MOTHER’S LEGACY ~ Fame Agidife

CHAPTER 16:  MOTHER’S LEGACY – ( Hope Alive Yes We Can)

    #A Tribute to Mother and Mother Earth

The relationship between mother and son can best be described as an oath of blood, sworn in a pang of distress by a pregnant mother who gives birth through surgical complications.

#This is a Eulogy from an African Child to all Mothers across the globe.

I avow that from the days of my little beginning, I will preach and spread this “Mother’s Legacy”—the lessons of love, sacrifice, and duty—side by side with Mother Earth, who holds my hand. We are two forces counterbalancing the world, like the centripetal and centrifugal energies balancing the West Wind.

I vow, by the intensity of the throes of distress Mother endured during my birth, to spread the virtues she planted in me across all territorial borders of the earth. What profound moral virtues could a son have gained in the whole wide world that a mother did not already fully inculcate in a child?

The University of Mother

I was taught at the university of higher learning about the philosophical doctrine of Socrates and Plato, centered on ‘virtue’ as the centerpiece of moral ethics. This virtue was idolized as the ‘Supreme God’—the ‘god of Virtue’—that ought to rule ‘Man’.

To me, this grand philosophy was simply the modest, essential teaching of Mother’s Legacy back at home: **“Son, you must be good to your neighbors—them Adeniyi, Michael, and Okaros—because if you are not good to them, they will not be good to you.”

I remember seeing excrement on the ground, and Mother would always take a half-shovel and park it away. And I, a poor, innocent child, would curiously ask: “But they are not your children’s, Mother?”

She always answered with profound simplicity: “If you do not remove them, you will still step on them and track it into your house. And besides, they are your brothers; they are my children too.”

I was taught at the university of higher learning about the great thoughts and great works of literary history's great men, like William Shakespeare** (*Julius Caesar*), John Donne (*Elegy in the Country Church Yard), and 'Paradise Lost'.

And yet, I found that these powerful narratives echoed the same simple, modest counsel Mother used to share with her son: “Ufuoma, wherever you go, always remember to attend your Christian Meetings. You and I must surely see in God’s Kingdom—Paradise. That is why I called you Ufuoma,” meaning ‘peace.’

These teachings are repeatedly re-echoed in my memory through letters, telephone calls, and direct messages, even when I am far from the shores of my Fatherland.

My Eternal Vow

O! Mother! Seeing you is like feeling the internal, magnificent power of the great dinosaur!

O! Mother! Adoring you is like honoring the highest and most profound part of my own humanity!

And with the unwavering support of Mother Earth, I vow to blow this Mother’s Legacy—this gospel of simple virtue—to all the nook and cranny of the World like the powerful West Wind.

*Dedicated from the deepest love of my heart to all Mothers across the World.