Dear Mother, may I?
Dear Mom,
Tomorrow is Mother’s Day and today is my birthday and last week this girl called Beryl Itindi - whom I’d never have dared introduce to you - wrote a letter to sijui Mr Nerea, so I decided to follow suit and conflate the last 20 years into a teeny weeny birthday letter on Mother’s Day, and just keep you in touch with what we’ve been up to in the 21st Century.
The year after you left us forever, I got into campus and consoled myself by drinking the cheapest cane spirits.
You, whose ciders I stole and sipped with my pals like Mocks every New Year’s Day in high school would have wrinkled your nose in distaste, especially since the sachet ones tasted like they were distilled straight from Satan’s urinary tract.
1999 came and went by in a flash - and soon we were in a new millennium. I just wish I had taken better care of little brother Benjy at the turn of the century, but then we were all a little wild and lost and confused back then, with the sound-track of our lives being Suede’s “We are traaashhh, you and me, we are the litter on the streets, papers blowing in the wind.”
But then Emilio K, that economist you had liked so much back in ‘91, came to power at the end of 2002 A.D., and by then I had finally figured out what I was meant to do with my life - write like crazy, record what life was/is like for our generation, etc.
Our sister, Carol, eventually found her way to England, to a little town called Essex, and thanks to something called ‘texts’ (you passed away in the age of the letter box and rotary phones) and Facebook, we stay in touch twice or thrice a week.
I have seen a bit of the world, the most insane destination being Russia, but I sure wish you had stayed alive much longer; just so I could have treated you to a well-deserved trip, seeing as you sacrificed so much to make sure we wouldn’t suffer.
Benji did - but that’s a sad story for another day.
Today is my birthday, which marks yet another milestone in this individual life out of all the lives in this world, but if you are reading this (dear reader, not you mom), aren’t you just glad to be alive this Saturday of May 9?
Your grand-daughter Checheslavia’s birthday is a week after mine - and though I will not celebrate my aging, we’ll celebrate her growing up a little more to four. And that is my one real regret for you, mom. How I wish you had lived to see her.
Anyway, I’ll now go out and buy a Cinzano (you liked Cinzi for X-Mas) just so I can toast to you tomorrow.
Ciao ciao for now, mom, and you’ll always be in my heart.
Postscript - I wish to say, even on behalf of my editors Christine and Rosie, thank you to the young Eve sisters of Mukumu Girls Brenda Cherusta, Chelsea and Whitney for ensuring this magazine is always available at their school library, and the great English teacher Dixon and the principal for facilitating it.
Salaams and congratulations are also in order, this mom’s weekend, to our HR head madam Pauline Kiraithe for the bundle of joy (and love). Lastly, to my lawyer pal Jaymo Kuria for recently making an honest lady out of Consolata, the beloved mother of his gorgeous kids. Kudos, my bro.
tonyadamske@yahoo.com