The memories begin to show all the craziness, all the missteps. And there you were thinking you were doing well. Mixed in with all the craziness are memories that were not funny at the time but certainly I can look at them and laugh because they are laughable.
When we started out we hardly had enough money to pay the bills with one salary and with one person going to college. It was really tough. I had gone to live at his relatives’ house to stay with them while she went abroad for an extended period which turned into a rental arrangement, so all I ever had when I moved in was my clothes and then I got pregnant.
The best way to cope with a pregnancy is to be prepared financially and emotionally and we were so unprepared. Unprepared but not regretful. There was never a moment when I did not want my child.
Of course, I am leaving out a lot because I don’t want to fall off the rails. I want to keep this short.
We had been using their stuff in the kitchen, mostly utensils, crockery, pots and pans. The time came when I really needed to start buying my own stuff but with the finances as they were I could only afford to buy a few things including two medium plastic bowls to have my Saturday soup. They were orange in colour.
One Saturday, there I was cooking my soup when another relative dropped by. She was coming from the market where she had gone from very early and it was now somewhere in noon time.
She asked me for some which I did not mind except all I had were the two orange plastic bowls and growing up, visitors were fed in crockery. She said she did not mind and I went ahead and served her some. She tasted the soup, complimented the taste and said she had to leave, which I understood because she had small children and needed to fix their dinner, but to my horror she left with my bowl!
I was down to one bowl! I was too embarrassed to say, “You can’t leave with my bowl,” so I didn’t. My heart sank as I watched her driving away with my bowl that I had just bought and couldn’t replace in a hurry.
I guess we both couldn’t have soup for dinner at the same time!