NEW!!! A REAL-LIFE SUPERHERO

Growing up with an active imagination and an undying interest in comic books, I’ve come to find out that Heroes come in different shapes, costumes, powers and sizes. I’ve always wondered the kind of life I would live if I had the powers of the webslinger Spiderman in Nigeria, I’ld be swinging from one electric pole to another, landing on rusted galvanized zinc roofs and saving simple folks from the tyranny of ritual killers and kidnappers and maybe even battle witches, we’ll never know how that story ends but it has always fascinated me, the worlds of possibility, the timeless battle of good and evil and the triumph of good over evil, superheroes always excite me, maybe because we’ll never see one in real life, maybe because they are too cool to be real, or because they always live out simple lives, as powerful as they are, they still disguise as common harmless folks who do simple ordinary things. The life of super heroes, given to the service of humanity and how cool their costumes are, even though I’m yet to grasp the concept of running around fighting crimes in latex tights and some even wear their underwear on the outside, what genius thought of that? “Hey guys, you know what will make superman even cooler? What if he wore his underwear outside… that way it becomes an over wear”, I’ld like to imagine that he probably got an applause for that pitch otherwise it wouldn’t have become a part of the costume.

So we grew up into the reality that Hollywood may have been feeding us with the right message in the wrong form… I mean, it’s true we ought to be selfless and serve humanity, but who in their right mind would fight crime in their underwear and well, we are yet to see flying men and women, so we got older and the reality dawned on us, we accepted the harsh reality that there was no such thing as super heroes. Or maybe not.

This morning I woke up and realized I had been living with a super hero all my life and I never thought of it maybe because she wasn’t swinging through electric poles, crushing the jaws of crime, or just flying about in her underwear, either way I didn’t realize I was living with a superhero until now.

To the ordinary eyes, she’s a simple woman, but while we sleep, she stays awake, checking to make sure we are comfortable, fighting the blood sucking mosquitoes, waking us up to go and pee (that was a long time ago), she would stay up late at night praying, fighting battles we couldn’t see and even though she had little sleep she would still be the first to wake up, she zooms of to the kitchen and like magic she makes breakfast, some of the most amazing things in life comes out of that kitchen when she’s in there, she serves everybody and makes arrangement for lunch, she’s five steps ahead and she never miscalculates, always right on the money, her aim is just spotless. With the strength of ten men, to have been delivered of four boys, training and making men out of them. Quiet yet loud with impact, she makes friends so fast and she’s always ready to help out, she wouldn’t mind giving up her slot for others, she’s always looking out for her boys and when dad rough handles us (i.e. discipline in the way you all understand), she would cushion the hurt, she would talk it out, ask you why the fudge you did what you did, she would be the soft landing, and for every petty inconsequential need we had, she was on speed dial, and she has never turned us down, even when resources are not available, she flies off to source for it, she would do anything and everything for her boys. I’ve been living with a superhero and she doesn’t even know it, she swings through different hurdles, flies to the rescue when I call, she investigates thoroughly every anomaly and as always she saves the day.

My hero is no superman, wonder woman got nothing on my hero, spider man ought to learn from her, there’s no hero like my mother, even though she won’t go about in a cape, she still saves the day. She lives quietly among us, guiding, protecting, advising, caring, loving, cooking, providing for us and definitely whooping our asses.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUPERMUM, YOU ARE MY HERO!