And then there was the unsettling fact that, despite whatever my mother might claim, the bullies, cheats, and self-promoters seemed to be doing quite well, while those she considered good and decent people seemed to get screwed an awful lot.

It was really fun for me. Those days when my mum sent me on an errand and I didn’t it deliver well, she would flog me and I would wonder “Are you sure this is my mother? But now when I think back, I realise she was only trying to make me a better person. <p> Especially, when I do the same to my son. It dawned on me that all those scolding was out of love. It was really fun. I grew up in a face me, I face you kind of house where you have lots of drama. When I think about it, I laugh a lot. Funny enough, I used to tell the “Aje-butter” children that they didn’t have as much experience about life as those of us who lived in the ghettos.

My own mother is always telling us how well behaved our children are, but little does she know how we got them that way! She would turn grey if she knew, I cane her perfect grandson, but she loves the result.

It was admitted by all her friends, and also by her enemies — who were in truth the more numerous and active body of the two — that Lizzie Greystock had done very well with herself.

My mum and I fought a lot. She worried that my chosen career was unreliable and wouldn’t take me anywhere.

My mother was very supportive. I was playing with other boys my age from a young age and was much better than them, so my mum wasn’t too fussed.

“My parents helped me and they hurt me…My mom was extremely pro-Black, and I believed her. My dad is Senegalese, and I grew up around my dark-skinned cousins and just thought that they were the most beautiful women in the world. I was surrounded by beautiful dark people. And then middle school hit, and I was like, Oh, they think I’m ugly. They think I’m big. They think I’m unattractive. I went back to my mom like, ‘What the f—k?! Y’all lied to me my whole life. What is this?!’ I started realizing, Mom, you’re light-skinned. So I don’t know what you were talking about. It’s not like you can relate to being dark. And your hair is not the same texture as mine. So what do you know about telling me I’m beautiful? Why would you lie to me? That definitely had an impact on how I saw myself.

My mom didn’t play favorites. She was kind and giving and wonderful to everyone who graced her presence. She never pushed me, nor put me front and center. She knew too many instructors who ruined their businesses by featuring their own daughters in every number. This turns people off! I didn’t even get to go down the mat first in tumbling class. Jeez!

How come Mom is crazy and I'm not? Well, it's possible my mom could stand up in front of this many people and talk about all the crap in her life and those people could have sat around and laughed with her, it would've meant nothing and she could have moved on cool. It's also possible she could have taken out the whole front row with a large-caliber weapon.

My mother used to — she would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say to us, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” (Laughs.) You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.

No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn't do too badly by one another, we did as well as most.

But her parents were certified weirdos and probably deserved such tactics.

Oh yes. It is almost like she needs therapy for that, but she is my number one fan. My mum says, ‘I don’t know how you do it, but my God, you’re doing alright!’ So, when you hear that most mornings, [especially] as a mother of three… [aged nine, five and three].

Mum was a disciplinarian though not in the physical sense – as to the latter at best she might use her slippers, but the truth was she was no dab hand and couldn’t beat anyone to save her life! We would usually just pretend to cry so she could let us go, whilst we ran off to have a good laugh.