A short story about a mother and daughter who went through rough time and a father and son who has a strange relationship. You will see how these two stories have in common and how they are different.
Marriage today is different (Pg. 3, paragraph 1) said Nnaemeka while talking to his father about how found the women of his life and want to marry her. As his father is not please due to the fact his son choose some one out of there village Ugoyer’s or someone he did not arrange for him Look here, my son nothing is different what one looks for in a wife are a good character and a Christian background. (page 3, paragraph 2). By making a point you the father wants what is best for his son, but his son wants best for him and not to be told what to do or who he can marry to. She is a good Christian, and a teacher in a girls school in Lagos (page 3, paragraph 6) said Nnaemeka but the father wasnt please to such thing he heard his son say because to him a wife shouldnt be a teacher nor do anything but be a stay home wife and do what wife do at home his replay to his son was If you consider that a qualification for a good wife I should like to point out to you, that no Christian woman should teach. St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians says that women should keep silence (page 3, paragraph 7).
Nnaemeka tried to talk to his father on being able to be a man of his own but nothing worked for him in the mind of an old man lays his bitterness and stubborn tradition ways. But he went on to marrying his beautiful wife Nene who has been behind her husband no matter what Nnaemeka father said bash his son and letting him know he no longer is welcome back home to visit and that he disowned him. Until one day Nene wrote a letter to Nnemeka father Our two sons, from the day they learnt that they have a grandfather, have insisted on being taken to him. I find it impossible to tell them that you will not see them. I implore you to allow Nnaemeka to bring them home for a short time during his leave next month. I shall remain here in Lagos (pg. 5, paragraph 9). When the father receives the letter, he started thinking how all this time he dis credited his son just because he didnt go with tradition and now he has two grand kids he cant disowned because they dont have no part to this and from there he started to regret his action and ways and wants to be part of his grands kids life.
She used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks’ habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice. She washed us in a river of make-believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn’t necessarily need to know. Pressed us to her with the serious way she read, to shove us away at just the moment, like dimwits, we seemed about to understand (pg. 2, paragraph 2). Here is a mother talking about her daughter Dee and how she uses to act when she was sixteen as if the mother did a bad job. Showing off her way of styles and how she dressed until one day the mother sent her to school as she returned as a grown woman and maybe seeing a man of sort.
Dee and her mother relationship isnt like any relationship its like a friendship that has been broken and they havent seen each other for years as Dee try to let her mother know that he new name is what she go by Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo which he mother thought that was a weird name telling her “ You know as well as me you was named after your aunt Dicie,” I said. Dicie is my sister. She named Dee. We called her “ Big Dee” after Dee was born (pg. 3 paragraph 6). As her mother let her know her roots and how her name got here but Dee wasnt having by telling her mother Dee is dead “ I couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me” (pg. 3, paragraph 5).
As she introduces her friend or man Asalamalakim or Hakim-a-barber which the mom thought his name was way too long to say and was going to ask why he has a barber does he cut hair, but she left hat alone as she sees the two admiring the house and the cattler’s thatr’s was roaming around the yard. You can say that she out grown from who she was to what she has become. At the end the mother and daughter grew a new relationship as she sees how the mother mad a quilt that tells the history of the family.
In conclusion, both stories have one thing in common which is family now matter how tough things get between father and son or mother and daughter family will always stay family.