Marriage Traffic Lights

Life is not bad at all, because it is supposed to be bad. That’s why it’s called life. We don’t question why blood is red. We just drive carefully because we don’t want to cause accidents which will result in loss of blood or life. But certain things are outside our control, for example traffic lights, called robots in other countries.

We come to a major intersection only to find they are out of order. We wait. Patiently. We must, because the intersection becomes a four-way stop. We look right and left, see which car came first before we proceed. It works very well in most countries. We are irritated that traffic lights are out of order, but we are not out of order. That’s why we work together to get out of that intersection alive. In Africa, creative strangers guide the traffic with entertaining proficiency.

Waiting at the four-way stop is not good. We think a lot. We look at each other with smiles that don’t reach the eyes. We know the driver’s or the passenger’s social insurance number, proof that we know them very well.  Ironically, we can relate to the traffic lights being out of order because it happens in our life. Someone always fills up the tank because another person uses the car a lot for errands not related to the shared home.

We are used to such things and we fix them, because they come with the marital or relationship package. We even go to the extent of making sure certain things don’t happen in the first place, like kids disturbing daddy while he’s working on his laptop.

There’s nobody to talk to because mothers north and south of the Equator have the same question. “Does he hit you? Does he starve you and the kids?” If the answer is no, they tell daughters to treat out-of-order traffic lights, as a four-way stop. They’ll work again.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.