loading . . . How to Raise Your Parents ### **Elnathan John**
January 14, 2026
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Ask them if they are drinking water—especially your father, who calls to complain about heartburn after devouring a colossal bowl of pounded yam and egusi, topped with an assortment of dry fish, fresh fish, cow entrails, huge chunks of beef, crayfish, all beneath a river of palm oil. Do not be lured in by your mother when, half visible on the FaceTime screen, she chimes in with her usual, _I keep telling him o!_
To maintain balance, say, _mum, you are also part of the problem._
When she protests, wide-eyed and affronted, placing her hand dramatically over her heart and pushing your father out of the frame, she will ask, _What have I done?_ Remind her gently that she is the one in control of the portions, the one who ladles the palm oil into the pot, who crafts his plate into a mountain of pounded yam, forgetting that the body she fell in love with—the one that used to metabolise meals with ease—can no longer handle such indulgence.
She will say, _ah, but what is wrong with palm oil, it is natural palm oil from a village o, not any of those processed things._ In a calm voice, remind her that you’ve sent two articles about cholesterol, sodium, and the dangers of seasoning cubes, especially, as your father is getting older. Smile when she tells you that her eyes strain in the evening and she’s too busy during the day, tending to her garden and the women’s fellowship to read long medical articles. Plus, she will add, when her eyes let her read, she prioritises the Bible. You both know where that is leading. Do not show too much discomfort on your face. She is only softening the ground for what will follow. Be prepared however for the pivot that is about to happen. Sister Phoebe, her favourite subject after the Bible, is about to come up. Well, Sister Phoebe only as a Trojan horse for her daughter Keturah, the tall one your mum calls Doctor Keturah, even though she is still in medical school. Mum will mention again that Keturah was able to continue her medical program in Nigeria after fleeing Ukraine at the beginning of the Russian invasion.
_Oh, how they treated the black students,_ she will lament. _Imagine, you are being attacked and everyone is feeling sorry for you but you still have the energy to be racist toward black people fa! They say she has only about a year or two to go. Very bright girl and God fearing . . .
_But you know this is not about race or the plight of African students in war torn Ukraine.
This is your cue to steer the conversation back. In a firm but gentle tone say, _Mum we’re talking about Dad’s food_. Remind her of the time your father, writhing in pain, cried in her arms on the way to the hospital—the first time she had ever seen him cry. Speak of salt, the build-up of kidney stones, and how water and a low-sodium diet are now his greatest allies.
When she gasps in horror at the idea of cutting his portions in half, as though you have suggested an affront to decency, tell her _yes, half!_
She will turn to him, scandalised.
_Do you want him to look thin and sick?_ Say that shedding weight is for his own good as he gets older. And for her good too.
Inevitably, your father will reappear, slipping into the frame to ask, _Do you think I’m too fat?_
Ignore the question. Stick to your point—more exercise, smaller portions, less salt, and more water. Behind him, your mother, shoulders tense, arms crossed, will bristle in the background, resistant but resigned.
_So you are now a doctor abi?_ she will chime in as your lips widen to speak. Pause. Do not engage. You should recognise this trick because as you have often said, the devil works hard but mum works harder. Once you engage with the word _doctor_ it will inevitably lead back to Doctor Keturah and perhaps this time she will sneak her way through that crack in your armour and get to the meat of it, which is that you should try to give the young lady a call.
Sensing the conversation’s delicate balance, this is your moment to ask, _Mum, how’s the Aloe Vera?_ Watch as her face lights up, all resistance forgotten, and she talks excitedly about the thick, green leaves—larger than her arms she’ll say—and how the gel fills jars and jars which she shares with the women in her fellowship. She will offer to send some to you. You should smile, before reminding her that shipping aloe vera from Nigeria to Germany isn’t exactly practical.
This is your exit. You must avoid letting the conversation slide back into dangerous territory—Sister Phoebe, your lack of church attendance, your father’s refusal to use the new hard sponge or let her oil his back which is always ashy. It is certainly now a great time to mention the weather.
She will remember that it is winter now in Europe. You will correct her and say not winter but autumn and when she says, _how many degrees_ , you will say, _eight degrees._ Laugh at the scream she lets out when she says, _ah eight? How is that not winter?_ Say, _well it was warmer, ten degrees earlier._ Laugh heartily when she says in Hausa, _me ya raba baki da hanci?—There is no real distance between the mouth and nose._ Doubt that this is a real saying, because you have only heard her say this.
She will add as you laugh, _for me from twenty down, in fact from twenty-five down, is already winter._
Say that you have adapted to the chill of Berlin winters and that in fact you cannot stand it when it is summer in Germany because everything is so crowded and there is no air conditioning and for too many people deodorant is optional.
_You mean they don’t wear deodorant there?_ she will say, shocked, even though you have already told her this before.
Say, _yes o, you just need to be on a packed train in summer and it all smells like regret and pain.
_
They will laugh and fall out of the frame but your father will recover quickly and tell you, _ah don’t speak so harshly about your hosts o.
_
Push back a little and tell him you are a tax paying resident of the city so you have earned the right to make comment.
Your father will smile and speak about the benefits of ginger and lemon and honey, especially ginger for the immune system and for a moment the roles will be reversed. They will, if only for a moment, become your parents again.
When your mother wonders why, if it is eight degrees you are not wearing a sweater and head warmer remind her you are inside your flat which has heating. Bring your tea cup into the frame and take a performative sip, adding, _and I am drinking tea with ginger and honey_. Watch her beam with pride.
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There are things you must not do. Do not remind them, should they offer you advice on dating, that the reason you still wake in cold sweats is because the night continues to unearth dreams that cling too close to the bone—too close to the lingering echoes of their battles. Those fights, finding their way through the thin walls of their room, seeping out like smoke, curling through the cracks and breaching the walls of your soul. Their sharp words, piercing and unforgiving, carving paths through the walls of your heart, leaving scars they may never acknowledge.
Refrain from showing them the shattered remnants you’ve had to gather, piece by jagged piece—the broken trust, the splintered moments. Do not tell them how many years you tried to make sense of a relationship that might have been better left to die a clean death than to stumble through the mire of prolonged agony.
Do not, for the love of all that is holy, talk about Uncle Yusuf, who died recently. Uncle Yusuf who had a condition no one named, who disappeared for long periods and could never hold down a job. Do not ask how they are feeling because, no one asks, how anyone is feeling. _How are you_ is not the same as _how are you feeling_. _How are you_ is safe, because _I am fine_ is there, a wonderful shield that absorbs all intention, all implication, all depth. _How are you feeling_ is a weapon fashioned against _I am fine._ It demands details. And details penetrate the armour to expose how insufficient _I am fine_ is. You do not want to hurt them. And when you think of it, no one, when your mum was growing up, walking barefoot, or your dad leaving home at fifteen asked _How are you feeling._ And no one asked Uncle Yusuf, _How are you feeling_ when he returned from wandering for weeks and ending up in a city far away from home. Or when he drank too much. Also, did a pastor not already help Uncle Yusuf by casting and binding the demons that held him by the legs and made him walk endlessly, and grabbed him by the arms and stopped him from being able to work? Because if _How are you_ was sufficient for them, it is also sufficient for you.
For your own peace, resist the temptation to linger in the shadowed past because this is what it means to raise those who raised you: to grant them the grace of learning from their missteps without dragging their failures to the surface, time and again. You do not wield the past like a weapon, because trust must be nurtured in silence. They need to believe that, even when they stumble, you will remain steady; even in their failure, they must know that your love, like the most enduring of things, does not fade, does not diminish.
When they ask you about racism—when they wonder aloud whether you think it might be safer to come home, especially now, with all those right-wing racists winning elections across Europe—do not meet their questions with facts. Instead, listen. Acknowledge their fears. Tell them their concern is valid. Hold back from pointing out the irony of it all: the quiet prejudices they themselves hold toward different ethnic groups in their own country. Refrain from reminding them of the things they have said about the Igbo—that they are obsessed with money and cannot be trusted. Do not remind them how they have spoken of the Yoruba as treacherous snakes, always ready to backstab and betray. Or how, though they are Christian, they admit to sometimes understanding why Hausa and Fulani Muslims do not consider Yoruba Muslims real Muslims, suspecting that tribal loyalty takes precedence over religious conviction.
Do not remind them that you have lived through four religious riots where neighbours went door to door in Kaduna, severing the heads of those who worshiped differently. Do not tell them that you are afraid to tell your therapist about the dead bodies you have seen in the streets, some disemboweled, some decapitated, many burnt beyond recognition because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong faith. Do not tell them about your therapist. Because when you are raising people, you shield them from the darkness of such memories; you do not burden them with the knowledge that you know, intimately, what a human brain looks like—not because you studied medicine, but because you lived through the Miss World riots, through Sharia 1 riots and Sharia 2. Do not wonder aloud how these violent eruptions came to be so neatly named, as though the branding itself cauterized the wounds, numbing the hearts of Nigerians who have become inured to violence.
And certainly, do not tell them that, in the five years you have lived in Germany, you have never once seen a machete raised against another person, never once seen a lifeless body lying in the street, never seen a human being torn open—except for that one time, when you went to the hospital to have your appendix removed. Tell them instead that you are being careful, avoiding dangerous places, minding your own business.
Do not talk to them about sex. Keep to yourself everything you have now learnt about your body and your heart. Certainly never mention that you have been to places where bad, bad things happen. Like queer bars. Do not show them the photo where your nails were painted in black matte varnish, dancing alongside drag queens and homosexuals, all of whom you know will not inherit the kingdom of god. Because although they regularly take their medication, you do not want their blood pressure to rise. You do not want to kill them. No one recovers from killing their parents.
When one of them texts you to report the other’s latest transgression, like a weary parent with two squabbling children, do not choose sides. Instead, assure your mother that you hear her, that her pain is valid, that you understand her frustration over being ignored when he went ahead and bought that new car she insists they didn’t need. Offer her comfort in the promise that you will talk to him about it. When it is your father’s turn, assure him that you hear him too, that you will speak to her about the days she spent in silence, punishing him for some offence he can no longer remember—or perhaps never knew. Do not dive too deeply when you speak to either of them; do not dissect the layers of right or wrong, as if justice could somehow restore what time and misunderstandings have worn down. Instead, gently remind them both to be patient with each other. Tell them that, in the end, they are all they have. And that family means bearing the weight of each other’s flaws, forgiving without demand, and learning to forget, especially learning to forget.
Do not remind them of the words they flung in moments of raw frustration or anger, words that have lingered with you, stubborn and unforgettable. Like when, after one of your siblings died, he implied that it was their favourite child who had been lost. There is no reason to tell them that you have often wished it had been you instead—that you were the one who had drowned in that lake. Do not tell them how often you wanted to run away, just like your neighbour Meena, who grew weary of being whipped and slapped by her parents and finally disappeared one Tuesday afternoon.
Do not tell them that you reconnected with Meena on Instagram. Do not tell them that you now know that when Meena’s mother was telling your mother how bad she was and how she was being promiscuous it was really because they were blaming her for what an adult man was making her do. Do not ask your mother why she agreed with Meena’s mother when she complained about how _girls nowadays are becoming too wild._ Because you love your mother and know she only wanted the best for her. And is Meena not a stable, respectable woman with a husband and children now? Is this not a sign that all that discipline worked?
When you give them gifts, be sure to distribute them with the precision of a diplomat. Each gift, carefully chosen and matched, because the last thing you want is for one to feel favoured over the other. It does not matter that growing up, you carried the heavy certainty that such favouritism existed. You must rise above it, because love, true love, is not supposed to keep score. Love does not dwell on past grievances or the unfairness of it all.
And if, just as the conversation is winding down, your mother sneaks in a request—Oh, by the way, Sister Phoebe hasn’t heard from you in years, and she’s been asking—do not resist. Simply nod and say, Okay, you can give her my number. Do not say that when Sister Phoebe’s WhatsApp video call comes through, you will stare at the screen until it stops ringing. And when her follow-up text arrives, all caps blazing—HELLO ITS SISTER PHOEBE FROM CHURCH YOUR MUMMYS FRIEND—you will let it sit there, unanswered.
They may ask why you no longer attend church, convinced that in Germany there must be places where you can worship in English. Of course, they know your faith has long since unraveled, but they will never relinquish the hope that one day you will return—like the lost sheep of the Bible. This is not a subject you will be able to sidestep, so if you can, simply nod and listen, because when you are raising people, you must remember: they need hope. What is life, after all, without hope? So let them send their Bible verses, let them offer prayers over WhatsApp, cloaked in love and longing. Do not tell them what you truly think of the Bible, or of the gods they cling to—the same gods that seem to grant permission for their prejudices, their quiet judgments of everyone, save perhaps the politicians who have made an art of reducing their country to something barely survivable.
In these moments, memories may stir—memories of your father standing tall in the pulpit, preaching to the congregation about what it means to be the head of a family, quoting from the prolific Paul only hours after he and your mother had hurled their voices at each other, their words slicing through the air, cutting deep into the fragile seams of their love. When that happens, you must remember the timeless words of Paul in his letter to the Corinthians: Love does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
Because the truth is simple: you still love them. You always will.
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**Elnathan John** is a writer and satirist based in Berlin, Germany. He is the author of the novel _Born on a Tuesday_ , the satire collection _Becoming Nigerian_ , and three other books. His work spans fiction, satire, and cultural commentary, and he frequently teaches creative writing. https://hopkinsreview.com/features/elnathan-john-how-to-raise-your-parents
