Our Sweet Little Sister

Some things in life are things you never prepare for but when they come, you are so happy that you can’t imagine your life without them. That’s the case with our youngest sister. We never expected to have another sibling when she was born but when she came, she brought so much sunshine and laughter into our lives that we couldn’t imagine life without her.

We were in high school when our mom was pregnant. We were totally oblivious to the fact that her big belly meant a baby was growing in her. We thought she had just gotten fat.

A classmate of ours visited us during that period and when she saw our mom lying on the couch with her protruding belly, she asked us, “Is your mom pregnant?”

“No, she is just getting fat!”

We answered, shocked at why our friend would assume that our mother was pregnant. Our mom being pregnant was not something we thought was going to happen at that time because our siblings and we were quite older compared to the kids of women who were still actively bearing children.

Our younger brother felt the same way. He thought pregnancy was not for our mom at that time. So when he noticed that her tummy kept growing, one day he called her into his bedroom and said: “Mommy we hope you are not pregnant. Don’t disgrace us oh.”

Our brother’s logic like ours was that mama had past her time for childbearing because we only knew much of younger women having babies at the time.

One day, a while after our friend had postulated that our mom was pregnant and we refuted, our dad came to visit us at the boarding school we attended at the time.

We went to boarding school for high school. In Cameroon, boarding schools for secondary to high school are quite common. As a student, you are required to stay in the school during each term of study. So it was always a delight when a parent came visiting.

We lighted up when we saw our papa. He was unusually cheerful that day. He announced to us that our mother had been delivered of a baby girl.

Alas, our friend was right! Our mother had being pregnant all along and naive Precious had no idea.

We were so glad about the news then we offered to name the baby. We named her “Pearly” which is kind of synonymous to Precious. And of a truth, she is such a Pearl.

Our unexpected sister grew in wisdom, stature, cuteness and quickly became us, our siblings’ and everyone’s favorite person. She was the light of our home. She said a lot of things that made us laugh!

Pearly was the girl who will ask us to wait for her to have a final slide on the slide of her school playground before we took her home during closing time.

She is the girl that will imitate the way our dad spoke while eating meat in the most hilarious way when she was just a kid.

She is the girl who will challenge an adult man who joked calling a little girl his wife by saying, ” No, she cannot be your wife! You are a man and she is a girl!”

Pearly was funny in every sense of the word. She had several nicknames in her childhood including, Pearly Nash, Abobo, Jerry the Jerry, Mpeke. We just loved her and she was just so phenomenal that she kept gaining nicknames.

Now she is a teenager and she’s still a good dose of fun. Our parents, our siblings, and we can’t imagine life without her.

We love you, Pearly Nash, our sweet little sister.