I am quite pleased that the year is coming to an end and that the festive December season is here. I have already received quite a number of invitations to all manner of parties and events and I am looking forward to the office Christmas party this weekend.
Since this is the first Christmas party for our new chief executive, he has been a bit too involved in the planning of the party. I was chatting with the HR manager who told me that the CEO has been so involved in all the details of the party from the venue, to the décor and to even the selection of the Christmas party. It will be interesting to see how things pan out.
Shiro has also been giving me daily updates on our plans for the Chama family trip to the Coast and just like our CEO. She is fussing over every single detail.
The only issue that seems a bit uncertain is how I will deal with my parents who believe that I should be home for Christmas.
This realisation came to the fore last week when I received a ‘please call me’ message from my father very early in the morning.
My father never uses his credit to call me. He says that “Since I paid your school fees, I see no reason why I should use my credit to talk to you”.
I was a bit busy in the morning so I forgot to call my father and so come evening I received a call from my mother. She asked me, “Why haven’t you called your father back?”
I told her, “sorry I got so busy that I forgot, let me call him back right now”.
As soon as I hang up on the phone, I called my father. He sounded very upset with me and spend the first minute lecturing me on the need to “respect your parents”.
He finally got the point and told me, “You need to come home for Christmas.” I quickly asked him, “Why?” He said, “We need to have a family to discuss some family issues”.
He sounded very severe in his tone and I asked him, “is everything alright? Why must we come?” He told me, “You of all people know that everything is not alright and we need to address the problem.”
That is when it hit me. We had a huge fallout with my brothers when they found out that I had been pushing my father to subdivide the land so that I can build a house in the village.
They also did not take it kindly when I asked them to contribute towards my father’s medical bill.
Our family WhatsApp group became utter chaos as we traded insults and accusations that eventually led to my departure from the group and I have not spoken to my brothers since. I have never discussed the issue with my parents because I noticed that my father had not been very keen to proceed with the land subdivision issue.
This summons to the village clearly indicates that someone must have told my parents about the fallout and he wants to address the matter.
To be honest, I too would want a family meeting to discuss the issues raised by my siblings.
However, I do not want to mess things up with Shiro by cancelling the trip to the coast.
I told my father, “we have made other plans for Christmas, so can we please have the meeting before then.”
There was a deafening silence on the other end of the phone and for a minute I thought my father had hung up on me.
After what seemed like an eternity he came back on the line and said, “what kind of man does not spend his Christmas in his village!” I had to stand my ground with my father — I could not risk a fight with Shiro. I said, “I can make myself available this weekend and we can have that family meeting”.
This seemed to calm him down and he said, “okay we shall see you on Saturday.”
As I hang up, I could not help thinking what a train smash our family meeting is bound to be.
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