by Gloria Obizu
It was almost two months in school before math classes began and guess who introduced herself as the math instructor, the same lady Carissa has been waiting to speak with. And during that class, much of Carissa’s attention was focused on the instructor than on the subject itself as she struggled to make the connections by fishing out old data, yet what she sought never really clicked. She also noticed that just as she was paying special attention to the math instruction, so she was also taking special interest in her but unable to make sense of the whole thing she made up her mind to confront the lady since math was the last subject of the day. She then called her husband to say he could come pick her up later.
It was end of class and she waited until she found a chance and seized it. Dr. Jacobs! Can I speak with you for a moment? Carissa began.
Oh sure!
I’ve been trying to make the connections but it’s not forth coming, yet I’m definitely positive I know you somewhere.
Know what? We are together in that ‘cause I’ve the same feeling we have met before now, Dr. Jacobs added.
That’s kind of encouraging! What High school did you attend? Carissa continued.
“Fountain Groove” Is that the same school you went?
No! Actually I didn’t get past Junior High” Carissa responded.
That’s ok! The Doctor continued.
Still the feeling you’re someone from my past keeps getting even stronger as I’m talking to you right now. Carissa continued.
I certainly feel exactly the same way, Dr Jacobs agreed.
What’s your first name?
Denyse.
Denyse? I used to know a lot of Denyse but never a Denyse Jacobs.
Oh! That? I wasn’t always a Denyse Jacobs. You see, my last name changed after I got married.
So you where?
Denyse Goldman!
Hold it right there! Denyse Goldman! That’s it! Do you recall friends like Isabel Diamond and Carissa Stevens and the rest of us?
Yeah! I remember! So you are!
Former Miss. Carissa Stevens but now Carissa Anderson!
That’s it! That is the missing link we all have been looking for.
Oh my God! I wouldn’t guess in a thousand years that the same Denyse I used to hang out with will ever turn out my math instructor. How things happen is amazing sometimes! This is Carissa Stevens standing right in front of you. The last time I saw you was at the Movies, remember? And you introduced me to this girl you said you met at a camp or something.
Elisa! Oh Yes! My goodness! Carissa! Is this really you? What a pleasant surprise. Come, let’s go to my office ‘cause we have a lot to talk about. And both of them walked into her very spacious well-furnished room.
Look at you! Carissa continued the moment they took their seats. You didn’t change too much though. A little sign of the grownup things here and there, that’s all. I would have recognized you still but for the change in last name!
I know!
This is really interesting. So, how have you been?
Good! Good! And how about yourself? The Doctor said beaming with smile.
Not doing badly either! Oh my God! This is unbelievable. You’re one of the instructors in this college, ha? Carissa continued exuberantly.
Yes!
The first time I saw you was at orientation class and I kind of got curious. That last name thing really got me distracted.
Oh yes! The Doctor said. I got married to the love of my life some 16 years back. Vincent Jacobs. I call him Vince though, never Vincent. We met in college and couldn’t live without each other thereafter. He studied Medicine while I got my RN first, went ahead for my BSN, then my Masters and doctorate degree in Nursing. It’s been a very fulfilling life to say the list and I won’t have it any other way. I really thank God almighty for his mercies every day, honestly; he provided me with a direction in life when I needed it most and then gave me my soul mate for a partner. I’m so happy and settled to say the list.
That’s so sweet to my ears Denyse. Do you guys have kids?
Oh yes!! Three lovely ones! Mathew, Jane and Ethel! What about you. Are you married?
Yeah! I’ve been married for eleven and half years now.
Great! I hope he is good to you, the Doctor added.
He is terrific! I consider myself one of the luckiest persons on earth after all. Denyse you are now a Doctor, ha?
Sure!
Awesome! Look at you! Is like you got it right from start babe! I wish I went the same direction as you did when you did.
It’s ok that you are here now! Better late than never!
I know! Trying to get my RN as a married woman at 38 is not that fun though.
It doesn’t matter at all. The important thing is you are here now and doing the right thing. You got to know this, whether we are busy or not the years will always pass us by, so, you better use whatever time you have wisely. In essence the two years you’ll spend here could come and pass and you’ll still be on same spot doing nothing unless you made the kind of move you are making right now. I tell you this; some of our students are already in thire70s, so age is no excuse for anyone not to achieve her dream goal in life. I always say to my friends, whatever you desire, pursue it and make sure you net it.
Oh my God! Look at you Denyse. Never thought I’ll ever meet you again! Not as a Doctor of Math?
I know! Life is a serious and tedious business and we have to continue doing our best!
You are right! That’s what I failed to grasp earlier on.
You’re not alone on that Carissa. Every one of us kind of started that way, you know? We all kind of fumbled until we found our path.
But you grasped it faster than I did. There must be a reason for that Denyse.
What I can tell you is that I was lucky to have met someone special who showed me the right way when I was grappling with darkness like every girl of my age at the time. And from that point my life took a turn.
How lucky! Carissa added.
I’ll rather say I was open to possibilities at the time, continued Denyse. I also leant a lot from that experience. Oh yes! A whole lot! It taught me that why some of us miss their part is because they don’t know the right way to go. If nobody guided you right how do you know the difference between right and wrong? And because you have no direction, you waste your time running round in circles. Is for this reason I do some of the things I do to provide every girl I can reach with that direction which to my understanding is the road map to a happy life. I have written books on that topic and involved in lots of project, all my works devoted to every girl out there. Open your mind’s eyes to view the riches bestowed on you by nature and please don’t let it go in ruin for lack of knowledge.
You must be a very busy woman as I can see! Carissa continued.
Yes I’m! I can’t help it! I had the zeal and it became a dream that materialized into a project I started about ten years ago. I call it “Ways of chicks” The Doctor continued.
Really!
Yes! It was all over the places then. On the news everywhere! You didn’t get to hear about it?
Denyse I was too busy for a long time grappling with my own peculiar darkness but a good man rescued me, Carissa said.
Oh! How sweet! Anyway as I was speaking, the inspiration for my project came from a book I read. In the book the author talks about the courage and bravery of mother chickens and how they nurture their chicks in face of many odds and I thought that was terrific and held on to it. And it goes on to prove how these chickens do their jobs with all boldness and would fight off any intruder with everything they got rather than loss a single baby chick. And they do all that without help from father cock. That famous author even expanded her scope to include other kinds of animals too. According to her, in the animal kingdom most
of the females raise their babies single handedly and that the animal kingdom survived till this day shows these dames are doing a good job. After reading that book, I kind of thought that giving the right kind of insight, the human feminine gender can do much more than she is doing today. So I started this project for young girls to serve as a means of orientating them to what an average girl would expect in her life’s journey and how to manage the situations that she may face and make everything work for her good and succeed.
Awesome! Carissa exclaimed.
And you know what my number one rule is, Denyse asked rhetorically, get educated or improve yourself in a positive way. Let’s put it this way, without education or acquisition of skill in one form or another, you may never be the best you can unless you have some other inherent talents that you must also exploit. Even then, you need some basic education to polish whatever talents you have and make the best of it. Some few lucky ones could find a way about their talents with little or no schooling at all but that is not true for everyone. Others get carried away by fountain of youth, their greatest asset, but unfortunately one that withers like rose of spring. Invariably, if you don’t manage your assets well you become the rose. So, I say to the girls I work with, go ahead and build a good life for yourself while you have the chance? Is not that hard! All it takes is a dream, a focus for a road map, the will to get to your destination and good sense to wrap up the whole package. But just like everything in life, the problem is with getting started. And my answer to that is this, just get up and go get it!
I know! Tell me something Denyse. How does one have to act to be considered as having what you described as good sense? It’s always confusing to me you know! What does it really mean? ‘Cause I hear it said all the time and off-course everybody thinks he’s got good sense, Carissa asked, stumped.
The way I understand it, Denyse continued, is of something like self-awareness and how you put it to good use to achieve your entreaty. Never deny yourself answers to the question, who am I? I had to sit myself down at some point and figure all that out. It’s not such an easy thing to do though because people hate to square up with their flaws but if you can, you get the blue print for your mission on earth. And then your mind opens to your strong and weak points and you figure how either works in your day to day activities and based on that you derive your actions on how to go about solving the puzzle ahead as you journey down life lane.
Just about the kind of thing my Aunt would say, Carissa added.
And expect obstacles everywhere as you journey but you must figure how to manipulate and succeed, continued Denyse. I’m not preaching here like be good at all times, no. Remember, there is time for everything. So there are times to be the lamb and others to be the lion but never use any means in such a way as to harm yourself or others. Say for instance, it’s time to be a lion but there is another one determined to have you gulped, be smart enough to get yourself out of the situation. The same thing happens when someone tries to take advantage of the lamb in you, get away from the situation. Ultimately It’s all about how to mediate between ‘ME’, which is who you are. A strong force formed by interactions of so many variables such as genetics and the way we are raised, cultural affinity and norms and how we perceive theses, believes and opinions formed out of them and what feedback we get in the society as we try to demonstrate these, plus how we interpret and manage the feed backs. That’s the sum of that individual who goes in search of what ‘Me’ wants and tries to figure how ‘Me’ gets his needs met.
Wow! I can see you’ve been really busy, Denyse. How do you do all these? Carissa asked.
Devotion! I study a lot! Anyway like I said, my focus right now is on girls of today and future. And in that, the main thing is to get busy with settling your life issues while the sun still shines or end up in a devil’s workshop where all idol minds go. You know what that means for a girl? Become an implement in the hands of guys and other wrongs take their root.
Denyse, standing right before you is a living example to that. It happened to me! Some guys Antony and Ricky did it to me. I was between twelve and fourteen when it all happened. I was in school at some point then but wasn’t serious and never understood what the teachers were teaching anyway, so I guess I was in the same corner as a drop out and eventually became one.
You understand what I’m talking about then, ha? And by the time the girl gets back her right senses, time already passed by because her time is shorter then she realizes. Some real strong and lucky ones may still salvage something out of it all and build up but many end up with exercise in futility. Most get frustrated, some loss their lives as they take to more drastic measures like drugs, prostitution, alcohol, crimes and all sorts of things.
I know that better than anybody, Carissa continues. I should have listened to my Aunt when she tried taking me the right route. But see I didn’t really trust her ‘cause she never showed me real love. She just talked about her expectations of me but never paid enough attention to all my needs as a growing child.
I understand! Nurture works best with nature for sure.
I know! Another thing is that in those days I used to hang out a lot with the kind of crowd that seem to love lying around all the time and doing nasty stuff more than anything else. Carissa continued. I’m sure you too remember all the rivalries and all sorts of stuff we had to go through ‘cause every one of us wanted to confirm to certain mood of behavior and win at it in some ways. I know that someone like you just couldn’t handle that but it had a strong grip on me. Anyway those are problems of growing up that are sometimes hard to deal with. At times it gets out of hand too.
Oh that! Peers influence us much more than we realize for sure. But I managed it in certain ways like you guessed. What worked for me was this; when I got into high school I converted my math instructor, Miss Boniva into a role model ‘cause that was how my best friend Elisa thought me to go about it and it worked like magic. Miss Boniva was a very young smart teacher then and I looked up to her in many ways. I wanted to do everything just like she did ‘cause she seemed to get things done right. I even tried to dress like her sometimes. Whatever she did around me I noticed and in private I tried to copy. And so consumed was I with it all that what she stood for became my inspiration and aspiration. So when I hang out with peers in body in spirit my math teacher would be very active. Oh I hated failing math then because what that meant to me was living far below the standard I set for myself, so I worked hard on it. And whenever I’m faced with difficult Math problem I sang a song I made up with stuff like; Pretty Miss. Boniva, if you can do it so could Denyse. Both of them had a laugh at that before she continued. At a point I started thinking I could even do better than she did. So I will place her as an opponent in some imaginary games I create and would do everything to beat that lady. Oh, I played those games with so much devotion but also always fair to her shadow. Poor Miss. Boniva, she didn’t even know what was going on. There were all sorts of things I made up just to connect with that lady in some ways. Not that I utterly understood the effect the whole thing was having on me then but now I do know better. The way I see it is that every girl needs a role model. Create your own role model in those who have achieved in their chosen fields and aspire to be like them by connecting with the hero inside of you. Let your dream become real and alive to you and live it! A dream is that vision of your hero you too want to achieve. Then with your dream comes a goal, aim and hit your target! It doesn’t have to be at one go! It could be once, twice, ten times and more but keep trying until you get it right. It may never get to be perfect, meaning it could be worse better or best. So you see, even peer pressure could be channeled to useful ends ‘cause is not necessarily bad. Again don’t forget that in spite of all the peer issues, not all of us dented our stars. Some of us did what they had to do to get passed that stage in more reasonable way and went ahead to continue doing the right things at other stations of life. Worms make silks
too you know.
I understand what you’re saying Denyse. Another thing is this, some girls want to do better but because they don’t have the means of reaching their goals they are compelled to do things they don’t necessarily like. For instant, some go into prostitution in obedience to survival instinct. I had a friend named Tasha. She is dead now.
Sorry about that!
That’s ok! It is been a long time now. We used to do stuff together and I know she was one of the nicest girls you can think of. She was talented in many ways but because her parents abandoned her at a very early age she had to struggle alone all the time and eventually ended up in prostitution. From her peculiar experience and some of the things that happened to me too, I learnt that some girls don’t really wanna do certain things, but circumstances become so compelling.
I understand what you are saying. Do you know I used to have a friend who also went through a similar experience of parental abandonment? But she never ended up a prostitute. Today she is Broadcaster. You’ll know her because she is very popular but I don’t want to mention names. See, determination is a strong force to propel us to whatever altitude we aspire. I also had a girl in my class once who come into the program without a support system but she ended up making one of the best grades. It is all about you and how you reason. And the best way to reason right is by knowing. Read! Get busy with books. That’s how you learn. I make it a duty to read a novel a week and there is always something new to learn from every one of them.
You make a whole lot of sense to me Denyse. Knowing precisely what you want out of life plus the determination to get things done is awesome. After all Elizabeth Churchill didn’t get past Junior-high, just like me, Carissa continued.
Are you talking about the same Elizabeth I know? The daughter of Dr Churchill!
Yeah! Is the same girl I’m talking about? She used to hang out with us a lot in those days you know, and we kinda felt it was odd sort of but that was the choice she made and we accepted her. But the truth is that she always had what we wanted, money and very giving.