"When we are young we want to be just like out
father. When we are teenagers we want nothing to do without fathers. And when
we are old men, we realise we are just like." I read this somewhere on line.
We inherit more from our fathers than just DNA.
If you can confess, you would say a little more than you are willing to accept
say like that balding thing, or that weird way we laugh or maybe a not too
flattering facial feature.
There nothing we can do about some of this
stuff like going bald and others with some serious practice can be tweaked. The
stuff we cannot change we have to accept and what we can we try our best to.
Some stuff just is out of our league and is
more of a burden, yeah bigger than that large set of wind breaks you have
plastered to the side of your head.
This is especially true for family. There are
things that our parents do that just keep coming back to haunt us. A second
wife, other kids, massive debts are just some of the things that come to mind
and that I have and maybe you have to deal with from time to time.
The list is endless. And like nationality we are
stuck with this flag flying over our head the responsibility of doing something,
if anything about it. In the words of my brother, “that’s our parents s**t but
we have to deal with it somehow”
How I wish we could boast that the heritages
our parents leave us is honour, respect and more but most time, in most cases,
for most African families, when the old man checks out the skeletons in the
closet walk in bringing with them the hurt, pain and anger that so often
threaten to rend families and hearts apart.
It’s when he is prostrate and 6 feet under that
the “other woman” makes an appearance, or the sudden realisation of his
positive status or just the mountain of debt that he left behind. In other
scenarios is simple that he is no longer there to stop greedy, conniving aunts
or uncles from caving in and over whelming us. Still for some it’s the gaping
hole of loneliness he leaves.
Family is something that I am learning is
double important and sometimes the flags we fly are not the proudest but they
are our identity, or badge and our claim to something on this green watered
rock floating in space we call earth.
The flags represented something during our father’s
time and we inherit this but how we go forward with it is the sole responsibility
of the current flag bearer. SO while the flag given to us left us with the
short end of the stick, what shall your son/daughter say about the flag you
hand them
We may not have a say over what we inherit, but
we can make the inheritance of our children a little better. The flags of our
fathers may come with a burden but they come with a promise and a
responsibility. Restore the flag, bear the flag, pass the flag.
