CNF #136.... Echoes in the Breeze

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The Saturday evening wind was so cold ❄️ and playful, dancing uniquely through the raffia trees and brushing my skin with memories yet to be made. It was an adventurous Saturday, one of those slow,
much thoughtful days in the village, and I was there with my dear grandmother — the only woman whose stories lived longer than the walls of our very compound. I had returned leaving my own parents in a foreign land to stay with her, awaiting my WAEC exams, and on that particular day, the breeze did stirred more than just the trees.

“Granny, please how old is Grandpa?” I asked, watching her closely as she twist the corner of her wrapper.

“I don’t know,” she replied me, chuckling. “Go and ask him.”

But Instead of moving, I did tilted my head toward her and asked again, “How about you, Granny? How old are you please?”

She paused for a moment. Her eyes seems to drift past me, toward something far away but not in distance, but in time.

“I really don’t know the year,” she whispered out. “But I can still remember the things of my young age.”

And with that, she opened up a window to the past story of her life. My father by name Ntuk, had three wives. My mother was the second wife among the three. I am the third girl child and fifth-born among my mother's womb. Her voice trembled slightly though not from weakness, but from carrying the weight of generations.

“There were many of us as siblings,” she said. “Over twenty children for my father.”

She then continued to speak fondly of her younger brother and last born of her mother's womb, Sir Ubong Ntuk was the second son for my mother, the only one of her mother’s and father's children entirely who tasted Western education. In a time when there were no phones, no televisions, but just letters passed with patience and hope, he rose. They all hustled as siblings, parents and villagers to ensure Ubong went to school.

• When he graduated after some years, a job was already waiting for him. The government of the state then gave him a Mercedes Benz, not the sleek, modern type, but indeed the one that rumbled like distant thunder and smelled of victory. A vehicle i grew up to see in his compound as a grand son even when it was pack one place. He became a teacher, then a true rock for the family, lifting others as he climbed. After their father died, and later their mother, Ubong kept going and rising to become a public figure in the state and across Nigeria.

Granny’s voice then swelled with pride as she recounted how her two sons got jobs through his brother's help and now working as civil servants to the state, she continued that my my biological mother being her last daughter lived with his brother for years passing through her Secondary School and Entrepreneurship Studies with him. “He never forgot us,” she said, and with a smile as soft as boiled yam. “He always called me to spend some holidays. And you, my child, you attended his school — Detri O International.” I replied yes, and added that some terms he doesn't allow me to pay school fees. Granny added, you've grown to also be one of his beneficiaries.

• I interrupted Granny: Yes I also remembered. He is so kind, always asking when I would come home for holidays when we see in school, always smiling more like a man whose joy was in giving.
  Granny concluded; that's how lucky we are to have him as he never forgets his own people.

At the end, that story of his, the hustle, sacrifice, and loyalty wasn’t just Granny’s memory. It was mine now too after listening ans finding out I'm a benefactor.
As the breeze continues to whisper through the evening again, I then realized I wasn’t just hearing a story, I was really inheriting a legacy.
That ends my story

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💚Thanks y'all for Reading💚

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