Being your children’s wingman
The human species has succeeded in complicating a phenomenon as simple as courtship to an unrecognisable gemors. It’s only a matter of time before the legal profession convinces our generally confused parliamentarians to pass a bill making prenuptial agreements compulsory. By 2040, even for casual sex, relationships will require a watertight precoital agreement signed by both parties in front of a commissioner of oaths.
And the full might of the law will descend on whoever spanks a butt cheek six times instead of the agreedupon five times. As for break-ups, they will require Nuremberg-type trials and, if you have a nasty break-up with, say, a French lover, minister Naledi Pandor might have to use her best University of London English to represent you at the International Court of Justice.
Look, I’m not hankering back to the time when a typical date involved our forefathers clubbing our foremothers over the skull, dragging them into their caves so that by the time they recovered from their concussions, they were married with three children — and everyone lived miserably ever after. All we can do is cancel every man in our respective family trees born earlier than the year 20 BT. (That’s Before Twitter.)
These were the thoughts going through my head as the 16-year-old last born was walking purposefully through Toys R Us, searching for the perfect Valentine’s teddy for his squeeze.
Yes, he was dragging me behind him, puffing like a chubby basset hound. After about 10 seconds of this I tried to imagine King Mpande trudging dutifully behind a 16-year-old King Cetshwayo, picking flowers for his girlfriend. The absurdity made me do something even better for my son —I handed him my wallet and told him I have a few calls to make outside.
Fast forward a few days and his mother is drenched in sweat, wiping floors and surfaces, vacuuming carpets.
Why? Our “in-laws” are on their way to drop off their own geeky bundle of raging hormones, so I can drive them to their Valentine’s date. I did not need to be told that my default unwashed state with torn T-shirt and shorts wouldn’t cut the mustard. By the time they arrived I had showered, shaved and splashed on some cologne.
To quote our children, OMG you could cut the thick awkwardness in the air in the brief, terse encounter. Don’t be daft, of course they both sat in the back to confirm my Uber driver status. It was so bad that when I dropped them off at their adventure golf date, the only thing I was missing was a chauffeur uniform, cap and, “Yessuh, I’ll be here by 5pm and ya’ll make sure to enjoy yourselves now, young master and missus!” to be Morgan Freeman in Driving Miss Daisy.
While helping my son pick a teddy for his squeeze at Toys R Us, I tried to imagine King Mpande trudging dutifully behind a 16-year-old King Cetshwayo, picking flowers for his girlfriend
And this is when I had a vision of my forefather, Dube kaSilwane, hissing at me in Louis Gossett Jr’s voice in those Windhoek ads, “Son, what are you doing?”
I’m not under any illusion about where my archaic, 1980s sensibilities about parental involvement in their offspring’s love life emanates from.
My own father’s involvement in this aspect of my life was to subject me to his notoriously oblique stories whose moral lessons were riddles wrapped in mysteries, hidden in a maze of parables. And it was all really, “Treat women kindly, with respect, don’t get STIs and don’t knock up anybody”.
My mother’s involvement was to tell me that I was not bring her a makoti (bride) who is “upetuza”. It’s a word she coined for hip-gyrating, scantily clad, heavily made-up young women in Bobby Brown’s videos. That, and to let me know that if she’s not Catholic, she won’t be happy.
Oh, and I’d come home for the holidays and find my drawer full of condoms from the clinic. The idea of walking up to my father and saying, “Dad, I’m dating Simphiwe, but now Ayanda has made it clear that she wants me, what do I do?” would have never occurred to me.
With the benefit of hindsight,
I think he would have really appreciated it. But it was foreign in that society. I know a few of my friends whose fathers would have sent to them to Father Gama for an exorcism if they had tried this stunt.
That sort of thing was taboo, only reserved, we were told, for “white people”. This was mostly based on novels and The Bold and the Beautiful. In my hood you’d hear things like, “You discuss your love life with your parents and before you know it, you’re like Ridge Forrester, watching your father Eric snatch Brooke from you!”
Yeah, this soapie wasn’t a good advert for modern parenting, but The Cosby Show was. I know I’m not the only parent my age whose relaxed, more engaged attitude towards their children’s dating life was, in large parts, informed by the Huxtables. This is why I’m able to have detailed conversations with my offspring about their romances without wincing and grimacing outwardly.
A lot of it has to do with the day my friend Mzamo and I were waiting to use the public phone outside his res, Stratford Court, at then Natal Tech. The fellow in front of us asks to speak to whoever is on the other side of the line. He clearly gets an earful about how dare he be so disrespectful as to ask to speak to her from her father.
Some boys are raised among wolves, because we couldn’t believe what we heard: “If you don’t want us to date your daughter, are you going to date her yourself?” The reason I used the word “date” in that sentence is because this is a family newspaper.
The point of that cringeworthy story is to say, I don’t wanna be that father.