I dated Emma for two years before he travelled abroad. I called him my first love because of the things he taught me. I had been in love before him. I had dated a few before him, yet I called him my first love. It felt different loving him, like tasting mangoes after tasting bitter oranges all your life. Every promise that fell out of his mouth was fulfilled or kept in his heart, waiting to be fulfilled. When he travelled abroad and asked me to wait for him, it was one of the promises I kept sacredly, waiting for its fulfillment one day.

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I was young but not too young. I was twenty-six when he travelled abroad. I could afford to dream because, at twenty-six, life isn’t running so fast that you can’t follow. We talked on the phone and exchanged “I love you” every day before we ended the call. He talked about the weather as if the heat in Ghana was a blessing. Sometimes on the phone, his lips would be quivering. “Is it the weather?” I would ask. “Yes, it’s minus ten degrees,” he would answer as if he worked at the meteorology office.

Two years later, all we had done was talk and love on the phone. He had sent me a few things that carried love and intention. I was grateful. I was loyal. People talked about how abroad changed those they loved. Emma didn’t change. He stayed true as we tried to shrink the distance between us with love and conversation.

One day, my dad called me home. Home, because I had started working and rented my own place—a new place I called home. I sat next to Dad, and for the first time in our lives, he asked me about my love life. “Isn’t this the same man who advised me to stay away from boys?” I asked myself. “Why is he talking to me about love?”

It was the first time in my life I felt like I wasn’t a child in my father’s eyes. No matter how you age, if your parents are alive, you’re still a baby. I told him, “I’m dating a boy. He’s out of the country, but we talk every day.” He gave me a concerned look. “He’s out of the country? And you think there’s a promise in that?” I answered yes.

He didn’t end there. He said there was a man he wanted me to meet—a man who was raised in love and knew how to love. I didn’t object, so a few days later, my dad, in the presence of my mom, introduced me to Matthias. He smiled broadly as he took my hand in his. His dad was in the same church society as my dad. His dad had seen me the few times I visited the church and had spoken about me with his son. So, just like me, it was his dad’s idea for him to meet me because he was growing older.

When we started talking and becoming friends, we laughed at our parents and later laughed at each other’s jokes. He proposed, and I said I had someone abroad. The look on his face when I said that is still in my memory. He was disappointed, but I told him I didn’t mind being friends, which he accepted.

A year later, he told me he wanted to marry and that I was the only one he had in mind. My dad also called to tell me to give him a chance. I told him about Emma and how I couldn’t marry anyone else but him. My dad, half angry and half loving, told me, “Don’t be a silly child. A man abroad is like a bird in the jungle. Even if it sings in your backyard and eats your grains, you can’t call it yours. Look at Matthias; he can be all yours.”

So I called Emma. I told him about the pressure from home to marry and how he was a bird in the jungle that eats my grains and sings, but I still couldn’t call him my own. He told me my father didn’t know him the way I did, so he couldn’t blame him. “Listen to me when I say I will come home and marry you. There’s nothing to fear.”

Another year walked by silently. Matthias was still asking me to marry him. Because of him, my dad never stopped calling. My mom called too, telling me it was hard to find a good man. I screamed, “Yes, that’s why I can’t let Emma go. Where will I find another like him if I leave him?” Like a warning that hangs over your life without fail, my mom said, “Don’t do this and later regret it. I’m your mom. I want the best for you, but if you think what you have is the best, I wish you well.”

Dad stopped calling regularly to talk about love. Mom stopped trying to convince me. Matthias slowed down until one day he accepted the truth that I wasn’t going to be his wife. Several months later, when I heard Matthias was getting married, I told my mom, “You see, he had someone else. See how quickly he got married to the person.” My mom responded, “If you had said yes to him, that is how quickly he would have married you too.”

I wasn’t at the wedding, but I called him to congratulate him. Just a few days after Matthias’ wedding, Emma called, and we talked like we always did. His voice was very low and lacked the happiness he usually carried when we spoke. I asked, “Is it about the weather? Still in the negatives?” He paused for a while. “It’s about what I’m going to say. I feel like I’m wasting your time and opportunities. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not looking likely… I mean…”

He started stuttering. Too many pauses than he had ever taken in our love life. Then he said, “Listen to what your father is telling you. I don’t think I can come back anytime soon to marry you. You’re a woman. Age is not your friend when it comes to this.”

What he said hung around me for several days. I could almost touch it like a cassette, rewind it, and play it again so my heart could break all over again. “Emma, are you joking? How can you tell me this when I still have trust in us? Just believe and work hard. Life changes like the weather. We’ll be fine.”

The conversations didn’t stop abruptly. He called less and less until we went a whole month without speaking. Then one day, our life together gasped for its last breath and died. We stopped talking. We ceased to exist. The love died, and along with it, the hope and dreams.

Just last year, while everyone was celebrating Christmas and singing happy songs, my heart was in turmoil. Emma, the same person who wasn’t sure about the weather, got married to someone else. He wasn’t even here himself, but I learned he had been in the country once since our breakup. They did the knocking while he was in town and married while he followed the proceedings on Zoom.

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My heart ached, but I didn’t cry. “Maybe life changed for him when we broke up a year ago,” I consoled myself. “But if he left me just because of this lady he married, may God be the judge.”

I didn’t call him. I haven’t told my parents what happened. Matthias calls me once in a while, and we talk. He still thinks I was meant for him. I tell him his wife is enough. It hurts a lot sometimes, but that’s life.

—Frances  

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