Whenever he saw a dead man’s mouth he saw the folly of not eating what one had in one’s lifetime
~ Unoka (Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe)
My interest in the deeper psychological attachments between children and parents was rekindled by re-reading Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe sometime in my 20s. I’d first read the book in my early teens but the character dynamics so expertly presented by the genius Achebe wasn’t as apparent back then.
The unforgettable protagonist — Okonkwo, is a tragic hero that spends his whole life trying not to become his father — Unoka, who was perceived as a weakling, a man of pleasure, and a low life. In return for Okonkwo’s brute strength - an antithesis of his father’s tainted legacy, he becomes the village wrestling champion, attains great wealth, and, earns a seat at the table with the respected elders of his village.
Unfortunately, strains of the same character flaws that besmirched his father’s legacy showed up in Okonkwo too, albeit expressed differently. By choosing to be strong, Okonkwo became rigid, and like his father, when life forced him to bend he shattered.
As I empathized with the unforgettable characters in Achebe’s novel, I overlaid Unoka and Okonkwo’s father/son dynamic on mine using my father’s baldness as the perfect metaphor for this interpolation. So as it goes, baldness is a recurring male trait in my family that stretches back to our first fathers.
At about the same time I was trying to understand what makes a man run away from his father’s weaknesses so badly that he comes back full circle to confront it, I had a head full of hair and my father was as bald as an eagle. Out of curiosity, I asked him what it felt like to be bald. I wanted to know how his hair fell off. Was it sudden, like when an assailant violently attacks one in the night, and makes off with one’s hair; or was it gradual, fading away like love retracting? How did it start? When did it start?
I wanted to know.
I had many questions because it was hard to reconcile the man he’d become with the young Bohemian with the afro that looked back at me from his old pictures. In one of those old photos, I look just like him. He is wearing a Superman shirt, and his smile is frozen, cast into the future beaming through me. His dentition is perfect.
When did that luxuriant headscape become a desert?
“It’s not noticeable at first.” My father responded empathetically.
“Your hair just gradually goes away. Don’t worry. Soon, it will be your turn and you’ll know.”
“Never!” I responded. “I won’t be bald.”
There was no sign at the time that I would but alas here we are today.
As I mentioned earlier, balding is a placeholder for the multitude of personality traits that attach us to those ancestors we love, hate, or never knew. And just as balding may lie dormant for years, choosing to reveal itself at an opportune time, some of these personality traits can find their out in inexplicable ways, and we’ll find ourselves acting the same way, or making the same mistakes we hated our fathers for. The irony, aptly outlined by my receding hairline is how some of these recessive traits creep up on us while we are awake — proudly proclaiming:
“It is now your turn.”
One of those traits that have crept up on me is my father’s constant, soul-sapping nagging. As a kid, doing anything with him was mostly a stressful experience. It didn’t matter whether it was changing a tire, driving him to work, or helping him to iron his clothes. He always had an ideal way to turn the screw, shift the gears or turn the electric iron dial, and whenever you did otherwise, he would talk and talk and talk …. On one occasion, while driving him to work I reached the cliff edge of his insanity-inducing prattle and I stopped by the roadside, forest on either side, tar fading into the horizon — and for the first time in my adult years, I openly challenged his authority by refusing to drive him any further.
He’d nagged my wits to death that day.
I knew how much he loved us but my father’s love for ‘correcting’ us as he called it was so stifling that I swore that when I grew up I’d never be like him. Well, not until I had kids and I found myself lapsing into the same habits I loathed about him. Whenever, I see my children’s eyes drop to the floor, worn out by my depressing diatribes I pinch myself — not this man again. In this earlier article titled, Many Years Later, I’ve Become the Witch Father I explore my nagging relationship with my children in a little more detail.
I am not a psychologist but I assume that a lot of this personality transmission is influenced by nature and nurture — in that we share traits with these people whose behaviors have also influenced us. How we show love, express our emotions, and understand ourselves; the values we hold dear and the instruments with which we navigate our lives were partly borrowed from these folks so it is highly probable that we will do certain things like them, even things we think were borne of our instincts.
At a deeper level is what I will call the Okonkwo Cycle which is a tendency to become the worst of our parents (against our better judgment) due to our hyper fixation on the symptoms of their failings and not the underlying cause. In Okonkwo’s case, what he saw on the surface of his father’s inadequacy was weakness and lack of strength, but behind that was a lack of awareness and inability to adapt — all traits that surreptitiously found their way into Okonkwo’s ideological clash with the Colonialists and his village people — the same traits that would blind him to the unfolding changes happening around him and lead to his eventual downfall. Had Okonkwo been able to step back from his blind rage against his father for a moment and see this, perhaps he would’ve done things differently. Perhaps he would’ve heeded the voice of reason by not wielding the cursed machete that ended his son’s life.
Oftentimes, in our bid to run away from the things we hate about our parent figures, we come around full circle because we’re not patient enough to see the true face of our assailant.
In closing, I must let you know that I still spend an awful amount of time reflecting on the oku-die-kaa-to of my personality — the detectable flaws I seek to eschew. However, I’ve stopped looking over my shoulders trying to find an excuse for them in my father’s failings or otherwise. He has lived his life; I’m living mine.
Yet, I must admit that I am him in a way — we are alike in so many ways. Still, I remind myself that I am also not him. I keep a closely guarded chest of the decisions I’ve taken differently to remind me that I am my own person, but I acknowledge our similarities — my artistic nature, the gradual decline in my motivations as my world greys, dying from all this meaning seeping out of its open pores. I acknowledge our mutual desire for glory eclipsed by our tendency to court tranquility; I see our large hearts, constantly fed by our narrow minds; I applaud our timeless charity but decry our self-doubt, and I want to be strong enough to overcome the burden of the extra effort we must muster to start anything over.
In getting to know myself better, I’ve come to know my father and with that knowledge, I’m less judgmental of what I perceive to be his failings.
Now, I understand.
As he predicted, I am bald now with half a head gone and half more to go; and the process was gradual, imperceptible, like some of those traits I battle daily trying to stop them from creeping up on my awareness like a thief who comes, fleeing into the night but leaving something of himself behind.
I’ve embraced our limitations like I’ve embraced balding but I wear it differently — not like a bald man who is ashamed of his baldness, but as one who has come to terms with that identity.
Every day, as I follow the dream of becoming, I toggle between the outward symptoms of my character flaws and the eclectic contents of my identity chest and I pick out traits I believe are essentially mine and those bequeathed. I set them aside; conscious of the power the past has in defining our future if we allow it.
In all, I remind myself to be kind, first to myself so that I can summon the will to walk away from my inherited burdens when I need to and renew myself for the bold future and opportunity that each new day brings.
To my father, whose reflection I now see every day in the mirror