I turned to find mother crying. I did not understand why. But I always kept the incident in my heart, together with the storyline of the movie we were watching that day.

When I was a child, every Sunday night there was this programme on television by name “Akan Drama”.

It happened that on one of those Sunday nights, we were in our living room, eyes glued to the tv, when Akan Drama started. For that night, a story of a woman and her daughter was being dramatized. The two had been through many difficulties together, the mother standing by her daughter through it all, selling everything she was worth for her daughter’s survival.

Towards the end of the drama, the little girl, now a full grown woman, overhears her name in a dispute between her mother and  an evil relative who was always jealous of the tight bond between the woman and her child. Specific places, names, and timelines were cited, proofs pointing to the fact that the young lady was found by the woman she thought was her mother on a refuse dump when she was a very little baby, perhaps abandoned by a teenage mother or someone who couldn’t take it any longer.

It had always been the woman’s deepest wish to protect her daughter from ever feeling unwanted or out of place, even if that meant hiding the truth of her origins. After all, is motherhood defined solely by giving birth?

And now, that evil, idiotic relative had spilled the beans.

The poor girl stormed out of her room demanding answers her mother would have preferred going down to the grave with.

Thinking back at the drama and mother’s crying reminded me of an incident in a classroom.

One day our class teacher gave us an essay assignment titled “Motherhood is not defined by childbirth”. Then, we simply assumed it was one of those essay exercises meant to improve on our writing skills.

Later, we would find out that our class teacher, though approaching sixty, was never married, never had a child. Some of her past students rumoured that in her youth, she was once in love but the relationship ended bitterly and ever since she never gave any love a chance.

Whenever rumours in our little town was sifted, there were always some rough grains of truth left in the sieve.

If what we heard about our class teacher were true, it explained many things.

She was the most difficult staff in school, picking on students, finding faults with everything a staff or student did.

And it seemed in a part of the world where childbearing was synonymous with motherhood, she must have noticed she was the object of ridicule that couldn’t be said to her face.

Perhaps to console herself, she gave us the essay assignment to hear soothing responses. For although we were to choose to write for or against the motion, she had indirectly decided how we were to respond by giving us a lecture on the fact that many women could play the role of a mother without being the biological mothers of the children they raised.

Much later in my life, I would also discover that my current parents were not my biological parents, and mother’s cry during that late Sunday night many years ago now took on a deeper meaning. Till date, my parents do not know that I know this. I heard it during the visit of two relatives that had come on a long journey.

To me, it didn’t matter that they weren’t my biological parents. They had provided me with every love, every care, every investment that many parents have never done for their own children.

I have always wondered how I would react if my biological parents ever popped up in my life, having abandoned me all these years. Whatever their reason, their places have already been ceded to those who have worked for it.