Dear Taiwo,I am a regular reader of your column and I have never missed any of your editions. My observation, though (I might not be right, anyway), is that you are always attacking men.Are you a man-hater' (Laugh) (This is just a joke anyway). Most of the time it is only what men did to women that get published and not otherwise. I can tell you that this is why I decided to share my own story too and I encourage others from my gender to do the same.It is not about being hard, or macho. Let us remove machoism, we all learn everyday and learning through a medium like this, who knows we could have a better tomorrow and get a well deserved 'pat-on-the back' from our children.Taiwo, I followed religiously, the story of the woman, whose 'heart bleeds' because her children who she single-handed raised, wanted their father who was then irresponsible to be a part of their lives now. I took my time to read the responses she got and also the woman whose husband did a similar thing to, by abandoning her with her kids after she made him.No doubt, men like the abound in the world, not only in Nigeria, but I wish it was possible for me to share the experience of my father with some of you out there.I am not trying to praise-sing my father. What if I did' He is worth more than that. Like people would say that there are mothers-in a-million. There are also fathers-in-a-million and my dad is one of such men. I agreed with all the writers and contributors who stated that what ever we sow on earth is what we reap.Yes! But it is very impossible for any one, man or woman to want to reap from what he or she did not sow. It is very easy to plead for forgiveness, just like we all ask God to forgive us when we recite the Lord's prayer every morning. But what about posterity' How does one feel reaping or eating from where he or she did not labour at all'Just as your former writers, were victims of irresponsible fathers who abandoned them for other men my younger brother and I were also victims of a mother or should I say a woman who abandoned us for not just one man but other men.I wasn't too young to know that everyday my father returned from work both of them would quarrel, why' Because she (my mother) was never home whenever dad was back from work.Both of them were graduates. You can say that dad was a university graduate, while she finished her Higher National Diploma(HND) from one of the federal polythecnics.She had job options, but according to dad, which she later corroborated, they both agreed that she should go into buying and selling so that she would be available for her husband and children. This was not forced on her.She decided which business she wanted, and later settled for a supermarket. A shop was rented close to our home which was in a Government Reserved Area (GRA).She had sales girls; dad said he invested much in business so that she would not lack anything and sometimes, she would travel to the US and UK to buy goods for sale. You can imagine how big her shop was. She had shop attendants and also house maids at home.I came two years after their marriage and my brother came five years after. It wasn't that they had any problem, but that was what my mother wanted.My father is a type of man who wanted many children around him, but my mother truncated that dream when she insisted on having just two children as she did not want to lose her beauty to child bearing and pregnancy.In all ramifications, she was and is still a beautiful woman. She is the reason why I refused to marry early and marry a fair-skinned lady.Read Concluding Part
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