so that we would not see the tears welling up in her eyes. That was the last time I sawmy mother for a very long time. As I grew older, I found out that my mother had left for Germany to be with my stepdad. We grew up with our grandmother, spending the first year in Tema. Then, we left for Kyebi because that was my grandmother’s village, and she preferred living there. Grandmother was very kind and loving, but I really longed for my mother in my formative years. It felt as if there was some emptiness in my life. As a child, I was very precocious, loving to be seen and heard and doing all it took to achieve that. Take, for instance, me at six at church on Christmas day, with the normal Christmas baby christening taking place. I watched in fascination as mother after mother, each dressed in a white kaba and slit, their hair covered with white head ties, carried their chubby-cheeked babies wrapped in soft white wooly fabrics towards the front of the church. Looking at the round-faced black baby doll in my hands, I decided that she had to be baptized, that she had to have a name. So, as soon as the last of the women joined the group in front, I cradled my doll to my chest and hurried after her, oblivious to the dismay on my grandmother’s face and the laughter that was building up in the congregation. The ushers hurried towards me in a bid to whisk me away from the front of the church, but the officiating minister intervened. Looking amusedly at my doll, she commended me on having a black baby doll instead of a white one as everyone else seemed to have in those days. Then, she asked what the name of my baby was. That was 7 The Birthday Journal
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