I don’t write to be famous, I don’t write to be known, I write because I am and I want to be read. How sad to fill a room with paintings no one sees or play music no one hears. Writing is talking without sound, singing without score and dancing without movement and yet, it is all of them. It is a solitary art conjured from thought and expressed by the need to communicate.

HEAD SLAPS, SPEED BUMPS and LIGHTBULBS, one woman's WTF, oops and ah-ha moments of life.

They were published once, and as every writer knows, once is not enough.




Tuesday, March 4, 2014

The privilege of being female (an excerpt)




They were babies, my girls, chubby then slender then chubby again until their bodies filled out, their minds sorted options and their hearts found a place to rest. Two girls who became women, more beautiful than I, smarter, gentler and kinder than the woman I am. They are driven and patient, focused and free of the female hang ups tattooed to my raised-in-the-sixties soul. They are savvy, an old fashioned word, and awesome, a new one.

My daughters are women. Though they will never stop being ‘my girls’, they are more grown up then I ever was at their age. More accomplished and less afraid, I envy their youth.

Sometimes I wonder if they know how lucky they are to be young because I didn’t when I was. I wonder if they realize the advantages they have because they are female.  Being female when I was young meant marrying a man with a good job to take care of me. By the time I was told what a cheating fallacy that was, and that I should always be able to take care of myself, college was out. Education came in temporary spurts and working the patheticism of retail filled in the gaps between what was and what is.

I went into business, dreamed and worked damn hard. I met a man and failed at everything. At the opposite of pinnacle I met another man and settled into three and half decades of marriage, family and survival. He took care of me, I took care of him, and we raised two daughters who wear skills, intelligence and humor like a designer wardrobe. 

Our daughters will excel, they will fail, they will love their husbands and wonder at times why they ever thought such a partner suited them.

From my past I garner experience and give it to my girls as insight into the importance of being young and female.  Youth, I mourn the loss of mine every single day; female, we are a higher species than man I think. I am convinced of this because we gave birth; no man who has witnessed the push to life would disagree.

5 comments:

  1. Beautiful. My daughters are teenagers and I wonder back to their baby days when I had full control and was easily the center of their universe. I've adjusted well enough to high school life, but can't imagine them as adults. Or am I more afraid of what it means for me? I don't know...I think I fear the almost total lack of control over lives.

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    1. Jennine, one thing I have learned is that the lack of total control is quite freeing. My girls are still my girls but we are sort of partners now as women sharing the same planet. They share the highlights of their lives with me, and sometimes the low points, and I always have some sort of story or incident I tell just to let them know I understand. (They have heard the stories a hundred times and nod to humor me).
      Letting go of trying to fix things and always having an answer has been hard, because that's what mothers are supposed to do. It is their turn to make things right, it's my turn to be there and listen. That I understand is sometimes the best answer. If I'm clueless (more often then not) I let them know and we have a good laugh.
      Actually laughing is the best.

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    2. I know you're right. It seems easy to adjust to things as they come, but looking too far ahead always seems intimidating.

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  2. Wry, first of all I love this title. And your words here flow effortlessly. I love how you step back and see what your "girls" have, and wonder if they see it, because you didn't. Neither did I. I took everything for granted. Don't we all?

    Is this part of your book? If so, I was captured by the words. Keep going.

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    1. Yes it is part of the book and thank you for the encouragement XO

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