S4, Account 3: Mamadou
I understand Claude’s concerns, they are honestly my own too, but if she calls me one more time to tell me how I should I should speak to my child, I may say something I won’t regret. Her own husband can stand her so little that he’s out of this country for half the time, and that has meant I’ve almost become a proxy husband to her for the past 20 years. I can honestly say the prayer request I have petitioned for the most, is that Claude’s children find a way to like her so she becomes obsessed with them as opposed to Noelle. Furthermore, it bemuses me that bearing in mind all her children have left home, her husband really has no reason to still be leaving every 6 months, and hasn’t had a reason for at least the past 6 years. But that’s Claude for you — utterly oblivious to the cracks in her life.
Somehow Seraphin and Claude are as thick as thieves and that absolutely baffles me. Claude is barely educated, was always bare minimum in that respect, but as the eldest sister and sibling, always lorded her seniority over her youngers like a dictator. Except Seraphin. For some reason they are the best of friends. If you tell one something, the other will know. Seraphin who qualified as a pilot. I was so proud of her when she did that. We had been dating for 5 years at that point, and had already started thinking about marriage. Even though it’s shame that she couldn’t continue that career, if ever there was a right reason to give it up, marriage and our family was.
It wouldn’t have worked. Seraphin flying all over the world and me working in my junior accountancy role, staying at home waiting for her essentially. We talked about starting a family, and you can’t do that in the air. Myself and her family thought it best if she concentrated on having a child — it was the one thing myself and Claude have ever really wholeheartedly agreed on. Unexpectedly, it took about another 5 years for Noelle to come along which was a really difficult time for us, but in the meantime, she picked up some retail work to support the household income, and excellent as she always was, managed to be promoted to a regional manager. Once Noelle was born, she had to leave that role to focus on caring for our daughter, and ever since Noelle has been in school full-time, she returned to retail but in the capacity of an assistant so that she could be there in case of any emergencies with Noelle. By that point my own career had taken off, so we could afford to live on just my income, but Seraphin said she needed something to be doing, which is fair enough.
Noelle definitely takes after her mother in terms of achieving and we have been careful to cultivate that attitude in her since birth. But I don’t understand why she doesn’t understand that life progresses in seasons. What use is all that achievement if there is no-one to share it with? And a woman of her stature cannot just marry anybody. I won’t allow it. She deserves the best, just as her mother had the best, but that also comes with sacrifice. To think she could maintain that role and tend to her husband and children appropriately, is a pipe dream. The Bible says there is a time for everything, and she is more than old enough now to start shifting her focus and thinking about these things.
Unlike Claude I am not overly enthused about Pascal. Yes, he is good-looking, decently educated and responsible, but something rubs me up the wrong way about a man who would make his devotion to a woman who has not claimed him, so desperately obvious. Truly it makes my skin crawl. He is utterly shameless though. Every time I give him a glare that I feel conveys “Find your spine brother”, he smiles, nods and on the worst occasions, will make as if to come and talk to me. On those days I leave church faster than a bat out of hell.
I know my daughter, and the day she ever gives a man like him a chance (possible, for all the reasons mentioned before), she will chew him up and spit him out without a thought, and I don’t want the guilt and conviction of having communicated amiably with him, on my shoulders.
Originally posted: December 29, 2021