Thursday, 11 May 2017

Planting the seeds of a memoir - I

Blueprints for my story
“It’s, it’s Bola.” Yes, my stutter that became the in joke, a source of embarrassment and blushes, probably the first words that anyone relayed back to me from my earliest childhood.
Bola was 3 months older and probably a bit of a feisty girl, the first child and daughter of one of my dad’s best friends, he now deceased. I would think we were brought together at small social gatherings or for a baby sitting, I cannot say. I was a late developer, born premature at just six and a half months, I quick to speaking but late to walking.
Our playful episodes were definitely plagued by some disagreement and discomfiture which resulted in my crying back to our adult supervision. “It’s, it’s Bola.”
Yet, out of the recollection of events log ago, includes observations, secrets, intrigue and scandal. Much discovered though unspoken, the speculations and allegations might remain unproven but never fully discounted. For instance, the discovery of a letter in a book in our library that suggesting an affair between Bola’s mother and dad. Contents committed to memory but questions never asked.
Of my early memories of my mother’s addiction to religion was Bola’s father presiding as white garment priest in clandestine meetings my mum and I attended in the dark Walsall nights, a woman desperately trying to save many things including herself.
I do not know how much I can gloss over the first few years of my life in England in both its ordinariness and enchantments, I will have to retrieve a few pictures from storage to flesh out the seminal moments. However, I can say, I was born a miracle could not reproduce some 40 years on.
This or a variant of it would appear in the first chapter of my life story.


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