Now and again, I think about the time my father told me my accent had changed. We were sitting in the living room (or was it his bedroom, or the yard?). We were talking about my upcoming move. He talked with pride but never said the words “I am proud of you”. I could hear it though, in the way he repeatedly said “You are going to be an Expat”. I would never put it so grand what I did/ do for a living but it was intriguing. I imagine sometimes that he sat there thinking, I can go now, my youngest conquered Makurdi. I know that is probably not what he thought but I sometimes wonder and as I do, I think about him telling me that my accent was not the same as it used to be.
“It is not a bad thing” he said when I fought back at the idea that I could sound like anything other than Mimidoo – the one that they flogged in school that year for speaking vernacular instead of English.
I used to be defiant. Brutally myself even when I did not know who that was. Yet, my father said “You no longer have the accent you had as a child”
My father traced his statement to everywhere I had been. Somehow inferring that it was a testament of all the places that had touched me but me, I considered it a disaster. I think of it now. It was nearly three years ago. I think of it still and wonder, what happened to my accent? the original one. Would I even recognize it now if I heard it? I don’t mean my voice, that one I can always find because if I search deep, long, and hard enough it might still be buried inside me, under the scolding of adults, behind the doors slammed in my face, or the opportunities I lost to fear. But, the accent – it is gone.
Recently, I have been feeling like a light that is slowly going out, a song that is fading, or a dish that has lost its taste. Not in the spoiled, gone off type of way, more in the way of a meal that was so great, you had so much of and now it just does not do it anymore. Or a meal that now seems to be missing something. It feels like I have been trying every addition to this dish to bring that magic back but it refuses to offer its sweet and spicy delights and for some reason, I can’t just toss the ingredients out because the problem isn’t the dish, like the problem isn’t the light. The problem is the recipe, the problem is the fuel.
Ever since I discovered I am very ordinary, I have only wanted to live an extraordinary life. To be present in my life, to know when my accent turns from a Tiv girl’s accent to an American one, to know the moment I hate something and excuse myself from it, to know the moment I love someone and show it, to feel everything. To be fully human, fully present but these days, I feel like a light that is slowly going out, a song that is fading, or a dish that has lost its taste. Not in the mid-life crisis or a little depressed type of way but in the way that everything lulls.
