My mother is a single parent. My father abandoned her when she was pregnant of me. Since then, she has refused to re-marry out of bitterness.

I’m her only investment as well as the only family she has.  I understand from her that her entire family disowned her. It was a stranger that picked her from the street and helped her to get back on her feet.  The woman died this year.  Her father, until his death never bothered about her or me. Her mother too hasn’t for once called.  Only her brother used to call her, but stopped when their father threatened to disown him.

Because of my mother’s experience, I have been very careful with boys; but there is something about my boyfriend that is so compelling. I love him to a fault and would do anything to make him happy.

He has been demanding for sex, but I have kept refusing him. But I know I would eventually agree to it because of what I feel for him.

But I don’t want to disappoint my mother who is forever telling me her story to guide me against making the same mistake she made. My mother is just 35.

Agatha, I’m sure my boyfriend won’t turn out like my father because he loves me and has promised to marry me as soon as he gets a job. He is 23 years old.

Another thing is that I’m beginning to resent my mother because I feel she is making me the scapegoat for her mistakes.  She doesn’t want to see me with any man until I graduate. I don’t think it is fair at all. After all, I didn’t ask my father to abandon her or her family for that matter.

She made her choice; I want to be left to make my mistakes and choices in life. Is that too much to ask at my age?

Dupe.

Dear Dupe,

What is your main concern? Going to bed with your boyfriend or your mother’s way of parenting? What is actually eating you up? Life is about having a focus. You won’t go far if you at this early stage of your life if begin to load your plate with so many issues all at once.

From your letter, more than the issue of having sex with your boyfriend is resentment for your mother.  Given what she has gone through, can you blame her for wanting to protect you against the likes of your father who got her pregnant at 15 and abandoned her to face life all by herself? It couldn’t have been easy for her to have been turned out and denied by her family.  Despite the help and support of the kind stranger, she will never forget until she dies how her conduct took away the love and company of her family. Perhaps, if your father and his family had come to own up to their responsibilities, her family may not have condemned her so much. While not in support of their actions, having their 15-year-old daughter pregnant without any man coming forward to claim the baby, couldn’t have been easy for them to accept too.

Don’t be rude and insensitive to the experiences of your mother by saying it is the choice she made. Yes, she had a say in the incident that brought about your existence, but taking on the entire responsibility for you at that age when she was still very much a child herself, isn’t a choice she made. Don’t forget that she could easily have put you up for adoption or since remarried if she was thinking of herself alone.

If she had also turned her back on you like your father did, you won’t be in a position to question her manner of parenting or accusing her of making you a scapegoat for her own mistakes. Standing by you means you are not a mistake to her. If she hasn’t bothered to go back to her family; is determined to give you a good life, means she loves you very much and wouldn’t want you to be in her shoes. Rather than bemoan her refusal to give you the freedom to associate openly with boys, appreciate her sacrifice. At only 34, she still has some good years to be fulfilled as a woman.

In her shoes, any woman would say the things she is saying to you. No mother wants her child, especially her daughter to make the same mistakes she made in life. I agree that mothers sometimes go over the board in their quest to drive some points home but, that doesn’t give you any reason to be rude to her.

If you say her current lifestyle is a choice she made, yes, you are right; but, shouldn’t you learn from her mistake? Do you too want to go down the same road you are condemning and blaming for your woes? Only a wise student of life learns from the mistake of others.

The question is: Are you ready to learn from your mother’s mistake? From your letter, I seriously doubt if you have learnt anything from seeing her pains and living with her mistakes.

If you have, you won’t be thinking of having sex with your boyfriend or vouching for him.  Even if he doesn’t leave you, do you think it is a good testimonial for you and your mother that you too got pregnant outside wedlock and while at school?

Love and wisdom go together. Your mother became a single parent because at 15, she lacked the wisdom to deal with what she felt for your father. You may be 19 and in the university, but your story won’t be any better if you get pregnant for a man who is still dependent on his family for sustenance.  He may have graduated, but he doesn’t have a job to sustain whatever will come out of your decision to have sex.

There is no way his family or your mother would want to take on the responsibility of fending for a baby in addition to what they are doing for both of you.

The wisdom you have to apply is to be patient until you graduate and able to handle and caring for yourself and a child.

At 19, you are not exactly a child as you are making it so obvious.  It is high time you sat your mother down for a heart-to-heart discussion. Just as you are anxious about your own love life, also be worried about the lack of it in your mother’s life.  Like I said earlier, she is still young and needs love in her own life. Very soon, you would be leaving to begin your own life and that would mean her being on her own completely.

She has done more than enough for you; this is the time to help her stand again and see life from a different perspective by encouraging her to go on a date.

She has to forget the past and take on the future. She cannot continue to make herself unhappy by living only for you. The fact that your father betrayed her doesn’t mean the next man would. Your happiness and freedom is in ensuring she begins to take interest in herself as a woman and not just as a mother.

Your maturity in handling this difficult phase in your lives will give her all the assurances that you have indeed grown and quite capable of dealing with your own challenges as a young woman. Fighting her on the other hand, will make her more determined to protect you from yourself.

Good luck

Hard to say his biological mother is a whore

Dear Agatha,

I have just been told by my doctor, that I’ve very limited time to live. According to him, leukemia has eaten too deep into my system.

That is okay by me since I have lived a good life and can say I am fulfilled. My only child is doing very well as God has blessed me with four beautiful grandchildren.

I can’t complain except that a recent letter I received, threatening to smear my happiness.

It all happened 40 years ago when a prostitute who used to patronise my shop got pregnant. That day, she came to my shop located at Campus Square, Lagos, to buy rice. I noticed she had puffy eyes and wasn’t in her usual jovial mood. 

She didn’t take her food away but sat on my side of the table. I allowed her be. It was more than a whole hour before she told me about her predicament. She was pregnant and wanted to terminate the pregnancy because it would affect her job.

Being childless after three years of marriage, I advised against it. She asked if I would be interested in having the baby since she had no intention of keeping it. I told her I would give the whole world to have a baby to call my own.

I said this to encourage her. That was the last I saw of her until one morning, I came to my shop to start preparing for the sales of the day and I met the most shocking but pleasant sight in the world. It was a beautiful bouncing baby boy in a milk carton. 

He was neatly dressed. Inside the carton was a note from the mother that I should look after the baby as mine since I desperately wanted one. In it, she told me, she wanted the freedom to live her life the way she wanted it and didn’t want a fatherless baby stopping her.

I was sad at her rejection of the baby but glad she gave him to me. Six months before the incident, my husband and his people had thrown me out for another woman who was carrying my husband’s baby.

That morning, I didn’t bother with my shop that day; I took the baby to my mother in Mushin.

That was how I started a new life all together with the child. He brought me luck because suddenly everything started working well for me so much so I was able to buy an expanse of land at Palm Avenue.

I was able to send him abroad to study medicine and today he is one of the very best in the country.

Now, his biological mother has sent a note insisting, she wants to meet him. I called her on the number she gave, she assured me her intention is simply to know him and nothing more.

Agatha, the question is how do I tell him he isn’t mine? How do I tell him that he bears my mother’s maiden name? And that he is the son of a prostitute and that he has no father?

He is a very sensitive young man. How do I face my grandchildren with the truth concerning their heritage?

Do I beg her to allow me die before breaking the news to him and his family? Would he ever be able to love me again as his mother or accord me any respect for lying to him all these while?

Please help me resolve this issue before I die. This is a race against time.

Arinola.

 Dear Arinola,

I can imagine all the different emotions going on inside of you. It isn’t easy coping with the knowledge that any moment one would stop breathing but don’t we all carry around the same death sentence? Even the doctor who has given you the verdict isn’t exempted from the mortal end we all come with.

For this reason, learn to celebrate each day with thanksgiving to God for His mercies that have kept you thus far. For the experiences as well as the opportunity of allowing you share in the excitement, pains as well growth of this young man.

Also celebrate the gift of your grandchildren as well as your daughter-in-law. You deserve to be happy after labouring to sustain his life through his nascent days to adulthood.

These are memories and investment no other woman can take away from you or deny you the opportunity of savouring.

Yes, she gave birth to him that is a basic fact which cannot also be denied her, for this she has a right to meet with him and get to know the son she carried in her womb for nine months. After all, if she had made the choice many young girls in her position daily make, you wouldn’t have had him to nurse.

Again, don’t forget that she had a choice of strangulating him at birth, dumping him inside the toilet or dustbin but she elected to bring him to your shop as a special gift to you. It could have been another woman who had him in your place. Something could have happened to you that morning to stop you from coming to the shop. The baby would have been taken to the Police Station and subsequently to the motherless babies’ home.

Call her whatever name you want to call her but she ensured she gave her baby to the woman she knew would give him a good home. She must have known how desperate you are to have a child, knew about all your matrimonial problems due to your childlessness hence decided to bless you with her baby, who she knew she could ill-afford to look after at that time.

That she knew where to locate you with a note suggests that she has never been far away from her child. What she feels is natural, she longs to touch as well as behold the child she carried in the secret of her belly.

Whether she is or was a prostitute is immaterial, this would never stop the maternal longings she has endured all these while.

Whatever her short-comings God designed your son to come to you through that process. If she hadn’t gone into prostitution, gotten pregnant in the way she did, you wouldn’t have had a child to call your own. She could have gone into prostitution simply to help give you this child. God’s ways are mysterious.

So in more ways than one, you must ensure their re-union and help douse the attendant tension on the part of mother and child.

This child is yours because you nursed him from the first moments of his life. He has your love deep inside his heart, so don’t be afraid he would ever stop loving you or abandon you now when you need him the most.

Besides, you must believe in the job you have done on him. If you planted love and wisdom into him, this is the time for you to reap it. We are products of our up-bringing. If you didn’t bring him up to be unreasonable, rude and unappreciative of the efforts of people, he would never blame you for lying to him or condemn you for it.

Your guidance too would help both mother and child talk without bitterness. No doubt he would wonder at the manner of mother abandoned her child at birth. Just as he would condemn her choice of a trade but you can help him get over the pains by pointing him at all the good reasons he should not turn his back on her now.

But before that, call him to tell him about his past. Start from the very beginning of your own story. How you were driven away by your husband and his family over your inability to have a child. Paint the picture of your pains, rejection as well as embarrassment. 

He has to be made to feel in vivid picture what you went through. This is called playing on his emotions. It is the only way he can think objectively, appreciate the sacrifices of you and his mother to enable him forgive. His human feeling has to be brought to the fore in your presentation.

Then tell him of how you first met his mother leading to the time she came to your shop early that morning to tell you about her predicament and all the things you both discussed.

Prepare the grounds by telling him all the good things you observed about his mother, her smile and good nature. Include the fact that something must have pushed her into prostitution. It is imperative he has something positive about his mother to hold on to, something to help him cope with the shock of her presence and actions. When we are drowning, we all need something, even if it is a fragile straw to hold on to hope.

The bit about finding him at your shop door, the note and the joy you felt at having him should form the concluding end of your story.

Beg him after this, to forgive the lies you told about his identity as well as his mother’s behaviour before telling him of her wish to meet him.

This is an issue you both have to iron out on your own before bringing your daughter-in-law and grandchildren into the picture.

Call his mother only after you have done this.

Don’t worry, God, who has been in charge of your affairs before you were born, knows about this development and has taken care of it ahead of time. Just trust Him and celebrate His mercies in your life. Already, it is well.

Good luck.

Should I marry him?

With Auntie Agatha gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com, Tel: 08054500626

Dear Agatha,

I will be 39 years of age, in June. Believe it or not, the only time I had a boyfriend was when I was in my first year at the university. Since that relationship ended, I haven’t had any man on permanent basis in my life.

They come quiet all right but they don’t stay. The longest, could be two weeks. At times, when I get extremely lonely, I pay someone to stay with me. It is that bad and frustrating.

There is no prayer house or spiritualist I haven’t gone to. I have even allowed a friend to take me to a native doctor in my quest for solutions to my problem.

Everywhere I went, the story was the same, powerful people within my family were responsible for my predicament to punish my father who thought the world began and stopped with me.

The churches recommended deliverance but, at one mountain we went to, one of the prophets told me to that my only solution lies in the hands of me marrying an old man whose age and love for me would neutralize the spell. He said, I have been shrouded in the garment of an extremely old woman which is why no young man stays for more than a week in my life. He said, initially they would see me the way I am but after some few days, I would appear very old to them.

I felt defeated and very confused.

That was about four years ago. About two years ago, I tried to get pregnant by paying a man to get me pregnant but after the first night, he refused to come. When I asked what the problem was, he said, I was a witch out to suck him dry of everything that makes him a man. I didn’t understand a thing. It happened twice so I decided to go back to the mountain to meet with the prophet. He didn’t allow me to explain what I came for when he told me that I transform into an old woman immediately any man sleeps with me.

I went home dejected as he had no solution beyond what he had already told me.

Agatha, the reason I have come to you for help is the situation that I have found myself in now.

In February, precisely, at the burial of my father, his best friend, three years older than my father who died at 82, proposed marriage to me. 

His wife died last year. He isn’t very healthy due to the minor stroke he suffered at the death of his wife. Sometimes, he messes himself up before help can get to him.

His children do take very good care of him; he has a nurse who goes about with him.

A visit to the prophet revealed my worst fears because God Himself showed it to me in my dream while I was praying early this year. That dream came thrice.

I know I need a man and husband in my life but to marry my father’s friend? This man can no longer function as husband so what am I going to do there? How am I going to cope with his health challenge besides, I don’t love him one bit and only see him as a father figure. 

People will mock me, my friends will laugh at me.

Life is so unfair to me Agatha. I don’t know what to do at all. Please help me.

Iremide

Dear Iremide,

Where is it written that life is fair to anybody? Not even the most powerful or rich would say life has been very good to them. 

Behind every ray of sunshine are gathering of clouds to wrestle attention from the sun. If the sun has to struggle with the clouds to perform its function of giving light and shine to the world, who are we not to struggle with all the powers that be for the retention of our glory and breakthroughs? 

If life demands an innocent baby to struggle to be born, what makes you think it would be fair on you in important and crucial choices? The task before you is that of doing what you have to do if you want to be happy.

If God has revealed it to you in your dream more than once, there is nothing to be afraid of. He that sees the end from the beginning is on the Throne of Mercy.

Our most profound wisdom cannot compete with what appears to be His most foolish.

If that is the way, He wants to route the solution to your problem, who are you to question Him?

Your only contribution is to obey and trust His decisions as being the best for you or do you have alternative to His plans?

If you have been masked to appear like an old woman to young men, you really do not have a choice if this spell is to be broken. No wise person questions the ways of God because He is the beginning and the end of all things.

And what friends are you talking about? Are these friends not married and having children? Are some of them not already laughing at you behind your back and ascribing your situation to some imaginary terrible life style you lived when you were young? Are these same people you are so bothered about not already expressing an opinion about your status as an unmarried woman at your age; are they not already comparing you with your friends who now have families of their own?

Are these friends paying men to sleep with them? Are they there with you when even the ones you pay to sleep with you run from you as if you are the devil himself?

Grow up and take what is being offered you as a life line before it’s too late. That man can drop dead anytime while you are still pondering on whether or not to do it. 

Think of the implications of this man dying before you make up your mind.

This isn’t science but a profound spiritual matter which cannot be subject to any analytical discussion if you don’t want to remain permanently at your current bus-stop.

If his ability to make you happy as a woman is the reason you don’t want him; entrust it to God. What God needs from you is obedience; once you trust Him sufficiently to follow Him unconditionally, you will be surprised at how easy things turn out to be.

I’m yet to see anybody who went into business with God and came out with tears of sorrow. 

I appreciate your apprehension and the worries, sincerely, they are genuine but what can you do when God says this is how He wants things done?

You cannot question or fight Him. At this point, the sensible thing is to ask for His grace to help you through all these. 

Something tells me, He is only going to use this old man to pray for you. There are certain people in life He has given certain authority over some people. This old man may be the one He is going to use to free you from bondage.

If I were you, I would accept and make up my mind to care for the old man as I would my father. Ensure you have a caring heart and good disposition towards him. Be his legs and hands. Don’t allow him soil himself before you help him. Read to him; share your stories with him; listen to his own stories, laugh with him but never at him.

Let him sleep every night with a smile on his face; let his memories of his last days be very pleasant ones. 

The smile and happiness in his heart are what will set you free. The more you make him smile, the more joyous your own laughter will be. Just trust God. 

I have this feeling your time of great happiness has come. Always remember, that we are all spiritual beings hence the need for spiritual interventions like this to make us happy. 

Good luck.