A MOTHER'S LOVE: DERRICK BOATENG

By Charlotte Mensah

It’s hard to think of something more abstract than motherhood.

It’s almost ironic. A beautiful nightmare of sorts.

If you were to survey a million people, I’m sure they’d all give you the same definition, and yet I’d be surprised if any of them had experienced motherhood in any kind of similar way.

Motherhood is nuanced and multi-dimensional.

We tend to simplify its stages, and by extension, the life of women as life as before kids, raising kids, and then having adult kids. But that takes away so much of the experience that makes motherhood. Sometimes, I’m a trailblazer pushing the limits of Black hair care. Other times, I’m a mother who just wants to spend time with her family.

Motherhood is seasonal. There’s no fixed feeling about being a mother. It’s as fluid as the speed at which our children grow. Sometimes it’s tough, sometimes it’s easy. Sometimes it feels like there’s nothing more fulfilling. Other times, it feels like there could be so much more. It is, though, a constant state of being present.

We store what preceded the current season in our memory’s museum. We get wiser from it.

Motherhood is an abstract concept and experience. Oscillating between the innate and natural bond, between mother and child, to the nurturing characteristics which are learned, honed, and iterated upon by osmosis. Motherhood is a journey. Some stops along the way feel more familiar than others, but it’s a journey that doesn’t end until we do.

Motherhood has touched me in so many ways.

I was born to my mother, Love Naa Densua, in north west London, where she and my father had migrated a few years prior. Just a few months shy of my first birthday, I moved to Ghana to ensure that I got the love and care that I needed. But equally so that my mother could work the exorbitant hours needed to provide for me and my siblings and a plethora of extended family back home.

From this, I discovered the theme that informs my understanding of motherhood: sacrifice. It’s neither glamorous nor something to valorize. Imagine having to wean yourself off the closeness between you and your child, for the sake of your child. With the risk of disassociation and disconnection, it was done with love and discernment. A response to the world, more than the privilege of choice. That’s what motherhood often is.

It leads me to my next understanding of motherhood: communal experience. We’ve all heard the phrase, It takes a village to raise a child. In Ghana, those villages are made of families with multiple mothers, forming the sum of all our parts to create a holistic experience of care.

It was 1970s Accra—Darkuman, to be precise. Compound living: grandparents, aunties, uncles, siblings, cousins, and cousins of cousins all under one roof. God was worshiped. Food was cooked. Hair was done. All was coordinated by a merry but strong group of women, whom I have the pleasure of calling not only family, but also role models.

My grandmother, Mary Owusua, was the matriarch. Flanked by my mother’s siblings, Aunty Vida, Aunty Diana, and Auntie OP. All of whom were navigating adulthood and their place in the world. My mothers in the absence of my own mother. The people from whom I consciously began to understand what it meant to be a woman.

Aunties OP, Diana, and Vida were skilled at sewing and dressmaking. The latter two were stay-at-home mums, while Auntie OP, the youngest and most carefree, traveled all over the continent for six months at a time, exporting cosmetics in bulk.

The environment in which I grew up was lively. My grandmother and her daughters would cook for their families in front of the coal pot. There were so many mouths to feed. They often fried up fish and made enough stew to last for days. We all had to share from a big bowl, so whenever one of the children took too much, the rest of us would get angry. If you were a slow eater, the greedy ones would leave you behind.

We had a massive garden at the end of the compound where we grew our own produce—yam, plantain, cocoyam—and reared chickens at the back. A mango tree grew there, too. I remember the day when the fruit became ripe; fighting commenced among us kids as soon as the first piece dropped. One of my fondest memories of motherhood was taking my son to that very compound when he was four years old, watching him do the same things we did as kids.

In all these women, I was privileged enough to learn what motherhood and womanhood meant simultaneously. They provided care, but that was only an aspect of their character. More importantly, I learned that ‘care’ was not the only thing that defined a woman or a mother. These were young women balancing the responsibility of familial duties with the desire to be something. Kind of how I felt after having my son, and again when I had my daughter. They were me—long before I was me.

When I moved back to London, it was hard. Stonebridge. A concrete jungle. A new environment that was in direct juxtaposition to the freedom of Accra. I grieved my mothers and the city that raised me.

My relationship with my own mother transitioned from bonding a few times a year to a full-time endeavor. I spent a lot of time watching my mother mother my younger brother and sister. I wondered what it would have been to have that experience.

My mother’s passing brought on a permanent physical detachment from the woman who brought me into the world. I had a new perspective on life, how fleeting it could be, and an acknowledgment of what was now required of me: to care and to be cared for.

Mothering from my big sister allowed me to mother my baby sister—not replacing our own mother, but providing respite from the pain of death. We found something to bond over, to suspend us in time, relishing in the fun we had, doing each other’s hair every Sunday at 4 p.m.

Those times were when I transitioned from understanding what it meant to be mothered to processing how I might mother myself.

My baby sister and I grieved. We alleviated our pain through the creative, meditative, and ritualistic act of hairdressing.

Fast forward a couple of decades and I’m a fully-fledged mother myself—the innate kind I spoke about earlier. A mother to a boy, who came into my life when I was 22. A daughter, who came into my life when I was 31. And a business, a hair salon, and product range, conceptualized and realized along the way. But its essence began when I took time to mother my baby sister. It’s funny how life works. It’s that same humor that lets me know that my relationship with my mother only ceases to exist in a physical sense. I’m privileged to be reminded of her presence in all that I mother.

I’d known many hair salons before I owned my own.

I’ve known Afro salons, European salons, and a home salon. My own home salon, where I’d let my small but mighty crop of clients into my house in my son’s earliest years as I sought to find balance between being a mother and chasing my dreams.

The salon is best-described as a Mothers’ Meeting. An arena where women of all backgrounds come to congregate and embark on a journey of conversation, with topics ranging from the Royal Family to the latest Beyoncé album. All while receiving the nurturing that comes with getting your hair done.

I believe it’s the relationship that hairdressing has to nurturing and care. A space for women that allows them to disconnect, go inward, and focus on themselves is often the perfect antidote to the things that worry us. The act of hairdressing, and by extension, the environment in which hairdressing takes place, can feel like a long, deep breath.