Bridget - De-bonding

My Darling Pickle,

I write this with the hope of three things:
1. That you have inherited my sense of humor.
2. You are no longer living at home.
3. And you don’t resent me moving to Peru to pursue a writing career you so rudely interrupted almost 20 years ago to this date.

On that note, read on.

My lovely child, I have watched you grow and blossom into a miniature copy of me. [Cue - Clip From Austin Powers, "Mini-Me Your Complete Me".] I was marveled at the tenacity with which you face the challenges thrown into your 5-year-old path. You have never disappointed me. Except that time when you failed to laugh at my Pooh joke.

At the age of 11, when you first got your period, and your boobs began to blossom out of control and I was forced to admit that Aunty Sheena was not an alien from outer space, that she had such a knockout pair. I was also afraid. For the second time in your life, I would play the heavy mother, not your friend, but someone who, though rarely ever fulfills this role, was here to guide you until you could read the Compass of Life on your own. Thank Jesus for Outcomes Based Education and the subject known as Life Orientation --- NOT! Short of giving you copies of Karma Sutra Made Easy, they did a good job of making you non-afraid of the one-eyed-snake! Because of LO, I had to spend the next year putting the Terror of the Penis back into you.

At the age of 16, when I urged you to spread you wings and spoke highly of the independence boarding schools taught me, I was merely trying to get rid of you for a few of months of the year. The constant jabbering on the phone, the slanging matches we had because you would not stick to curfew and the fact that I started worrying that you were becoming a 16-year-old monster, led me to my actions. I hope you, like myself, found boarding school an enriching experience, a chance to finesse you fighting skills and sharpen you intimidation tools that would stand you in good stead late in life. I also hope that you learnt to be patient, made lasting friendships and was smart enough o no tell your friends when you started having sex because they would have gone and told the entire school by break time.

Reaching 18, one of your toughest years I’ll wager, as you would have by now been told the family skeleton, I hope you meet that challenge of learning things about those you love with the strength I see in you today as I write this letter. I also hope your father will still be alive and I will still have enough sway on his Guilt-o-Meter, to present you with a car to mark you leaving High School and doing whatever it is you will choose to do.

I hope, given the fact that I would have set up your education financing system in such a way that after 18, all you needed from your mother, was a sympathetic ear and advice when you contract the clap from your travels to exotic countries. A little advice, when in a Thailand, hire gigolos for sex, they’re safer than tourists and will not put drugs in your coffee.

At this juncture in your life, do not resent me for taking up doing all the things I didn’t do because of your untimely entrance into my life. Beginning with the diving off the coast of the Red Sea, living in The Sudan and getting in touch with my inner Inca.

As you reach this zenith of your life (25), having either just left university, if you took the break year, or finishing your first year working I have a couple of words of wisdom for you my child.

1.Sucking up to your boss doesn’t mean sleeping with him.
2.Being good at what you do must never come at the expense of others.
3. Teamwork often leads to under achievement, and allocated blame when things go wrong be the “I” in TEAM! Except when you are operating on the heart of a fellow human being.
4. Where you come from is important, but only figuratively. Where you are going is unknown, so make the best of the present.

On that note,

I’ll grab a drink and continue to write my memoirs, which I will sell under the pretense of being a descendant of King Shaka.
See you on Skype Video Call.

With love,
Mammo

PS: That current boyfriend of yours, he’s gay.