Why I will not marry a Girl

At first, I was happy remembering that I will marry someone someday. My mum will be happy then and probably have to name my first son ‘Ugochukwu’. I figured out too that I should have a boy first. You know, we need the boys so that they could become men and family line will be up and running. My family already had a hand full of men, with a girl then. I am the second to the last, so not Mummy’s pet nor Daddy’s favourite. One thing was clear to me when I was small, I was loved not by my parents alone but by a lot of people who took care of me. A little talk about my family will have a way of telling my childhood experience.

One of the funniest incidents of my childhood was that I didn’t know all my brothers. Yes, I just giggled now because of such weird thing. Tell me how I am supposed to know six people in all who rarely stay at home. I remember walking into the living room one day to find one fellow sitting down and smiling for reasons best known to him. I looked at my Mum, I think so, with a questioning face; who is he? Well. That’s Victor, my favourite brother in some rarest honesty. How does that make with the topic? Just chill a bit. My parents have us bathed with rules and morale this and that, we fought them silently and obeyed a lot at a time.

I thought of marriage for the first time as some extension of our happy life defined by what made my parents happy. This is so hard to say but I did have some happy days and some terrible days. The terrible days came quite fundamental to me because it dealt with family life. It touched our home, my family and we are yet to recover from the instances, at least as a whole. Well, I may be wrong about that. I remember the day we sat in the living room, with hymns and singing in unity; waiting and hoping some miracles will make my only sister snap out of her condition. I paused within moments and starred towards where she was alone. I wondered what she thought while I prayed to wake up from the terrible nightmare. Let me spare you other details. We passed through all that, in dissension, in love, in hatred, some fighting and cursing, and others running away from home, but we never lost family.

On a certain cold Tuesday morning, Ozioma died. We all sat around in the living room that evening having cried all the day. That was my only sister. Some days I wish I never had such childhood with these tales. Of all the things that touched me in life, grief was a bit closer to getting me. But I am here stronger and healthy, with little to think nowadays except for love, joy, and the girl who swept me off recently. What I have encountered in life has shaped my way of seeing family. Some unified unconditional bond. Why will I marry a girl? I will marry a girl for the sake of family, even if that consists of just her and me. This is so because I remember that above everything else, my family stood with hands held together like my mother did with father in thick and thin times.

So ‘why I will not marry a girl’ is not supposed to be the topic my dear reader. I am sorry for misleading you into reading something that you wouldn’t have bothered yourself with like Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. I mean to say that I will not marry a girl for any other reason other than I love her and I want her as a family, whether kids or no kids or no one else to talk to us. Why I will not marry a girl is because I want to marry a family. I would have ended it here but something I almost forget to clear even though it may not carry some sense to the wise of some cultural whatever. I mentioned about boys. Well, I will rather have a girl and maybe just girls; two or three and I am glad. Family line will definitely continue if need be. But for now…