The journey to 30 starts weeks, months before September 15th.
There is brooding involved, as expected. I brood with books for company. Too many to count here. But there is “Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine”, and “Love Lives Here”, and a book on peak performance whose name I don’t remember (and am too lazy to google right now). This book convinces me to take the plunge and delete my social media accounts. I start with Facebook. Then Twitter. Then Instagram. 11 years of memories and identity carefully archived, and then summarily removed from the Internet.
It doesn’t bring the catharsis I hope. But it is a good first step. An old friend reaches out on Google Chat (who uses that?!) to ask how my writing is doing. I tell him what seems like the truth. That it’s dead for now. But even I don’t believe it.
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In 2017, I followed a colleague from work who volunteers with St Vincent De Paul to the Island Maternity Hospital. She was going to check on a young woman, a new mother without resources to care for herself or her newborn. I had heard stories of what it is like to give birth in a public hospital. That day, I saw the stories live. And what I saw forever changed my outlook.
I have a goal to one day open a shelter for young women who get pregnant and have no means to care for themselves or their children. I’m thinking 18 months of housing, feeding, childcare and skills acquisition. This is, of course, an expensive and high-effort venture and I simply cannot work on it right now. But what I’ve learned this year is to start from where I am. The intent is to help young women. Well then, how about helping them with the resources I already have?
The notice is short, less than a week. I send Whatsapp messages to my friends saying in effect: My birthday is on Saturday. I’m having a small tea party at home. But first, I’d like to go to Mass and then visit the Island Maternity Hospital to support the poor mothers. Can you help me?
My friends come through. Some send money enough for a dozen care kits (toiletries for mother and baby). Some bring baby clothes. Some show up to help at the hospital. And some send money to pay hospital bills of 3 mothers. (Did you know that if you don’t pay your bills in a government hospital, they don’t discharge you AND they stop feeding you?)
We go to mass (first time in a while I attend mass on my birthday. It’s the feast day of Our Lady of Sorrows. Figures). And then we go to my apartment to eat all my favorite things (jollof rice, Kitchen Butterfly’s cassava salad, and all the small chops).
It’s not exactly how I’d have planned to celebrate my birthday, surrounded by only women save for my two sons. But it just happens that K. has travelled for work and it’s the perfect excuse to do a female tribe party. It isn’t a fancy do. But I can’t explain how happy it all makes me. To be surrounded by the women who are some of my closest friends, doing things I love, eating food I like and with little or no fuss. Sitting there in my sitting room eating my birthday cake (homemade by Ozoz) and drinking zobo (homemade by my housekeeper, Becky), I realize that this is who I am. At 30, I am a woman who loves the simple things. This is not who 10-year-old Osemhen thought she’d be at 30. I swear I thought I’d be sophisticated.
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What good does the brooding do? A lot. I make my peace with a lot of things from my past. I make resolutions to enrich my life by subtraction. Yes, subtraction. What/who else can I say No to? Turns out there is a lot.
This is how I turn 30. Happier. Quieter. Lighter.