So, I will be putting up guest posts every week or bi-weekly so feel free to send me original works and properly label them so all credit will go to you. (sunesiss26@gmail.com)
A dear friend of mine Kehinde has done me the honor of agreeing to be a guest Author on my blog on a weekly basis. So watch out for her.
I hope you all like her début piece on my blog. Enjoy.
My mum loves having new clothes, there’s no other way to put it. She loves it so much so that she frequents the tailor’s like monthly. Personally I don’t understand it, in my mind I’m like “but you have enough clothes”, but it’s none of my business so I say nothing and without questions follow her to the tailor’s anytime the situation calls for it.
As it is my mum will go any length to get quality out of her material. She’ll go the extra mile to find a tailor that’ll do the job well, that’ll do justice to her clothe. Her current talior has his shop a long distance from our home but he’s very worth it. He’s expensive but very creative and detailed and it is with commitment to his excellence that my mum visits his shop with every of her material, no kidding.
It was on one of those days that I followed my mum to her tailor’s shop. We’d been there for about 3-5mins with my mum telling her tailor the adjustments she wanted him to make, him clarifying why he added or didn’t add a design, when a woman of about 50 entered into the shop. I’m terribly bad with telling people’s ages so I couldn’t tell her age until she mentioned that she was a grandma. My first impression of her was neutral, she didn’t know me, I didn’t know her, but of course there was the courteous greeting initially. Because she’s older -that was pretty much obvious- I had to get up from my sit for her as a show of respect, what irked me was the air about her that I perceived had her feeling that indeed I had to get up for her afterall she was older. She didn’t even tell me thank you o. All well, nothing doing. I continued to watch the banter between my mum and the tailor somewhat bored, I was restless and ready to go. More adjustment and talks later and the woman that entered in was shouting.
This woman had given the tailor specifications of what she wanted in her clothes, she’d given him two lace materials. She’d heard he was very good and brought her materials to him to sew because she was to wear it for her son’s wedding. If you know an average Yoruba woman, an everyday Yoruba woman, you’ll know how seriously -emphasis on seriously- they take their parties and everything associated with it, especially when they’re an important part of the party, and especially when they happen to be the mother of the celebrant! Note if you’re a vendor: pressure alert! To be honest the material was nice, like very nice…before I digress though. The tailor out of sartorial common sense and over-creativity (if ever it exists) sew something that was a bit different from what the woman had specified. In my opinion the tailor did an awesome job. I loved what he did with that material, but once the woman sighted it all hell broke loose: he didn’t sew exactly to her specification. While my mum out of womanly understanding tried to reason with the woman, and the tailor looked on in confusion (you should’ve seen his face), I sat being irritated because I didn’t understand how someone as old as she could throw a tantrum over something so trivial. I don’t ridicule what her opinion is, she bought the material and has the right to dictate what happens to it, but hey, this guy was only trying to spice things up. That was how she kept crying and shouting until the tailor, still in confusion, started loosening the seams of the clothe.
I took some time over that incidence and concluded with the most powerful lesson from that: NEVER ATTACH YOUR EMOTIONS TO MATERIAL THINGS. It’s okay to like things in an inexplicable way, it’s okay to value things, it’s okay to attach sentimental values to things, but please never let it control your emotions or reactions. That woman reacted the way she did because she was emotionally attached to that clothe. My guess is that she’d had this fixed vision of what she wanted in her mind and nothing could change that. Flexibility is important. If we were a bit more flexible we wouldn’t get so worked up about things not working out our way. It’s a lesson I’m learning daily and for someone who’s getting over worry I’ve found that just letting go and allowing for life to do its thing will relieve a lot of pressure, does that mean we should be passive? No. But it does mean that if we’ll get over anxiety or spontaneously sparking out of anger, it’ll be because we have learnt to go with the flow and not be overly attached to things that won’t last.
By Kehinde.
Images found at http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=lessons&FORM=HDRSC2
Third Culture Wife. 