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The experience still haunts me till this day.

She must have been two years old, or slightly less. Though this detail skips me, i do know that she hadn’t begun speaking fluently. Her vocabulary was limited to; ‘tea’, ‘mama’, ‘no’, ‘yes’…etcetera. She had not begun stringing sentences together, just gibberish.

She is my firstborn, and extremely beautiful. I am not biased, I’ve had to batter a few friends who dared compliment her good looks. Let’s just say i am extremely possessive around the kid.

You know what they say about daughters and their fathers? Yeah, we fit the profile. We are close like that. Right from birth, uncanny really.

She does not call me ‘dad’ or ‘papa’ or ‘daddy’. For some reason, at the point of my story, she was calling me ‘babes’. Her mum calls me that. Years after, she still calls me ‘babes’ when she wants my full attention.

The times in question were rough. Trying situations sought to test my resolve. She was still being potty-trained. Her personality was starting to blossom, my life was in crucial imbalance. My rite of passage into fatherhood was tough.

The time was about 5 a.m. She specifically woke me up, and i knew she had to go ‘potty’. And so groggy and bleary-eyed from sleep, i acquiesced and had her all set up. I was leaning against a door frame thinking thoughts i cannot recall presently.

‘Babes…’

‘Yes baby…?’

‘Jesus is coming soon.’

Now folks, I’m not the sort prone to fear or panic. But those words sent me hyperventilating. I jerked upright, my (very few hairs) prickling…

‘What did you just say?’

With her lovely eyes as clear as crystal, her manner and demeanor devoid of guile or motive, she reiterated, ‘Jesus is coming soon.’

I later learned that i had screamed for her mum. Because the wife was suddenly beside me, a picture of maternal authority.

‘Sage, tell mama what you just told me?’ I remember hoarsely requesting.

And she did.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Her mum expostulated.

Yuppity yup!! The same one coming soon apparently I reasoned. The ‘sly’ in me emerged in microseconds…

‘When is He coming exactly?’

She smiled enigmatically in response.

‘Is it today?’ her mum quipped.

Another smile.

‘Babes…?’

‘Yes Sage?’ We chorused.

She stood up. ‘I have finish.’