Celebrate Your Mum On Your Birthday

It was a stressful night but still had to obdurate with another wake-up-class by stretching my paws vigorously this morning after a tight schedule yesterday. Honestly, I expected a zilch wish than plentiful of wishes today ever since I got to know that the more man grows the more he eats his given age away in titbits. If you turn 40yrs today it means that you have grown forty more years to your grave, and so why must man glory with 'Birthday Celebration'? When I was young poverty do compel me to forget, I mean this special day in which I was delivered at Ridge hospital, but I do remember after two or three days have gone by!

And if you are an extremist religious person kindly extinguish your peppery mode if I say birthday is a special day; Birthdays are special because our mother's nine months’ pregnancy has held a meaning and they died not during labour, if compared to other unfortunate beings. In fact, I now call it 'DeathBomb' because time is shoving us to our grave as the day keeps revolving and we know not when death would actually knock but it shall surely do so without fear or favour!

People who had known that this special day was not only the birthday of the Vice President of the Republic of Ghana, Dr. Mahmud Bawumia but was also a special day of the ‘insignificant me’, wished me a happy birthday. Among these lovely ones are Thomas Ako Nai-Romeo and Adiza Aflowa Afful, which came through a mobile text and a status with my name inscribed on it. My mother was the only one who called me on phone not just to wish me a happy birthday but also invoked Allah's countenance on me, and I have nothing to say again than to endorse her supplication with a hopeful ‘Ami'. After her prayers she asked; “so where, when and how is the party going to be had”? In my trickiest mind of not spending a 'dime' on today, I resorted of rescinding her request by asking; “Ah mom, today is my day so you ought to be sponsoring me instead”!

She remains aloof for some time on the phone and that was the moment I thought that I have quelled her! She rebutted my childish answer with a motherly wisdom which forced me to think and thought deep! She said; “you should be celebrating me today and not the opposite because I was the one who suffered carrying you and God willing got you delivered successfully on this day, and for this reason I am demanding this and that from you on today”. Now my time of utter silence; after a long hiatus I was left to acquiesced the credence of what my mother had said, and without further ado I knew I have no other option than to fulfil her request!

To me, this is the best of birthdays I have ever celebrated insofar the two decades and more which I have witnessed this day by the kind courtesy of my Creator, after taking a handful of a mashed yam mixed with red oil and with an honourably one cooked egg, traditionally called ‘Oto’, somewhere in the year 2000 prepared by Rhoda Owusua Oboubi of blessed memory! The traditional liturgies of such birthday celebrations then were not expensive unlike the extravagance of birthdays of today, but highly cherished, no musical tunes but a sobering moments of wise thoughts, ensuring that one’s actions do not go contrary to what the obvious books have said.

Nonetheless, this year’s birthday was magnanimously celebrated and above all I got to know that no matter the lessons we may have derived from exposure, or how knowledgeable we do claim we are, our parents know things which we know not! So instead of spending lavishly on your birthday rather make it a habit of putting smiles on the faces of your parents if they are still breathing and if they are not, be charitable to those who have lost their parents through birth. The Bible mentioned in Ephesians 6:1-4 “Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honour thy father and Mother which is the first commandment. That it may be well with you”.

We owe our parents our entire life and birthday celebration…!

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