My Guitar Story : A Weekend Freewrite.

Dear little children, please gather 'round. Bring you a pillow and come and sit down.

That day will always remain a day I will never forget, it was from joy to sorrow and vice versa all along. I've never been put on that kind of pedestal before in my life. That was my first, the last, the most defining.

It was my birthday and gift were coming in from both left and right, everyone seems to bring something to the star on the street, one of the brightest student in class, a class captain, from a proud parent who are the counselor of the town.

The DJ was playing a mix of dancehall and reggae with many popular hit jam made available at my discretion. I personally select those song and gave the DJ to mix it, a token of my love for reggae music.

Everything was fine till when grandma made a guest appearance at the birthday party, wearing the Jamaican colour code, more like a Rastafarian, for God's sake we are in Nigeria. She doesn't seem to care about the eyes popping at her and asking who is this old cargo ? At a staggering age of seventy-two with the hair fully grey.

She had this big box with her and I thought maybe it's for mum, took it from her with respect after the gesture greetings.
"Grandma, did you bring any birthday gift for me" I said as I strolled the corridor to my parent room to drop the big box.
"There it is my dear"
"What ? "
"I mean, it's in your hand"
My eyes sprang wide. The woman's dark brown face was very close.
"This big box" I asked in a childish manner to drive out the seriousness in her.
The old lady changeth not.
"It's a guitar my dear" she replied with a smile
"You mean..... this is a guitar ?"
"Yes my dear".

I couldn't stop staring at her as I gently settle down the box and made to open the small old rusty moveable cupboard. And there it is right before my very eyes, a wooden box guitar 🎸. For so many seconds I couldn't stop staring at it. It was not something I've ever expected but something I've prayed for. I just don't know how in a household of a religious conservative parent, a boy of ten could fall in love with a kind of music that is associated with having a very big dreadlocks, smoking marijuana, shake your head more than ten times when singing while jumping and humping like a kangaroo. It dawned on me when I noticed other genre don't appeal to me but reggea and reggae alone. And the worst part of it all, I don't have anyone to share my passion with.

Made way straight to my room and neatly slide it under my bed.

The party goes on.

In the evening, she called me to her side and took her time to tell how her journey began with the guitar, the year was 1973 when she had her first boyfriend who was fully devoted to reggae music then, he taught her how to play the simple cords and some simple strokes and frets of the guitar 🎸.

The young man joined the war against apartheid in South Africa by being in a protest and was shot dead there, the only remembrance my grandma had was the guitar 🎸. The old woman was relieved to have passed her burden over to me and that was how I got my first guitar. Or rather put, that was how my journey began.

Source
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A look at grandma now in a bigger wooden rectangular box laying there quietly stiff and looking young ready to be lowered into the earth and the number of record albums I've made thirty-three years after that encounter has shaped my life and defined me. There more to life than a bag of groceries she always said.

One single moment with the right person can give us the confidence we need to face our future.

Good bye mama.

My entry into @Mariannewest weekend freewrite.

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Posted via ReggaeSteem | Reggae Culture Rewarded