When I left the hospital, my mother went back to Lagos with me instead of going back to Osogbo.
She had to stay with me, because of my condition, even though we had hired the services of a professional nurse to take care of the baby. My husband’s people came about two times and that was the end. It was hard to come to terms with my new situation as, not only a single mother, but also a helpless one.
He told me that he once had a wife, who left him in his trying moments, when he had some health challenges, which he eventually overcame. He was a loving man to the core, just like the very first man in my life. His parents and siblings were happy to meet me and they became very fond of me
After about six months, I resumed back at work. Everyone offered one helping hand or the other, just to make me happy. After that, I went through two operations to correct the anomaly in my leg. I started raising my child all alone. Thank God I was intelligent enough for my company to see me as an employee they could not afford to miss. They did all in their power to support me in my condition. I forgot about my husband completely, because there was even no channel of communication. My daughter grew up to know and love only one parent.
We became inseparable, because I saw her also as my world. My mother played her part as a mother in a million. She was always in and out of my house, even when I had three other siblings, who also got married along the line. I was promoted twice and had to travel, when my daughter was 10 years old, to Vienna, Austria, to coordinate a unit of the company’s operations for one year. She was already in a very good secondary (boarding) school then.
While there, I came in contact with a guy, who heard my story and became a very close friend. He was the first man I would get close to in over 10 years, and he made it very easy for me to share all my worries.
We were close to the extent that it started affecting the relationship I had with my daughter, who was my best friend. I did not think of dating him. I only saw him as a confidant, until one thing led to the other and we started seeing each other. He was in Vienna for only two weeks, so all our conversations had been mainly on the telephone.
When I got back to Nigeria, he started picking me from work and staying in my house till very late, when he would return home.
Once in a while, he also slept over at my place, whenever he thought that it was too late to drive home. I knew virtually all his close friends because we were almost always together at events.
He was always proud to take me out, not minding the fact that I was walking with support. That made me share everything with him and also support some of his business ventures. But my daughter did not like him and said, point blank, that there was something about him that was just not right.
My friends said I should not mind her; that she was behaving that way because she was used to having me all to herself.
Then, all of a sudden, I started seeing strange text messages on my phone; a woman calling me a harlot, who has been keeping her husband away from home. I did not understand it all, because this guy never told me that he had a wife.
I confronted him with the text messages and he said I should ignore them; that someone was just trying to play pranks. It was later I got to know, through one of his friends, who the wife had gone to meet, that he actually had a wife, who had just given birth to a baby and needed his attention badly.
He said the baby was their second. I almost fainted. When the trouble from his wife became unbearable, the guy left even before I could tell him never to come to my house again, that I did not want trouble.
He stopped calling and, again, I faced life squarely with my daughter. I forgot completely about men and resigned to fate. I saved very hard and sent my daughter to the United States to study after her secondary school education.
I had one more operation and could walk without any support, though my steps were not completely regular.
Then, one summer, I had gone for my daughter’s graduation ceremony in the United States, when I met this man, a friend’s cousin. My friend had been joking about him wanting to meet me for sometime, but I did not take her serious.
He was very friendly and did not allow me to spend anything when I took everyone out for a small reception in honour of my daughter. My daughter also liked him immediately and kept on winking at me.
To cut the long story short, we started dating after I had resisted the relationship for a long time because I did not want to be disappointed the third time. He told me that he once had a wife, who left him in his trying moments, when he had some health challenges, which he eventually overcame.
He was a loving man to the core, just like the very first man in my life. His parents and siblings were happy to meet me and they became very fond of me. I could not stop thanking God for bringing someone like him my way.
At that point, I did not think of any hindrance, may be because my dad was late. I enjoyed every moment with him. Then his people started disturbing us that we should make the relationship official; they wanted to visit my family and set a date for a small wedding.
Then the age long stumbling block showed up again. The fact that he was a Muslim became an issue again.
It was even worse because his father is an Imam. My mother first kicked against it, but when my siblings reminded her of what their initial opposition to my first fiance eventually caused me, she softpedalled and said everything would depend on what the eldest of my father’s family members had to say.
Luckily for me, my uncle, who was the eldest, had been my favourite, so I thought it would be a smooth ride. He started chatting with my fiance on phone until the issue of picking a date arose. Then he dropped the bombshell
To be continued.
