This morning, I heard the woman next door calling out to her kids at the top of her lungs. "Ikenna! Dubem! Chioma! Kedu ihe unu ka na-eme n’ime uno? What are you still doing inside the house?"
She was clearly in full school run mode. I haven’t seen her yet—I’ve only been living in this estate for about three months.
But by now, I can recognize her voice from anywhere. She doesn’t just talk; she yells, in that way Nigerian mothers do when the day is running fast and time is short.
Her kids were getting ready for school, and she was gearing up for the school run. The voice reminded me of my own childhood, and suddenly, I found myself reminiscing about my mom.
She’s a superhero in my eyes, and thinking about her school runs makes me realize just how amazing she was. Thinking about it now, I have no idea how she did it, day in and day out, with so much grace and efficiency.
In our house, school mornings started painfully early. By 5 AM sharp, my mom was already in action, shaking us awake. “Oya, wake up!” she’d say, dragging us, groggy and half-conscious, to the living room for morning devotion. I remember leaning against the couch, still dreaming, while she led the prayers, her voice firm and steady. As soon as we started praying, she’d quietly slip out for morning Mass. And once she left, we “continued” the prayers. (I’ll leave it to your imagination what really happened when she left, but this story isn’t about us—it’s about my mom).
By the time she returned from Mass, it was a one-woman show. She’d make breakfast, pack our lunches, and somehow still manage to prepare herself for work, all at the same time.
It was a marvel to watch. One minute, she was frying eggs, the next minute, she was arranging our lunch boxes with rice, stew, or beans and plantain, and maybe some fruits on most days and biscuits for snacks.
Before we dashed out the door, and filed into her car ( I will tell you on another day, a story about this particular car, my brothers would be laughing now because I am sure they all remember)… anyways….she’d give each of us a final look-over. “Is your hair combed? Are your socks clean?” she’d ask. If anything was out of place, she’d fix it right there. My mom was strict about our appearance. She hated untidy hair, and to this day, whenever my afro gets a little bit wild, she still frowns at it. The day I shaved it all off, she was visibly pleased, as if I’d won some kind of award.
The actual school run was another spectacle. Nnewi traffic, what we call “go-slow,” is notorious, especially during the school rush. But my mom was a pro. She’d skillfully weave through the chaos, squeezing us into shortcuts only she knew about. Somehow, despite the madness on the roads, we were hardly ever late. School was about a 30-minute drive from our house, and we almost always made it before 7:30 AM.
What amazes me most is how she managed all this—getting six boys ready for school, beating traffic, and still making it to her job at the federal hospital, all before 8 AM. She’d drop us off, still in her starched white uniform, sometimes with a blue jacket for the cooler mornings. Back then, nurses didn’t wear the colorful scrubs and Crocs they do now; everything was sharp and professional.
It’s only now, looking back, that I fully appreciate what she did for us. My brother Raph once said, “I’ll marry a woman like Mom.” I remember us sitting outside, drinking and joking last December, when my eldest brother chimed in, “Before I marry any woman, you guys and Mom have to approve.”
We laughed it off, but we knew he was serious. It wasn’t just drunken talk. We all feel that way. We all want to marry someone like her—a woman who loves our children as fiercely and actively as our mother does.
