By Three Decades And Half: Note To My Brothers In Blood By Sulaimon Mojeed-Sanni
Today is a great day to reflect on the strenuous beginning I have had; reflect on the mornings my mother was doubtful of my capacity to survive another day or another year. A good day to reminiscence on the stories I have heard of how sickly I was at the beginning of days; of how being fatherless at eleven months made many fearful for my capacity to survive; and how I have drawn strength from wailing and messing up many places.
By nature’s deal, I was deprived of a father at eleven-month-old, while I cannot remember ever calling “Baba” nor being smack for deliberately doing things I know could have been wrong, I cannot, in all honesty, say that I missed not having a father because I grew up to the age of consciousness having so many father figures around both in Mile 12 and Ikorodu. And I can make bold to say that I have come to know my father more in the last five years of my entire thirty-five years on earth through the reflections of my brothers. Many I have lived with since my teenage years without deep reflections of them being a piece of my biological father.
So today, I dedicate myself to folks whom we shared the same heritage, people I call brothers by blood. Though over the years, I have been opportune to make friends who are today closer to me than bloods – who feel my pains presumably more than me and I have blood sisters whom I dearly love, I shall crave for other days to celebrate every extraordinary person in my life particularly my sisters and friends. I assure you if the head does not leave the neck, and the heart still pumps blood, I shall write another piece just for you but today is for my brothers, and I shall make quick haste to it.
For everything I am and would be, I owe it to God’s grace and my brothers’ unrelenting tutelage most of which come from pure willingness to make me a better version of themselves. At every point in my life, I have been thrown a chink of light, narrow opportunities to be better and do something different and true to being my father’s son, I have taken all, some ending in wows and others in why.
Some of my brothers, I lived my early life with while others I watched from afar. Today, I am a combination of varieties. Easily predictable unpredictably. I am my father’s son sharing a piece of my nine brothers. I have a soldier’s soul, a bookseller’s mind, a tailor’s seamlessness, a rental’s gait, a builder’s shrewdness, broker’s attitude to risk, a sugar seller’s sweetness, an academia’s idealism, and a film maker’s drama yet I am completely incomplete but still my father’s son.
The whole world is a necropolis of sorts, we all live to learn and be buried someday. Nothing is as good as freedom. Freedom to live, love and long for a better tomorrow. I thank my brothers for the liberty to be myself even though sometimes you are not comfortable with my actions, yet you still let me live.
I am today a reflection of people who have passed through my life. A man of many shades. If in the cause of our engagements we disagree, it might be a function of some of the things I have learned from you. However, I urge you not to despair for I am who I am by what you are.
Despite not living a reckless life, in the last three decades and five years, I have struggled to pay bills and meet needs. Though in my needs, many envy and wish to live just a bit of my life, not knowing it has been a glossy surface with a tired soul but this soul will always push on.
Nothing feels like having brothers, people you can trust and walk their path. Brothers who share themselves so that you can be them or be better. Many a time, I have inconvenienced you by making my burden yours and at every point, you have proved what you are – Brother!
On this day I send a bounty of thanks to my brothers, for their tiny drops making this ocean of me. I thank you for the fees paid, for the knowledge given, for the valuable gifts, for starter packs, and the sense of belonging giving me a quick hold on the realities of life.
Thank you all for the sacrifices, I do not take them for granted. In my travels around the world, I can say that my brothers are better than many brothers I have seen. That I do not take with levity.
As I clock this new age, I remember everything you have done, and imagined if you were not my brothers, what would have become of an eleven-month toddler.
Be Safe. SM-S
