There are times where life is sour, just like lemons.
Circumstances and experiences leave an unpleasant taste in your mouth; you feel like every iota of joy and happiness is being squeezed out of you – it seems hopeless, how in the world can anything beautiful emerge from this?
Then you discover there's purpose in all the pain; you take all the lemons life throws at you and you make delicious lemonade.
Ayjay otewrtay atthay (I'll explain)
On June 9th 2019, a day after Jay replied to my birthday message, I was going through my WhatsApp and I saw her name on my contact list; she'd never been on WhatsApp but apparently, she now was.
I'd have realised this sooner if only I had saved her number correctly from years ago – I forgot to add the plus sign before the country dialling code back then, I corrected it 2 days ago when I was thinking of calling her for her birthday; her profile photo was a picture of her wearing this red Ankara dress and this thing on her head that I'd like to believe is a ready-made gele.
In Chapter 11 on the topic of cute coincidences I mentioned someone I hadn't heard from in a while who now has a daughter named Aviella; well that person is Jay.
Here's our WhatsApp conversation from that day;
Jay
Where in the world have you been?
...
I have a daughter, she's one.
She'll be two in November.
She's married now and has this cute little girl named Aviella who looks like her (she sent me pictures and this video where Aviella was saying mama) – we messaged for a bit on WhatsApp and I caught up with what had happened in her life since the last time we spoke (this was 2016).
She's a super mom now – school, work and family.
I can't even imagine how demanding it is to joggle those three things and still stay sane (she seemed sane), but then again, I'm not really surprised, she always had it in her, now that I think about it – back in Chapter 17 when I saw her in New York she was killing it in school (she was on the Dean's list), she was taking care of her aunt like every day and she still found time for a side job – she'd always been a multi-tasker of sorts. The last part of that message stream says:
Jay
I was wondering how you didn't know I have a child
Well, I hadn't been on Facebook in years (except it was work related), I hardly ever go on Instagram (except it is work related), so yeah, I had no idea she had a child (reading that made her sound very...motherly ;-)), Jay is a mom?!, I'm still shocked, kind of)
One other interesting thing she said is that she's now a non-denominational Christian and is taking God very seriously – like I mentioned at some point in this story she used to be Catholic, but now she's moved to something that according to her poses less trouble:
Jay
I'm deeper in my faith now and my walk with God,
Bible believing Christian...
Non-denominational Christian
On reading that, the Baba voice in my head said – Why you no go dey deeper, after you don flex life weh weh – I really need to exorcise that voice.
