1 1 LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL

When I was born, my mum said that I didn't cry for five long weeks. All I did was squint and rub my tiny hands together as though praying. The nurses spanked my bare bottom, but I didn't make a sound. They pricked my tiny foot, and all I did was wiggle it. No matter what they did, I didn't cry.

My mum said she and my dad were worried at first but stopped worrying because as the days passed, instead of crying, I smiled and yawned a lot. She also said that when everyone was fast asleep at night, I burst out laughing loudly. When she woke up, she would see me staring at the ceiling as though someone hanging there was making funny faces at me; and when she tickled me on the cheek to distract me, I would look at her, smile, turn back to the ceiling and laugh even louder.At those times, my mother said I made her feel like there was a grown man hiding inside my body.

Even though they weren't worried that I hadn't cried for a while, they took me to the hospital to complain, and the doctor had told them in a comforting tone:

"Don't worry, some babies just take their time. As you can see, his eyes follow you when you speak, so this baby, I must say, will be a very intelligent boy. A boy who will cry at his own time."

When I finally cried, it was because I was hungry. So hungry that my mum had to immediately feed me with baby food because she couldn't produce enough breast milk for me. I always wanted to suckle, and she was sore from breastfeeding me.

The doctors were surprised at my appetite but were not altogether concerned. They told my parents that over time I would develop a normal appetite for a baby my age, but I didn't. Instead, I ate more and more until I became chubby and round as a ball.

My mum said that my laughter was usually infectious. It was the kind of laughter that made you laugh with me even if you didn't know the reason I was laughing. She also said that though I didn't cry early, I spoke at four months old. It was a babble that was made up mostly of the names of foods like:

Water, Milk, and Dodo.

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Words like:

Hungry, Sleep, and Toilet.

Soon those were followed by phrases like:

Give me, and Oops, me burp!

These words were sometimes followed by long giggles that most times transformed to lingering laughter. It was as though I wanted to make up for not crying early.My mum said she was glad that since I was already bigger than my age, she didn't need to answer questions from people who would have been shocked that I started to talk quite early.

I was a very big baby, bigger than all the babies my age that the days after I was born, my mum couldn't find my size of diapers at the stores, and she had to buy the size for toddlers. I grew up fast, spoke faster, and played without boundaries at every opportunity I could get. But I wasn't fearless. I had a healthy dose of fear. Just that, somehow, I never allowed it to hold me back. I just stared it in the face for a short while before I pushed it aside and went ahead to do what I wanted to do.

My mum said there was something about me that was attracted to exploring things, figuring them out and using them to discover even more things. I would check the shoeboxes that were kept in the open store at home and upon finding them empty, I would stack them up in front of the huge wardrobe in the room and climb on top of them so that my hand could reach the knob of the door of the wardrobe. Once my hand reached it, I would open it a little bit, climb down the stacked shoeboxes, and open the door of wardrobe even wider before stepping into it to explore the contents. Usually, I ended up wearing a mismatch of clothes and shoes that were way bigger than me, so that when I walked into the living room where my parents sat watching television, I'd draw a loud report of laughter from them.

My mum would say, as she spoke about me to her friends and our relatives, "Trust me, there is no boring day with him. When you think there is nothing crazier or funnier he could do, he would surprise you in the next instant. In fact, his dad and I already know that he is either going to be a comedian when he grows up or a soldier. He is fearless."

I was a quick learner. Actually, my mum said I ate knowledge like I ate food. But unlike food which made me put on weight, knowledge made me lose all the baby fat I had. So, as I grew older, I became slimmer and taller. And my light-complexioned skin became more like that of the colour of chocolate, which was exactly like my mum's, yet I looked like my dad. Everyone did say I behaved like a mix of both of them. I was caring, outgoing and fun-loving like my mum, and stubborn and courageous like my dad; but no one knew where I got the ability to hear things no one else could.

As I grew up, I surprised everyone by my claims that I could hear trees, flowers, and animals talk. First, they thought I was daydreaming, and when I insisted, they would look at me, worried. It got so bad that at school, the students crowded around me, asking me what the birds that flew over us were saying; or the goats across the street, or the trees in the playground. I would respond, and they would marvel at my answers even though they really didn't believe me. But when the headmistress summoned my parents and me to her office one day and explained to them that I was becoming a distraction to the other kids, I had to stop talking about the sounds I heard.

Though I stopped talking about it at school and left it only to my parents at home, I was still very popular. My classmates always wanted to play with me, even when there were no stories about animals or trees talking. I had no idea why but I was open to playing with them as long as they allowed me to lead the way. I didn't like them expressing their fear when I suggested we did something daring, like climbing up the tree and doing somersaults from the tree branches onto the ground. This is because if you expressed fear, somehow, I would begin to feel that fear and would end up not doing what I wanted to do. So, I just went ahead and did what I wanted to do, and usually, the others would join in, or they would step aside and watch. I was like a superhero. All I needed was a cape or a bodysuit.

Life was beautiful. It was fun when I was the only child and a different kind of fun when my younger sister was born.I used my fierce imagination to explore everywhere I found myself. The schoolyard became a forest where I was a hunter, the backyard at home became an ocean in which I was a pirate sailing on a large ship, and the car that dropped me and picked me from school became an armoured tank at war. But all of these were regularly disrupted because my mum and my sister were both born with a dangerous illness.

It attacked my mum frequently, and when it did, the house became silent; either because my dad had rushed her to the hospital, or she was lying in her bed and moaning in pain.

I would stay in my room and cry when she cried because I knew I couldn't stop the pain and it made me realise how powerless I was: a superhero without any powers.

My sister didn't suffer as much as my mother.One night, as we sat around the dining table and ate fried plantains and eggs, my dad told us of a doctor friend of his who had told him of another doctor in London who could heal my sister of her illness.

I had asked if the doctor could heal my mum too and my dad had said that he hoped that would happen, but first, the doctor had to see my sister because she was younger and the treatment worked better on younger people.

I looked at my mum listening to my dad as he spoke and I wasn't sure at first if she was happy or sad, so I opened my mouth to ask her; but my dog, Kompa, brushed against my leg.

And when I looked down at him, he said, while shaking his head, "Mum is not sad, she is happy that one of them will get well, so don't open your big mouth to ask her if she is sad."

So, I closed my big mouth and listened to dad tell us all about the trip he had to take to London with my sister.

I listened to them talk about the chances of the illness being treated and how cold and far London was from Lagos where we lived. As I sat there listening, I began to imagine myself as an eagle flying free across the ocean towards the city they described as beautiful, clean, and filled with miraculous healing.