For the longest time, I believed my father would never change. Not in this lifetime. Not even if pigs grew wings and soared across the Ikot Ekpene skyline.
He was the kind of man whose voice made the house go silent. His name was never said out loud when he wasn’t around. We simply called him "that man" or “Daddy,” depending on the mood. His slippers alone had authority. Once they slapped against the tiles, everyone disappeared. No one dared talk back. Especially not me.
He didn’t beat us often, but his words left bruises where no eyes could see. I was seventeen the first time I stood up to him. Not in anger, but in honesty.
“I don’t want to study Law,” I said quietly during breakfast.
He looked up from his plate of yam and egg, eyes narrowing as if I had just confessed to murder.
“What did you just say?”
“I said… I want to study History and International Studies.”
The silence that followed was louder than thunder.
“Over my dead body,” he said, his voice sharp as machete steel. “You think I suffered in this country for you to study History? What will you become? A tour guide?”
That was how it started. Years of cold wars. I would eat my food after everyone else. He stopped asking how school was going. On the day of my matriculation, he didn’t come. My mum made jollof rice and handed me an envelope with two thousand naira inside. “He’s still angry,” she whispered.
I stopped expecting anything from him. I focused on surviving university, on finding meaning in old African treaties and Cold War policies. I was proud of myself, even when no one clapped.
Then came the day pigs flew.
It was a hot Thursday. I had just returned home from school for the semester break. NEPA had taken light, and the generator hadn’t worked in two weeks. I stepped into the house, drenched in sweat and smelling of bus fumes.
And there he was, in the sitting room. Watching NTA with his glasses balanced on his nose, a newspaper in his lap.
“You’re back,” he said.
I stopped. It wasn’t what he said that shocked me. It was how he said it—calm, almost soft.
“Yes sir,” I said.
He nodded slowly, then folded the newspaper. “Come.”
I froze. Come? Like, into his space?
“Sit.”
I sat at the edge of the chair opposite him, unsure what was happening. Maybe this was the day he would finally disown me properly.
He leaned forward. “I read your article.”
My heart skipped. “My article?”
He nodded. “That thing you wrote in the campus press... about colonialism and economic dependency. Someone in my office sent it to me. They didn’t even know you were my son.”
I blinked. I had written that piece late one night in the library, half-hungry, just to meet the deadline.
“You wrote like a man who understands the world,” he continued. “And... I was proud.”
I didn’t know what to say. The silence grew thick between us.
Then he said it.
“I’m sorry.”
Three words. Simple. But in that moment, they shattered years of tension, as if a wall made of glass had cracked and the light came flooding through.
“I was wrong to push you,” he added. “I didn’t understand this new world. I thought I was doing what was best... the way my father did with me.”
For a second, I thought maybe I was dreaming. Maybe I had dozed off in the bus and was hallucinating. Because this man this same man who had once called my dream foolish was now apologizing.
Then he said something even more unlikely.
“You make me proud, son.”
Son. That word hadn’t touched his lips in reference to me in years.
I swallowed hard. “Thank you, sir.”
“No. Not sir,” he said, managing a tired smile. “Just... thank you, my son.”
The world shifted that day. Not in dramatic fireworks or celebratory drums. But something in me healed. It was the beginning of new conversations, the kind we had never shared. He asked about my final project. I told him I was researching the Biafran War’s impact on cross-river diplomacy. He didn’t interrupt. He just listened.
The next week, I caught him reading Chinua Achebe’s There Was a Country. He said he wanted to understand what I was studying. That, to me, was even bigger than the apology.
Now, every time I hear someone say, “That’ll happen when pigs fly,” I smile.
Because sometimes, pigs really do take off. And when they do, they carry old fathers and their stubborn pride right into the clouds, leaving behind a space big enough for love to grow.
