I was too little to understand anything. The thatching job was for boys and men much older than I am. If my determined Mother could do anything to it, I was neither old nor big enough to lend a helping hand.
The next morning, while it was still dark Mother set out to the bamboo plantation at onyia stream and did her cuttings there. The plantations housed a large number of woods and were well known and accessible to everyone. That was where she spent her morning. She did not come home till she became tired from hunger and expectation. We had eaten the left-over from last night, while she had not eaten anything.
while she was away, I was left alone to care for my little ones, who laughed, cried, quarreled, fought, slept and woke up many times. Before now, I had no conception of how difficult it was to be with a baby all day. They depended wholly on me for their needs till Mother returned. When Mother did not come home as they had expected, they slept again, only to wake up again and asked after her. Mother had given strict instructions for us not to step out of the house, even to our closest neighbor. All through the years of our childhood, we neither visited our neighbors nor knew what happened in the next house. We visited others only when we were in her company. In those years, Mother lived a solitary life which I grew up to dislike.
That evening, it rained as though the four pillars of the heavens were torn apart. Mother caught cold in the process. I stood at the door and saw her with a head load of the bamboo leaves tied together entering the compound It was load meant for three persons on her head. She did this so as not to go back again.
My fears dissolved as soon as I saw her. I had feared that water level had gone high and that she had not been able to pass through the next path or that the flooded water had carried her away. Any of these would be disaster for me and my younger ones. I kept my mind busy with many thoughts. But seeing her reversed the thoughts.
Her whole body was soaked. The water that ran down from her load and forehead went into her eyes and caused her a lot of discomfort. She could not easily spot where I was, but I saw her clearly and called her.
She pressed her eyelids closed at intervals and blew out the water running into her mouth. I quickly ran to her, not minding her soaked body. She hugged me lovingly, calling my younger ones by their names and asking where they were. Immediately, they woke up from the mat they had laid on all evening and ran to her. They had heard her loving voice, even in deep sleep as a result of long expectation. Mother’s voice and her children were two inseparable things. She was happy and we were happy, too. We welcomed her back and then I understood that nothing could take her away from us.
Without being told we were hungry, she set to cooking. Though she caught cold, and had only removed her soaked cloth, she sat close to the fire. I watched as she set the pot of food on the fire and sat down supporting her head with her left hand. I sympathized with her. She was doing all these for us. It was a time to think again. It was time for her to think of her husband, my father. I followed each movement she made, asking ways to help. She would go in and out of the kitchen, opening and closing the pot, turning it over and over with her eku, after which she would flatten her left palm, poured some on it and sip. It was a woman’s way of tasting the saltiness and taste of a dish. After blowing air into the fire, she stood up, dusted her hands, wiped her tears and called me to keep the room ready for dinner.
Our supper for that night was porridge yam.

* * *
Before the fourth round of rain for the year, Mother had gathered enough thatch without anyone’s help. She asked me to help her in the roofing of our house and I accepted happily. After all, it was a place that housed us all.
The work began the next morning in earnest. She rearranged the entire rooms in our house to enable the work to be performed effectively. She climbed up the roof with a ladder which rested against the wall. Without much ado, she began removing the old thatch and