Here is the second short story from my series, Family Tales. Please be nice with your comments. I'm still learning.

You can read the first story at the following link: https://www.nairaland.com/957303/family-tales-quarter-hope

If you like them enough, follow me for more stories: https://www.nairaland.com/michelin89 / http://inspiredyarnsofthemind..it/

Dear Mother, wherever you are, listen to these words, I have written for you.

Mother, I know your story began the day you meet Aunty M. Please don't be upset with me because I choose to call her that way, but that is how she was introduced to me and that's how I grew up to know her.

Mother, you were a graceful girl, yet so minute and fragile. Your siblings picked on you for anything and despite all attempts by grandma to protect you, she couldn't stop the hands of mean strangers from touching you, pushing you and pointing at you in laughter while you fell so easily on the ground, like a dry leaf blown here and there in the air by a sudden autumn breeze. You were mocked, picked on and ridiculed because of your delicate frame and unhealthy appearance, but still you were beautiful mother. So much beauty that it couldn't go unnoticed. You had grace and you had heart, but you lacked the strength to fight back to protect this precious gift you were given.


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Then you met aunty M.. She was the tough girl, the one who wouldn't be messed with by anybody, the one who was feared by everyone: old, young, big and small. She was the saviour you had been waiting for. The day she stretched forth her hand and helped you to get back on your feet, was the day you sealed your friendship: a bond that was never going to be broken. I know, because aunty M. always told me. She always said you were the best thing that had happened to her. You gave her a purpose to fight for. Before she fought to establish her dominion and force over others, but when she met you, she started fighting for the love she had for you; to defend you from the malice, wickedness and envy that were constantly thrown at you.

The both of you became inseparable. Where she was, there you often were; but where you were, there she would always be, like your shadow, standing like a shield, protecting you from all harm. She was with you when you graduated from secondary school. She was with you, when you got your admission into the university. She even read your letter for you, because you were too scared of you had been rejected. But you weren't and why would you? You were the smartest person I had ever known. Even dad used to say it. All through the years you spent in isolation for the fear of being maltreated by others, you hid yourself in the world of imagination, made of novels, arts, numbers and poems. I still remember the stories you used to tell me and the lullabies you used to compose for me. Oh mum, I miss your voice. It gave me peace and serenity. My heart was always filled with love whenever I heard you speak or sing. I'd do anything to hear that voice again, mother. God knows I would.

So your story continued and you also survived your university days with aunty M. always with you. You were beautiful and graceful and caught the attention of so many men. They all wanted to know you, talk to you and be friends with you. Aunty M. protected you from the shady ones and advised you with the decent ones. She was there when dad spoke to you for the first time. She was there when you were nervous about the dress to wear to your first date. She was there all through those years. You called her from the toilet in excitement when dad proposed to you, leaned on her shoulder when you had a misunderstanding and her signature will in eternity be on the document that certified that you and dad forever, were going to one body and soul.

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When you got married to dad, he knew already that you were just like an egg; so fragile on the outside but with such a great mind on the inside. He realized it the day you stood up for aunty M. against a certain boy called H. whom she had fallen hopelessly in love with. Your "shield" had become weak and didn't function like it should have. The boy was a sham and way toying with her emotions, so you went to him and told him to stay away from your friend. Like a man who loved being in control, he still held the grip with so much force and stubborness; even aunty M., like a butterfly caught in the web of a spider, didn't try to move her wings, to break off from the mortal trap. She gave in to the captivity but you like a heroin flew to her, broke the web and saved her. For months she hated you and accused of not wanting her happiness. She then reminded of all the battles she had fought for you and of you never returning any. But she was wrong. You saved her, mum. Had aunty M. continued with H., she'd have gotten not just her heart, but also her mind shattered into pieces. She'd have stopped being the rock you knew her for. Aunty M.,was indeed a tough young lady, but even the ages of maturity had caught up with her and when she met H., her womanhood easily took control over her and made her lose her strength to a man who didn't deserve a bit of her.

You knew she was tough on the outside, but so fragile on the inside. She was your contrary. Once penetrated through her shield, you found a heart as soft as a cloud. A little touch and it melted into water, falling right in the palm of the intruder. She had protected you all along, but then you realized you also had to protect her. She was your shield that protected your body, while you were the safe that wrapped and cudded her heart.

Then from little women, you grew into wives. Aunty M. soon became a mother of a lovely child, while you mother, couldn't bear the heaviness and grieve of conceiving one. You first encountered a miscarriage, but then you had to give up, when at your second attempt, you almost lost your life. In your irrational and somehow deluded euphoria, you had already prepared the baby's room, with the little crib, the painted walls and the newly composed melodic lullabies. But the baby didn't make it, so you closed the door to that room, locked it and gave the key to dad, so he would hide it somewhere you couldn't find it; had you, you'd have opened that door again and subject your heart to an unimaginable pain. So you gave away the key and together with it, you also gave away your hope.


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But I came mum, I came. On a bright morning I came, right there in front of your door. In a pink basket, wrapped in a blanket of the same colour. A note alone came with me, you read it and immediately you understood mum. You understood that someone loved you so much that not only did they want to be with you all the time, but they also wanted you to have a part of them. You didn't need to tell dad, because immediately he also read the note, he too understood and together you took me in. Dad gave you the key and you opened that door again. You placed me in the crib and sang a beautiful lullaby for me. You always sang it for me, when I cried and cried, with so much desperation that someone would wonder if I had magic lungs.

You spent sleepless nights just to cud me to bed, you stood up for hours, walking back and forth in the house, singing, talking, begging me to sleep, when I wouldn't surrender to the beautiful call of the night. I was just a baby, I didn't know how much this weighed on your delicate health, I never even knew of your conditions, because I always seeing this strong woman holding, petting and kissing me on my forehead and later smiling at me with the most beautiful smile I had ever seen. I was really a lucky child.


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But then all good things come to an end, they say. One day, aunty M. came to our house with her husband. I was in my room, but I heard everything. You had a heated arguement, I could hear dad and uncle screaming, but I didn't hear your voice. I pictured you to be sitting and crying, because you hated when people quarrelled mum. You always cried when dad got angry with you, because your heart couldn't bear the pain. It was too pure to conceieve any malicous thoughts, so you just cried: you cried for yourself and you also cried for your offender. While I was busying imagining you, sitting down and feeling for the people involved in the fight, you and aunty M. walked into my room. You came to me and squatted beside my bed. You rubbed the top on my head and later my cheek with your soft hand and told me I had to go and stay with aunt for a while. You said it was just for a while. That you and dad were leaving on a trip to the village to attend to something very urgent and you didn't want me to miss school, so you had planned with aunty M. to allow me to stay with them until you returned. I obeyed mum and I followed them.

I waited and waited mum for you to come and pick me up as you said. After school I'd hide so aunty M. wouldn't find me and wait for you to come and take me home, but you never came. For so many years you never came. I never heard of you and dad or saw you again. You broke my heart and I hated you for this. Even though for some time I had nurtured the hope of seeing you or dad knock on uncle's door and asking me to get my things ready, after years of continuous disappointments and failed expectations, I gave up. I chose never to wish you'd come for me again. I even started calling aunt M. mum, after an initial resistance to her request. I soon became part of their family and wished to be reunited with any more, not even in my dreams.

We relocated to a different state, miles away from you and dad. Even if I had wanted to come back to you, I wouldn't have known my way back home. I was too little when I left and I'm not sure I even knew my way from school then, because you were always outside waiting for me. We used to walk back home hand in hand back as I told you about what I had learnt that day. You paid me compliments, even for the most silly things. You never scolded me, always taught me and motivated me. You wanted me to learn life through respect and not through fear. You had known fear in your childhood days and it was such a dense fog, you didn't want me to fall into. "Fear makes you blind to the good, but respect opens your eyes to beauty", you used to tell me. And I kept it safe in my mind like a treasure even through those years with an undesired memory of your bothering my mind.


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you are good!is this a non fiction ?if yes was it birth from a personal experience

It's actually a fictional letter a young lady writes to her mother. Well being born of a woman myself, I might have put some personal feelings, but both characters and storyline are fictional.

Thanks for the compliment though. I so much appreciate!

what about the dad?

Fathers getting shortchanged again.

You may want to read my first fiction: a quarter of hope: https://www.nairaland.com/957303/family-tales-quarter-hope if you want to read about an important male character.

But my fictions are mainly female-centered and are told from a female point of view. I may decide to write from a male perspective someday, but I'm so much enjoying the complexity of the female psyche at the moment.

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I knocked on that door I used to remember so well. In my eyes of a child, it was big and imponent. I could hardly reach the handle, but now it just looked like it had been made for someone of my size. I recollected everything, as though, it had been locked in a box in my memory. I just had to dust it and open it, for me to remember that street, those buildings, that road and that door. That wooden door that was the only obstacle between me and you.

When dad opened the door and saw me, he couldn't believe it. He just pulled me to his body in a long and touching embrace. We both cried as we inhalated our smell. I remember dad's smell so well. It was a mixture of his shaving cream, cologne, and of you mum. I always compared your smell to that of freshly blossomed roses wet by the dew and in its drops the rays of the rising Sun reflected and created beautiful colours. I felt the same freedom of that of a young girl running in a field of million roses whenever you hugged me and in dad I could still relive a piece of that same experience.

Soon we were in your room and I saw you. I saw you laying on that bed. You were so pale and so thin. I fell on my knees once again. This time to supplicate you to forgive me for hating you. Not knowing that you had felt the greatest pain.

When you lost your child, you almost fell into a hole of depression and aunty M. saw it. She had never forgotten about her promise to always be with you and protect you. That's why she when she got pregnant of her twins, she payed the doctor to keep her husband oblivious of everything. On the night I was born she gave me to a nurse, who after bathing and clothing me, wrapped me in a pink blanket, put me in a pink basket and went to your house. She placed the note on my perfectly covered body, knocked and hastly ran to hide herself somewhere close enough to see the joy on your face when you held me in your arms for the first time. On that note, only my date and place of birth were written, but that was all you needed to know to register me as your daughter. The privilege of giving me a name was granted you, because aunty M. knew how flourished your imagination was. So you chose a name that would remind you of the precious gift I was: a gift free of charge.

But then the unthinkable happened. My twin brother died of a fatal accident and aunty M.'s heart, the cloud that melted into rain just by the touch of an intruder, crashed into pieces. She thought of her son that was no more, then she thought of his sister who was the other part of him. So she told her husband everything and immediately he demanded that aunt returned his child by all means. That day they came to the house, it wasn't just you who was sitting down, crying your heart out, aunty M. was also crying with you, because she didn't want to take me away from you. She gave me to you because she knew no one had so much love to offer like you did. She never one day thought of reclaiming her right over me. I was your daughter and you were my mother. She was just the woman who hosted me for nine months, but you were the one who was going to love me forever.

As you lay on that bed, I didn't want any apology from you. All I wanted was for you to sing for me like you used to do when I was sad and unconsolable. And you sang. You sang the same lullaby you sang for me the very first day I entered this house all covered in a warm and soft woolish pink fabric. That's all I needed from you.

Mum, today you are no more. But in my heart you'll always live. This is not just a letter to tell the story of you and I, but an ode I wrote to celebrate the great woman that you were. Graceful and beautiful, yet strong and unbreakable. Fragile was your body, but indestructible was your soul.

Dear Mother,
no amount of tears can ever bring you back, but for the love you have given me I wish you all the peace your soul deserves. I love you and always will.

Yours forever,
E.


End.