I have watched my papa grow through photos. From being a man who once had afro hair so thick it shone like the sea at night through the black and white snaps, to a man who oozed of power and masculinity, always well groomed, hair short and tie knotted in its proper position, to a man who rarely has a shirt on and dyes his barely visible hair. Undeniably what happens in life writes a story in our flesh.

I have always thought of my father as a time traveler. A man that has lived through two centuries and diverse decades that carry with them different sets of standards of how to live and do things. My father has been forced time and again over the years to morph into a being that fits a particular day and age. I wonder if he ever questioned how much change was really necessary , to carry out that job, to stay in touch with family, to be educated, to survive. I remember how he refused to get a smart phone in the same way a child stubbornly refuses to eat. As though saying enough is enough, I am putting my foot down! How much change can one person go through in a single lifetime? He persisted for as long as he could till it caught up to him.

I am curious to what decade or year my dad would travel back to if given the chance to time travel. I have never had the nerve to ask him. A few weeks back however my father was leaving to run an errand while my siblings and I browsed through channels, watched that, not interested, boring. He suddenly stopped in his tracks when he overheard the theme song of an old show. He said hurriedly, “Go back to that channel.” I saw him blissful, face beamed up, shoes removed, eyes on the screen and a smile on his face. He watched the whole show.
“This show was all we could talk about back then. If you weren’t watching this you were living under a rock.” He was thrilled he started to talk of the days of his youth. “Have I ever told you guys of the time I gave your mother a basket of rats?” we shook our heads. “ Well it was our second date and as you all know back in those days, you really had to sweep a woman off her feet if you wanted a third date but I thought why not make her laugh instead? I had a friend stationed at a flower vending point with a bucket filled with rodents. After our meal we went for a stroll and on que she asked if we could go look at the flowers across the road. Your mother loves flowers so I used that to my advantage. We spent about ten minutes there then I suggested we go to the florist at the end of the street.
“Why are his flowers in a bucket?” She questioned. I shrugged and asked him to open it. My father at this point couldn’t control himself. He fell about laughing and gasped out, “You should have seen the look on your mothers face!” That bucket of rats scared so many people that day, some people started running away, your mother included. She was screaming and running she almost got hit by a car.” He wiped a tear off his eye. “I have no idea why she married me.” I have never seen my father laugh that hard before. It was then that I knew he would go back to the 80s. He was so sunny he got to relive at least one thing from one of his past lives that he said, “Thank God for memory for keeping what life would let go”.