The world is deep.

What you see is not what is.

And what is, is not what you see.

Like my friends parents.

Who married in the late 50s.

When his father met his mother at work.

Both of them age mates and colleagues in a single owner company in Nigeria.

Their boss being a wealthy industrialist.

And his mother being their boss's secretary.

A debonair, tall and handsome man, born into wealth and about twenty years older than them.

Their marriage was beautiful and wonderful.

Blessed with two children.

And five grandchildren.

But when their boss's wife died and he was left alone being that his own children had all married and moved out.

My friends mother surprised his father.

When she asked for a divorce.

And when his shocked father summoned a family meeting to break the news to them.

His mother held on tight to her decision.

Saying without bated eyelids.

"... he is the one I have always loved, not your father. And the only reason I didn't marry him then was because he was already married..."

And when my friend's younger sister asked their mother.

"Does he love you?"

"Yes."

"So why didn't he leave his wife for you?"

"Because he loved his wife too and had married her even before he met me."

"And you don't love us?"

"Of course I do."

"Then why would you break our hearts like this?"

"Come on. You will always be my children and grandchildren. It is your father I am leaving not you."

"You are sixy-two years old mommy, what business do you have leaving your marriage for a man in his eighties?"

"I deserve to be happy."

"You are happy mommy! Daddy and all of us have given you a happy life..."

"It is not in your place to call the life I have lived a happy life. Do you know what it means to marry at twenty two to a clueless, struggling man after you have experienced what it means to love and be loved by a real man?"

"Mommy stop being mean! You are breaking Daddy's heart!"

"No, I am not."

"How can you say that, mommy. See how he is crying?"

"He was aware I loved our boss when we married and remembers clearly that I said to him that anyday our boss became single and asked me to marry him, I will do so without thinking."

My friends father interrupted.

"That was over forty years ago, for Christsakes!"

"It doesn't matter how long ago it has been. You have always been only about you and you alone. Thinking that once you marry a woman you have married someone whose only duty in life is to serve you. You are here painting yourself like a victim, because I have never shown the children who you really are."

"I love..."

"Don't go there, please."

"My darling, all this time and you do this to me?"

"You did it to yourself. If you ever cared to ask me all this while ago if I still loved him or wondered why I have never for once in all these years told you that I love you, you would have realised that to me, you are nothing but the father of my children and a placeholder for the one I have and will always love..."

Lagos

Jude Idada
May 20, 2023