The Picture Frame and The Wall Clock

‏The Picture Frame.

In my parents’ house, there is a picture frame of my maternal grandmother on the wall of our living room. In the frame, my grandmother wears a purple lace blouse and wrapper with damask gele. She didn’t smile as the photographer took the picture, and her stern face has been the only piece of decoration in our living room for many, many years.

The frame is the only thing that reminds me of her face. She died in 2006 when I was just a child, a six-year-old child. I remember her funeral. I didn’t feel the grief my mother felt as she wailed and had to be held by her siblings when my grandmother’s body was lowered into the ground. At the time, I didn’t understand grief. I didn’t know the pain of losing a parent. I still don’t know it.

When my mother was informed of her mother’s death, we were together in the kitchen that night. My mother had just slaughtered a hen and she was cutting it while I held on to the meat, tightly. Her phone rang, she picked it up, and she began to cry. I didn’t know what was wrong, so I asked her. She said mumi was dead. I didn’t know what death meant, but I knew my mother was sad. So I felt sad too.

After the funeral, my mom brought the picture frame home and hung it in our living room.

When I think of home, the first place I picture is the living room because it is where myself and my family have experienced a lot of our joys. The frame is there. My grandmother is always there.

I once mentioned to my mother, when I was 19 years old, that if not for the picture frame of my grandmother, her mother, which I see every day, I would have forgotten her face. She replied that the picture frame has been helping her hold on to the person her mother was because she sees it every day. I smiled at her response because it made me remember when my grandmother was alive and she would bring fruits to our house as soon as their seasons began. From mangoes to cherries to cashews. I cherish the memory of her scolding me when I roasted cashew nuts in her house. She retorted that the fumes from the roasting nuts could kill the chickens she was rearing.

My dad was passing by as I was discussing with my mom, and he fondly added that during Christmas, the only food he looked forward to eating was the one brought by my grandmother. She would arrive very early in the morning with hot pounded yam and the tastiest vegetable soup with fish, meat, and cow skin scattered in it.

Our home is a home because of many things. One of them is the picture frame of my late maternal grandmother. I imagine that she lives on. I imagine all the joys that have passed through our home get to her too. I imagine that she absorbs them through the picture frame.

During her life, we called her Mumi. She was a deaconess of her church. She was a matriarch. She was a mother. She was a wife. She was an individual, a person. My mother told me she would have been greater if she hadn’t married the man who impregnated her when she was in secondary school. I could see it.

She’s deceased, but she lives on in my parents’ living room. Different people come in and see her, and her face occupies little spaces in their lives. She continues to exist.

The Wall Clock.

I have slept in my paternal grandmother’s room since the beginning of my childhood. Whenever I think of my room, I picture my paternal grandmother laying on her bed or offering her Salat by her bed. In the room, high on the wall, there is a wall clock. It is manufactured by Quartz and all my life I have heard it ticking away time.

Whenever I woke up at midnight to pee, it was there, ticking away.

When I did my homework with my grandmother’s kerosene lantern, chewing my pen whenever I didn’t get the answer to a quantitative reasoning problem, it ticked away.

When I woke up in fright from vivid nightmares and became too scared to sleep alone on my mattress on the floor and I had to climb on my grandmother’s bed to sleep beside her, the clock was aware. It ticked on and on.

My grandmother, throughout her life, was a devoted Muslim. Whenever she woke up at dawn for prayers, she would point her torch at the wall clock and squint her eyes to see the time. By 10 am, she would squint her eyes again to confirm, as that was the time her favorite radio show began

The wall clock witnessed her life. It witnessed my growth too.

I used to wet the bed as a little girl and whenever I woke up, I would be ashamed. With this shame, I would take a cup of water and pour it on the part of the mattress I had peed on, change my clothes, and then tell the entire house that water poured on my bed while I slept. My grandmother caught me one morning, and she beat me. I cried to school.

The wall clock ticked through all this. It witnessed me.

When my grandmother became weak with old age and couldn’t leave her bed anymore, the wall clock was there, ticking away, reminding us of time that was getting shorter. It was there, preparing us for our griefs.

When I wailed for the life of my grandmother when she died, when I cried with my dad as we both attempted to console ourselves in our griefs because he lost his mother and I lost a grandmother, the wall clock ticked on. It knew, eventually, that time would grant us familiarity with our pains. We would know what to do with them.

My dad once told me the wall clock is older than I am. I was born in 2000. He told me my grandmother had owned it for a long, long time. I often think about what he said.

To me, it means that even though most of the people who knew and witnessed my grandmother’s life are gone, the wall clock still ticks on the wall it has been on all my life. Its memory of time contains my grandmother’s joy, my grandmother’s distress, and my grandmother’s passion and fervent devotion. My grandmother’s life.

After her death, I inherited her room, along with the wall clock. It is still there, high on the wall, witnessing my life and keeping count of my joys. It is also getting old. I have had to change its battery several times in the past year when it could go for the entire year without needing a change. Nevertheless, it is still right two times a day on the days when it doesn’t tick. On the days it does, its ticking keeps me asleep and it wakes me up.

My home is a home because of many things. One of them is my grandmother’s wall clock.