Chapter One

Summary

• The protagonist emphasizes the importance of family privacy within their Ghanaian culture, mentioning how intimate details about their family are to be kept within the household.
• Despite social norms suggesting best friends share everything, the protagonist's need for privacy about family matters leads to a sense of inauthenticity in their friendships.
• The narrator has a routine of waking up before their alarm, silently preparing food in the morning for their father's meals, considering the state and schedule for cleaning and sorting the kitchen.
• The protagonist prepares meals for their father, who has Parkinson’s disease, and interacts with his carer, Dawoud, who is from Yemen.
• Details about the protagonist's morning routine, including watching a prayer channel, setting reminders for their father's appointments, and assessing council tax reductions are shared.
• The protagonist reminiscences about a significant event from the past when their father got lost, signaling the onset of his Parkinson's disease, and subsequently discusses the genetics and rarity of hereditary Parkinson's.
• Mentioned is the protagonist's brother, James, who lives away from home, and their mother's travel pattern between Ghana and the UK due to family business and personal reasons.
• The family dynamics are explored, touching on the absence of the protagonist's brother and mother, and how the protagonist learned to be self-dependent and manage household responsibilities.
• The protagonist's morning interaction with their father, who has Parkinson's, is described, highlighting the changes in his condition and the nuances of his routine and memory.
• The story conveys the protagonist's struggle to balance their emotional connection with their father and the need to manage his care while maintaining a personal life and job.
• In a comparison between past friendships based on convenience and the present, the narrative focuses on the lasting friendship with Nia, the protagonist's best friend studying in Utah.
• A morning commute ritual is detailed, which includes getting to work and observing other commuters, contemplating their job satisfaction, and looking up lists of happy and unhappy careers on Google.
• There is a conversation between the protagonist and their mother, who requests money, and it transitions into the protagonist expressing feelings of sadness and anxiety, which the mother dismisses, attributing it to a lack of faith and social activity.
• The mother's reaction to the protagonist's suggestion of seeking medical help for their emotional state is negative, with the mother advocating for reliance on faith over medical intervention.
• The chapter concludes with the protagonist self-reflecting, questioning their constant state of sadness, contemplating if there's something fundamentally wrong with themselves, and expressing frustration over their mental state.