Tunes

I am at the age my mother was when I first noticed that she preferred to wake up with soft music playing quietly in the house at dawn, always around 5 AM.

It used to be a slow Igbo song by a woman who danced in her music video, her head wrapped with a large Gele. You might think she was the bride at a traditional wedding. She would step gently to the left and then to the right, her smile widening as if her crush had just waved at her.

The music was gospel, and when translated loosely, the Igbo words meant, “You are my God, the eyes I see with here on earth, the voice that counsels me at every crossroad.” Somehow, the music always blended with my sleep. I would even hear my mother hum along as she began her day, calling my name to do the dishes or asking the rhetorical question, “No school today?”

I am that age now, and all I want is to lie in bed with soft tunes waking me from sleep, not a harsh alarm jerking me awake. I want my mind feasting on something surreal, fresh, and peaceful at dawn. I want that calmness I saw my mother enjoy. It was a sweet calmness. The one thing that got close to that sweetness was when I learned that Chibuike, the tall, fine boy from the next street, told someone who knew someone who knew me that he liked me. The teenage me slept beside my mother that night with a smile plastered on my face, a calmness that felt just like my mother’s.