On being a parent (even though i am not a parent)

I want to take a moment to feel for all the parents out. I am myself am not a parent but I am someone’s child. When we, their children enter this world, or even before we make our grand entrances, they, our parents, have such great expectations for us but we seldom ever go the direction they want

They want John to become a doctor or an accountant but John decides he want to become a club DJ instead. He is good at it and it makes him happy but sadly it makes no senses to his parents.

There is a certain type of man our mothers tell us to date, but sadly we don’t find him the least bit interesting. She calls him stable, focused and God fearing, we call him predictable, dull and boring. We choose instead to date the men our fathers vehemently told us to avoid; he is the one who makes our hearts flutter.

After 21 years of all going to church as one happy family, born and baptised there we decide we have found our own church which edifies us more than theirs, so come the 22nd year they are going to theirs with a heavy heart and us to our own with a joyful heart.

Mom worked real hard to grow Lisa’s hair to the length that it is, years of African threading and cornrows. Lisa wakes up one morning and decides that she is quite taken by Pabi Moloi’s bald looks and she wants to try it out. Snip snip and the tresses are gone. Mom can’t fight it, it’s not her head. She bore it but it’s not hers.

They want us to buy the dress one size bigger, we want the dress one size smaller (to get that extra fit). Mom thinks your uniforms are just the right size but that doesn’t stop you from cutting off 5 cm from the hem line. Dad thinks your pants will look much better if they are worn at the waist line, you want to wear them closer to your knees. Dad wishes you wouldn’t show your underwear to the world, you have trouble explaining to him that the underwear was designed to show at the top.

Someone once told me that it’s a cycle; when we are young we hang onto their every word. We admire them and aspire to be them. Fast forward to our teens and early 20s and we think we know everything and they know nothing. Fast forward another 20 years and we are back at their feet, asking for advise and trying to figure out how they made it work – it referring to love, family, work, finances and everything in between.

That remains to be seen…