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 read 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 why 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.
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