It is I. I return.
Aging comes with so many things. Grey hair popping up uninvited. All things adulting. Sleep being a favourite thing to do. Another one of them is you waking up one day and then realising that you’re in the position which you considered as “old”.
I grew up in a Christian community. I grew up observing how the elder women in my community had a unique dress code on each Sundays and Thursdays of the week. They would each put on uniform belonging to various sodalities. Black and white, purple, navy blue and red, red and white, green and white, white with different aprons and white doeks, green and yellow, black with leopard skin…and so forth. Back then, I thought that once one gets old they automatically join these groups.
As I grew older, I got a bit of understanding on some of the differences between each uniform, the requirements and what it meant to be umama webatyi / womthandazo (a woman of prayer / of the cloth). I remember how we would have to stay behind church long after mass waiting for my mother’s meetings to end. Torture. I’d ask myself if God was pleased at how we were waiting there hungry while they spoke with him…again. Did He not hear them during mass? Why were their prayers so long?
Thou shall not judge! Many moons later…I am now one of them. Phakathi, inside, binnekant! This year I was pinned and welcomed into a sodality: Catholic Women’s League. If you had told me that I would be here, a couple of years ago, I would have laughed at you. I just never saw myself here.
Life has taught me, 2023, that God has an incredible sense of humour…
No comments:
Post a Comment