DON'T GIVE UP ON PEOPLE

I was really upset with my mother, though I didn't tell her so because when your Mom is pushing 85 you would like to have as loving and peaceful a relationship as possible.  Again and again, I see why holding your tongue and holding on is the right decision.  You can go to therapy after they pass. Our time here on this side is limited. I don't want to lose a minute.

This evening she sent me a Powerpoint that contained photographs of women - it was breathtaking and humbling and astounding.  Women who have endured so much.  I opened it when I sat down after cursing and swearing over the fact that I was too short to reach the area I wanted to hang a Christmas wreath and the fact that because I was too short two nails flew God knows where (I took off my shoes before I viewed the photos and said out loud to myself "well, I'll find them now that I'm not wearing my shoes.")  I was tired and sore and worn out. A grumpy old grouch, to say the least.

I finally said "Fuck it, I'm done."  I poured a glass of wine and checked my email and there it was.  It just looked different from the emails that Mom sends.  It just said "Women."  All she said in the body of the email was "Good reminders of women all over the world."  Again...so uncharacteristic of the emails or forwards she sends.

I don't think that she knew what she gave to me.  Sometimes we give what we conceive to be a tiny gift and to the recipient it is beyond words.  That's what happened.

I live in a really nifty home that Ron and I have worked so hard to make our own.  Nothing in this house would ever speak "Homeowner's Association" or "Model Home."  It's an old house...built for the military just like all the other houses in our area, only we have a lot more area because one of the owners before us decided to build an addition with brick that matched the original.  When Ron and I moved in we went about making it our own and did wonderful things like ceramic floors, rebuilding areas to be more efficient...really put effort into making a house into a home.

The reason I'm bringing this up is the photos.  I saw photographs of beautiful and loving and old and young and heartbroken and homeless and every circumstance that could exist in the life of a woman.  It made my frustration at being short and tired so absolutely ridiculous.  There is a photograph of a woman with a joyful smile carrying what would amount to two laundry baskets on her head and another under her arm with a child beside her.

There are elderly women carrying loads of firewood, sewing, working the fields.  There are women teaching and weeping and living lives of such deprivation with smiles still working the corners of their mouths and the lights of their eyes.

Shame on me and shame on all of us who think our life is so bad.  Even for one minute.  We have the strength of lionesses and to let anything break us when we have such plenty here is nonsense.  We just have to stop being afraid.

I, for one, will just have to buy a little higher step ladder.  And I have the money to do so.  To put up decorations.  I doubt that most of these incredible women have the luxury to consider that to be their pressing issue.

To the women of the world:  You give life, you are life and you are more powerful than you can imagine.  As I tell you to believe in yourselves, I'm telling myself to believe in me so that I can be a part of the proud legacy that is woman.

Thanks, Mom.  What an unintentionally beautiful gift.  It's amazing how an evening can turn.  Life is something.  I'm not sure what.  I guess it is what it is and I will always welcome the surprises.