Peace

Thursday 3Aug06 6:12pm

The other day I finished my dinner and washed up the few dishes that were dirty and I stopped. I held a soapy plate in my hand, watched the water pouring out of the faucet and thought, I'm living what my mother never had the opportunity to do. I live alone in peace and quiet with my animals. I don't have to answer to anyone in my space. I don't have to worry about tiptoeing over any ones ego or bad moods or controlling behaviour.

It had to be tiring to always think of others needs before hers. It had to be hard to fulfill this male fantasy that the dinner should always be on the table at a specific time and be silent when he wanted and have the answers when he needed and be at his beck and call. Yes a relationship is supposed to be about give and take but women generally give a whole whack more than most men.

Most of the women that I know that are hesitant to move in with a man say it's because they can't do what their mothers did.
I honestly think that the choices my mother made in order to raise her kids without ending up in the projects still resonated in her ears as motivation even after her children had grown up. She still believed she needed a man for survival when she could have chosen a man for other reasons, shifting her list of values on the rung of importance.

What you do for survival reasons don't necessarily work when you no longer need to be in survival mode. It's like realizing a goal and not setting a new one. Because of my childhood and the adults who took me under their wing at different times, I vowed that when I grew up that I would work with kids to give that back. I did that for 4 or 5 years and one day not only discovered that I had realized my goal but that I didn't have to do it for the rest of my life. I gave to Justin and Trevor and Erin and Leah and Gabriel and Joshua and Kaitlin and ...

I taught a kid what a bad reputation meant in the eyes of adults and how, with time and consistency, that bad reputation could be changed. I gave suggestions on how a child could tell his father that he wanted his father's attention.

I still do it now. I take the younger ones under my wing in work situations. I let them know that I can be turned to when they feel nervous or frustrated or need a question answered.

I wish my mother had set a new goal for the man in her life. I wish she realized that she was out of survival mode and that she could ask the cosmos for a man that gave her good loving and laughter and a safe place to lay her head. Someone who'd rub her shoulders and rub her feet and show her the reflection of her true beauty and intelligence.

And God, if you could send ME a man like that... I'm just saying

EY