My Mom's Visit and Martha's Vineyard in the Fall.

Iya ni wura iye biye

Ti a kole fo wo ra....

My mom has always wanted to visit me. But between my schedule and hers, it never happened...until a month and a half ago.

Let me step back a bit. I have never been away from my mom for an extended period of time. I've always been home. When my younger brother went off to boarding school and my older siblings went off to university, and my dad came to the U.S., I went to school that's a stone throw away from my house. In those days, when it was just the two of us, we would eat dinner early and watch TV or read or talk.

Even when I got into college, I went from home, every day for 4.5 years. So when I started applying for graduate school, I knew I will finally be leaving NY and home. So did my mom. She kept planning to come visit me where ever I ended up. I was in Providence for a year and we made plans for her to come for a weekend but it just never happened.

So now when she brought it up again, I decided to be proactive and buy her tickets. That way she had an incentive to come over. It worked! And what better place to take my mom than Martha's Vineyard. I live 10mins from this lovely island and the ferry ride is not expensive. So, why not?

She saw what I do as a graduate student for the first time (trust me, seeing is not the same as hearing about it, unless you're equally in the field). She marveled at the quiet streets of Woods Hole, she dubbed Water street "downtown" because it was the only "busy" street in the area.

When we got to Martha's Vineyard, we walked around the "gingerbread" houses in Oak Bluffs and took a bus ride around Vineyard Haven. We had coffee in one of the local shops (well, my mom had tea) and shared a bagel. She fussed about how the weather is too cold for me and I reminded her that it is no colder than NY. She counter argued that the high winds makes it colder and I had to concede. She was right, the wind factor on the Cape can make it feel colder than other New England areas.

There were a few lighthouses around that we could have gone to but most were closed and the threatening weather didn't encourage us walking up to any of them.

It was starting to drizzle on the way back and the weather got colder. But it was overall a fun trip. I was very glad my mom came to visit and I was glad she enjoyed her visit as much as I did. 

When we got back home, I prepared a nice, warm dish of eba and efo riro. Yum, you can never have too much "Naija" food.