My Parents' Love

My parents loved each other so much that, for a long time, Salma and I thought Valentine's Day was a public holiday.

I mean that almost literally. February 14th arrived in our house in Buziga the way Christmas arrived — with anticipation, with fuss, with the sense that the day itself belonged to something bigger than a Tuesday. There were flowers. There were cards. There was a special meal that smelled like celebration before it even reached the table. Our parents dressed up a little. They smiled at each other in that private way that made Salma and me roll our eyes and secretly feel safer than we knew how to say.

In Uganda, that kind of open affection was not the norm.

Public displays of affection — holding hands, kissing, lingering too long in a goodbye — were frowned upon. Love was supposed to be quiet, private, respectable. You didn't put it on display. You didn't make a holiday of it. You kept it behind compound walls and closed doors, if you showed it at all.

My parents didn't care.

They held hands in the driveway. They laughed too loudly at each other's jokes. My father would steal a kiss when he thought no one was looking — and we were always looking. My mother would lean into his side while he told Friday stories, as if the folk tales weren't complete without her shoulder against his. On Valentine's Day they made the whole house part of the celebration, and if the neighbours noticed, so be it.

Salma and I used to tease them for it. We also soaked it in. We didn't have the words then for what we were learning — that love can be loud, that tenderness isn't weakness, that a marriage can be warm enough to make two children believe a commercial holiday was written into the national calendar.

I think about them whenever I cook for someone I love. Not because every meal needs flowers and a card, but because the best kitchens I know are the ones where affection is allowed to show — in the way someone tastes the stew for you, or waits for you to finish rolling the chapati, or sets an extra place without being asked.

My parents taught us that love doesn't have to whisper to be proper.

Sometimes it gets the whole day off.