Mothers! Sigh...

When it all turns to shit and you want to weep like a baby, only one thought runs through your mind: Where's mum? No, don't you dare to deny it. What you want is your mother. You need her. You need her comforting words. You need her wise counsel. You need her to kick butt on your behalf. You want your mama and that is all that matters. But the foolish grown-up voices in your head yank you back to the here and now and remind you that grown men do not go running to their mummies. Stupid, stupid grown-up voices. Now you really, really want to weep like the man-child you are.

If you can imagine life without your mother your heart must be formed out of the finest carrara marble: cold, hard and unfeeling. If you cannot imagine a situation that your mother cannot fix, then there is no fix for what you are. A mother is so much more than the woman who gave birth to you. My mother is so much more. If you say that raising me was more than just a job, I will kill you. It was much more important than a job.

My mother protected me from all comers, not the least being myself. Fathers have a much easier job: smile when required, and smack the snot out of you when directed, the mothers doing the requiring and directing, of course. I am told that if there was an electrical outlet to poke my finger into, my mother would have the devil of a time discovering where the electrical outlet was, placing an obstacle course to it and keeping a particularly beady eye on my inventive attempts to get around the obstacles keeping me from my beloved electrical outlet and its shocking reward. Sons are placed on this Earth to trouble their fathers, but they are placed on this Earth to test their mothers' heart muscles - and I have tried and tested my mother's that I do not know how she forgives me and why she loves me as she does.

You know your mother loves you deeply when you are four years old and all that you want is that last lollipop with the extra bright Kamba-flavoured wrapper and she says no and you throw a God-level tantrum to wake up all the saints. You know she loves you because she'll give you The Eye, which you will ignore, turning up the volume from eleven to eleventy-five. She'll adopt that Voice-of-God tone when she tells you to toe it down. Instead you will double down and attempt to modulate your bawling. She will give you One Last Chance. By then you're invested in it. It's you versus her. David versus God. 

Because she loves you, she does not care what the other patrons on aisle three in Uchumi Jogoo Road think about her parenting. She will let go of the shopping trolley. She will pick you up by the scruff of your shirt. She will settle down nicely on the floor, place you bum-side-up on her lap and she will smack that ass until the bawling ends and the irrational demands for lollipops are abandoned. Despite the humiliation, pain and anger, the bawling miraculously ends and lollipops have become the Devil's Stick. Thirty years later, the lesson, like the ten million other lessons in the intervening decades, still stands you in very good stead.

It is a profound feeling to know that she is the only one who loves you without reservation. It is terrifying that you don't know how to show her that you love her, that even though you left home and shacked up with That Woman, you will always love her. It is enough to make you weep like a baby and call for mummy.