Regrets

Enjoy this AI generated nod to "The Help."

“Fear is stupid. So are regrets.” - Marilyn Monroe. It has become a very modern idea that one should not have regrets in life. Or as Jennifer Aniston said, "There are no regrets in life, just lessons." The general message we get from society is to accept our lives and our choices, because even the poor choices we made lead us to where we are today. To say we have regrets then suggests that we not only failed, but learned nothing from that failure. While some of my biggest mistakes - the two relationships that lead to my two sons, for example - I would never take back even if I could, there are some little things in life that I wish I could go back and say yes to.

For example, if I could go back in time, I would attend Mina’s wedding in December 2013, I would have paid the 500 cfa to ride on the back of a bedouin camel in Northern Togo on New Year’s Day in 2012, and I would have been more curious about my night guard Alphonse’s life. None of these choices would have changed my life in any significant way, but because they constitute moments of self-absorption and egocentrism I can never get back, I wish I had a do over. 

When I moved to Togo in 2011, I had only a few weeks of the most basic French lessons to help me. I’d studied Spanish in high school and college, then learned Macedonian, Albanian and the littlest bit of Turkish when I was in the Peace Corps. So when I decided to pack my bags and my son and move to West Africa to teach English literature at an American School, I could only say, “Comment allez vous?” and count to ten. 

Luckily, I had help navigating my new world. The school where I was teaching provided housing and with it, a night guard, Alphonse. Additionally, with the help of one of my new colleagues, I was able to hire a household helper, Mina, for shopping, laundry, and cleaning as well. 

Alphonse came every night and tended the home’s garden, and I woke every morning to the crow of roosters and the sound of him sweeping the patio. One of the first nights in the house, a giant flying cockroach flew into my living room and landed on my curtains. Back at home in San Diego, I’d never had an issue killing the run-of-the-mill cockroaches that crawled out from under the sink and were well under an inch in length, but this cockroach was three inches big with wings! I was not about to have its guts splurting out all over my curtains. So, I requested Alphonse’s help to get it out of the house. He kindly obliged, taking off his rubber sandal and knocking the monstrous insect to the floor and smashing it. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship - except that I would later learn, I knew nothing about the man.

Similarly, I came to depend heavily on Mina. Mina stayed over weekday nights and went home most weekends. She was petite and strong and kind. When I first moved to Lomè, there was  construction on the roads near my home and we didn’t have any running water. I’d never lived in Africa before, so I thought this was just normal. For the first few weeks, Mina was hauling buckets of water from a pump down the street for our cooking, laundry and bathing. When I finally told the school, I learned there was a water tank on the property and they came and filled it once, but it didn’t last long and soon we were back to buckets again. I felt bad that Mina had to carry the water all the time, but also, I had no idea what was normal here. For me, normal just became Mina filling up the bathtub with water and then us using that water throughout the day for our needs. The weather was so hot, that taking bucket baths seemed perfectly adequate. Mina would boil a pot of water and pour it into a bucket and then I would use a smaller container with a handle to wash my hair and rinse. I thought nothing of it until I visited other teachers’ houses and discovered they had running water and working showers.

Neither Mina nor Alphonse spoke English, but both spoke French, which was Togo’s most recent colonial language, and Ewe, a language which spanned West African borders and was also spoken in Ghana. Mina and Alphonse became my main teachers of French. Using google translate, I would explain my needs and practice the words. French was a tough language for me, harder than any of the others I’d learned because of so many silent letters. Eau, which means “water,” for example, is pronounced like the letter “O” and mange and manges which are different conjugations of  “eat” are pronounced the same. I remember learning gateau, because it was my son’s birthday shortly after we arrived and Mina offered to make a banana cake, which turned out to be what we would call banana bread. 

For two and a half years, I took for granted that Mina and Alphonse were a part of my life. They were witnesses to the few men I dated that came and went. They helped me care for the two dogs I adopted - the first because I couldn’t bear watching the neighborhood kids hang it by its tail over the ten-foot wall and the second I got from a friend who felt the dog needed more attention than she was able to give it. The dogs became companions for Mina and Alphonse, following them around the yard, and in turn they looked after the dogs more than I did. Alphonse and Mina were there for many of the dramatic moments in my life. Like the time I stumbled home completely and idiotically drunk one night sobbing because the moto taxi driver took off with my purse and passport. I’m sure they heard the tears and the fights with my boyfriend. They played with and joked around with my son and watched my belly swell with pregnancy. 

Then, two things happened that made me realize that all of this time that I was walking around completely self-absorbed as the protagonist in my own novel with Mina and Alphonse as the supportive characters to my ego - Mina and Alphonse were living their own distinct lives that I knew nothing about. In the beginning, it was likely because I did not have the words to ask, but eventually, I was so wrapped up in my own drama, that it didn’t even occur to me to be curious. 

Unfortunately, it took tragedy to open my eyes. One day in my third year in Togo, Alphonse came to me distraught. His wife was in the hospital with pregnancy complications and the doctors would not operate to save the baby unless they got paid, so he was trying to raise money to pay for a cesarean to save his wife and child. I knew Alphonse was married with kids, but I honestly thought he was well into his 60s and that his children were adults. It never occurred to me that he could be married to a wife who was still young enough to have a child. I gave him what money I had, but learned later that while his wife survived, the baby did not. It took this loss for me to even think to ask about his family.

Similarly, I was caught off guard in my eighth month of pregnancy when Mina gave me her one-month notice that she was moving to Ghana to get married. To be honest, I had simply taken for granted and never asked that she would be around to nanny the child I had on the way. Talk about self-absorbed and egotistical! I literally didn’t even know she was engaged. When she went home for the weekends, I never asked where home was and whether or not she had a boyfriend or was dating. 

What I knew about Mina could be scrawled on the palm of my hand. I knew Mina was religious and that she didn’t celebrate holidays in the way we did. Sometimes when she would spend the night on weekends and I would stay over at my boyfriend’s house, she would take my son to church on Sundays. I thought it was good for him to attend mass as a cultural experience, since I had been raised in the Catholic Church, but given up Catholicism permanently by the time I graduated from college.

I knew that Mina was able to buy our groceries cheaper than I could and that when she shopped there were boll weevils in the rice. When she was at our house, she did the cooking, and when she was gone, I did my own shopping at the expensive supermarket, because I was not about to sift the boll weevils out of the rice. I knew that at our house Mina wore rags, but that when she left the house she was always dressed to the nines in tailored dresses.

I knew Mina had never  received wrapped Christmas gifts from under a tree. The first year we were in Togo, I wrapped my son’s presents and put them in the closet to hide them. We spent Christmas Eve in Ghana with friends and I asked Mina to put the gifts under the tree after we left, so they would be there when we returned. She did as I asked, but when we walked in to see what Santa had brought - we found all the toys unwrapped and in their original boxes. The tradition was clearly new to her!

Basically, I knew nothing about her inner world or her family. When I realized that I didn’t know Alphonse and Mina, I felt ashamed of my actions. Even worse, I felt too ashamed to attend Mina’s wedding. I was supposed to be her boss and I had this idea in my head that as her boss, I needed to attend with generous gifts and give money, but I had nothing saved and was living month-to-month. That December of her wedding in particular, all my discretionary spending went to hospital bills for the birth of my second son and my personal life was in shambles with my boyfriend breaking up with me a week after our son was born. As protagonists go, I was failing. So instead of showing up as a supporting cast member, I didn’t attend Mina’s wedding at all. 

To this day I regret not rising above my own issues, so that I could celebrate this joyous moment with her - on the sidelines as a minor character where I belonged. I regret that I still owe Mina a wedding gift. I keep waiting for that moment when I have reached success and become worthy of being this big generous boss with plenty to go around - financially and emotionally. I have to come to terms with that never happening. I think some regrets are worth having, especially when they involve others for whom we can reach out and make amends. Reflecting on these moments that I will never have back - it’s not enough to learn a lesson for my future - the people I hurt or neglected may be in MY past, but they are living in THEIR OWN present. By acknowledging regret, my self in this present can find solutions in this here and now.

What regrets do you have that wouldn't change the course of your life, yet nag you nonetheless? Share your story in the comments.