Forget Mother’s Day? If you are a married man, you should know that that is a mortal sin; it is a crime of the highest order. But that was the sin I unwittingly committed last Sunday. And as you know, ignorance is no excuse under the law. So I was prepared for the full consequence of my misdemeanour, except of course there was divine intervention.

For me, Sunday mornings are usually not the best time for frivolities. My wife had to get used to the fact that every other person’s activities must revolve around my own from wake-up till service time on Sundays. And it was not particularly different last Sunday. What made things a little different was that my car had crawled through the Lagos flood on Friday and somehow the engine was affected. My quick visit to the mechanic did not help matters as he was not sure what the problem was. Against my will, I had to ‘manage’ the car like that, or stay without one, till Monday.

You can therefore imagine my anxiety on Sunday morning. I had to be in church as early as 6.30am to prepare for the 7 o’clock service. I have two children I help to get ready for church. And I still had a few things to take care of in church before the commencement of the service. Since I had chosen to ‘manage’ the car, part of the problem was that it was as unreliable as anything. What if the engine refused to start? And I had no time to confirm that until it was time to go to church.

After all the stress of preparing early for service, I discovered to my chagrin that one of the tyres of my car was almost down. I knew the best thing to do was replace it with the spare, but that would eat into the little time I thought I had gained. I therefore decided to leave home with the car like that, since the engine started effortlessly, with the hope that I would find a place to inflate it. Good enough, I was able to get to church shortly before the service started.

As I climbed the stairs, I heard someone saying something like, “Happy Mother’s Day.” Mother’s Day ke? No wonder my wife had been carrying face all morning. I definitely did not need any soothsayer to tell me that there was trouble lurking in the horizon, except I quickly atoned for my sins. It was Mother’s Day, and there had not been a single word of appreciation from me to my lovely wife. And since our children are still too young to understand whether Mother’s Day is a kind of chocolate or a time for a solemn assembly, it was within my jurisdiction to mobilize them to appreciate their mother and the only mother I can genuinely call my own now. How on earth could I have failed in this responsibility?

Indeed, my wife deserves trailer loads of appreciation if it could be quantified. She has been such a great wife and an indefatigable mother. Sometimes, I really wonder how she has managed to cope with us – our two daughters and my humble self. In all honesty, I feel most of the time that we have not been and can never be grateful to her enough. But at least we can show her the little appreciation we can.

She had sometimes felt really terrible when our first child started learning how to talk and for months all she could say, or decided to say, was ‘Daddy’. All attempts to make her say ‘Mummy’ met a brick wall. “No,” she would say, “it’s Daddy.” That was in spite of the fact that I was not at home half the time. Her mother was always there because she had taken a break from work to have our children. Then our second daughter followed exactly the same pattern. These two little girls would not as much as let their mother touch my stuff sometimes. “It’s my Daddy’s own,” the older one would tell her mother in clear terms. Then you would begin to wonder how old the little girl who is fighting for her father is. At such times, I always wonder how my wife feels when she does practically all the caring and someone else gets all the appreciation. I guess it is all part of being a mother.   

The truth is, Mother’s Day has been a big deal in our church for as long as I can remember. We have never gone with the tide as far as the date and time are concerned, but we have never missed it. We simply pick a convenient date, after it has been marked all over the world, and celebrate motherhood in a special way. Everything was simply the best: from the decorations to drama, music and other ministrations. If you knew Pastor Bimbo Odukoya very well, you would understand that everything she organised or was involved in was of necessity colourful and distinct. But some things have changed since she passed on to glory in the ill-fated Sosoliso plane crash in Port Harcourt on December 10, 2005.

As I walked into the auditorium to apologise to my wife, it occurred to me that if Pastor Bimbo, the mother of the house, was involved in the preparations for the activities in church last Sunday, it would have been impossible for anyone to forget that it was Mother’s Day, irrespective of the pressures. It is true that so many things have gone on fine without her, but when it comes to that extra touch, it is ever so apparent that no one can do it like Pastor Bimbo. 

Of course, some tears were shed for her during the service, but none of that really mattered as it would not add anything to her now. The important thing is that she was an extra-ordinary woman and mother in her lifetime. Apart from ensuring that her own children got the best, I know she personally sponsored scores of other people’s children through the university both at home and abroad. What usually qualified them for that privilege was either that they were from poor homes or they did not have any parents.  

It is also on record that she ministered in practically all the institutions of higher learning in Nigeria . And when she was invited by a students’ body, she often settled her bills herself and sometimes gave them her personal money to meet their needs. I am not talking here about the countless number of people she personally bought cars for or gave money to start their own businesses.  

When you consider that until her death, she and her family were living in a rented property, you will understand how much sacrifice this woman made for humanity as a mother. And she had the privilege of knowing how much she was appreciated by all before she passed on to glory. It therefore behoves us who are still alive to play our roles well - as a mother, father or child – and appreciate those we need to appreciate.   

Robot  Villager

# 1 var sbtitle9447=encodeURIComponent(Mother’s Da...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 15.05.2007 13:01

Just mii  Villager

# 2 So touching! I can't help but emotional when Pastor Bim's name is mentioned. Posted by Just mii| 16.05.2007 05:20