Even happier post ...

I just got off the phone with my Beloved. It was such a pleasure to hear Her voice, soft and sweet in my ear, talking about what She has been doing today.

No man is more blessed than the man who has a Woman in his life to cherish, honor and uplift. Service, devotion and dedication to the happiness of a Woman, makes the life of a man complete, makes him whole.

My first childhood friend, as a mere toddler, was a little blonde neighbor Girl, followed a few years later by naive plans to marry Melissa Gilbert, star of Little House on the Prairie. I cannot remember a time when I ever believed Girls had "cooties," or a time when I did not count Them among my cherished friends. I was writing gooey love notes in third grade. From fifth grade, I still cherish the memory of a classmate named Dawn, who was truly a gifted artist -- and I still have one of Her drawings to remember Her by.

And then of course, adolescence turned the steady little flame into an inferno which has not yet burned out.

I read in a motivational book today about a fool of a man whose dear Wife gave him a picture of Herself for their anniversary. She had planned it elaborately, consulted with Her friends to pick out the prettiest dress, the prettiest pose, the prettiest hairstyle, even the perfect frame to put it in. She was so excited that She even gave the photo to him early.

And what did the imbecile do? He said that She looked like a slut and threw the picture down. The result was years of therapy for Her to rebuild Her shattered self-esteem, and, of course, a divorce from the caveman.

Some part of me should feel sorry for such a man, wandering alone in the mists of moronity, doomed to grow old with only his stupidity for company. Most of me wants to find him and throw him off a bridge.

But then I think about the beam in my own eye, the times that I have overridden my Beloved in conversation, the times that I have not taken Her ideas seriously, the times that I have initiated arguments because I was tired or whatever.

She still loves me, thanks be to heaven, in spite of it all. And I am a blessed, blessed man.

Hope

Until about a week ago, I personally knew only one person who was an adopted child -- grown now into a sweet, affectionate wonderful Lady -- and none who had gone through foster care.

Then someone special whom I know, in the funeral for his Mother last week, revealed the poignant, heart-wrenching details of his early childhood. It was a complete surprise to me. For a reason he did not disclose, he was in foster care for a time, able to see his Mother only every few weeks, and he cried on the porch of his foster home every time that She left, wanting nothing more than to see Her again, praying with all his little heart that each car that passed was Her returning.

This someone special has now grown into a sweet, affectionate man, with a good marriage, highly respected in the community.

Now, just moments ago, I have learned that another person I know was also adopted. She, too, is a fine, fine Lady.

So what is my point? Maybe it is just that if you happen to be an adopted child or in foster care and reading this blog, you should never forget that you are just as wonderful and special a human being as any other. You can achieve your dreams and change the world -- google Dave Thomas for one well-known example. Just because you come from a background in which there was pain and loss, doesn't mean you can't achieve stability in your own future, in the relationships that you will build.

I certainly do not think less of any of the people whom I have mentioned above, now that I know their backgrounds. If anything, I love them all more for who they are in spite of the pain that they have endured.

What remains ...

Sweetie and I went tonight to visit a friend in the nursing home. Passed a resident in a wheelchair who was clutching a doll to Her chest.

Even at this end stage of life, with Her body weak and sick and Her mental faculties almost gone, something of the Woman still remained in Her, some of the ancient instinct, some of the memory perhaps of when She was a young Mother in the prime of life, with a doting husband close at hand and a lifetime still in front of Her and a living baby tenderly held in Her arms.

Adena, on love

Can platonic love exist only between people who are "completely and utterly unattractive to each other?"

That's lovely Adena's question today, and I don't really have a good answer but I thought maybe someone here would like to post a note on Her blog.

I guess one would first have to define unattractive. To me, it would be someone with awful hygiene and an awful personality as well. Absent those deficiencies, I honestly could probably be attracted to just about anyone Female, sane and breathing, under age 90.

So I'm not a good one to ask about platonic love. (o:

Short story -- no title yet

Marvin loved Melissa. He lived for the electric moment each morning when she breezed into the office, ten minutes late as always, her golden hair tousled and the scent of fresh cigarette smoke and perfume swirling in her wake.

Smoking and tardiness seemed to be her only vices. She refused to join the office gossipers, the back-stabbers or the cynics. She stayed bright and cheery no matter the pressures or the stresses of the day – and she loved nothing more, it seemed, than to bring in a birthday cake or to massage the tension knots out of some colleague’s neck.

Marvin hadn’t had the courage to ask Melissa out. Today, he vowed, today would be the day. He walked over to her cubicle but she wasn’t there. Maybe on a smoke break. Damn, she always looked so pretty cradling her long Misty Lights and softly exhaling.

“She’s in the break room,” Vickie said, gesturing that direction.

It figured. He could see her standing on her tiptoes on the break room table, trying to post up a banner for Will’s birthday. Will had no friends in the office – just did his work without comment and went home – but Melissa would honor his birthday anyway.

Marvin stepped into the break room, wondering if this would be a good time. But Linda was in there, too, helping to steady Melissa on the somewhat wobbly table.

“Hey, Marv,” Linda said. Melissa, with her lips cradling several thumbtacks and her focus on her task, didn’t say anything. Today she wore an angelic white sweater and light pink slacks with white pumps upon her feet. It was a perfect combination, he thought.

The women were both looking up at the slightly crooked banner now, trying to gauge how to adjust it.

Then it happened. Marvin braced his hand against the table, preparing himself mentally for his request -- and Melissa stepped backwards.

He felt a sharp pain shoot through his pinky finger as the narrow heel of her shoe landed squarely upon his tender flesh and bore down with all 110 pounds or so of her weight. Marvin was not weak. He could lift 110 pounds easily but of course not with one finger. And he had no idea that 110 pounds could concentrate so powerfully on said finger.

He stifled the sound that wanted to burst from his lips, for he realized that if he startled her or tried to yank free, she might misstep from the table.

In a strange sort of way, he realized, he was one with her at this moment, in tactile unity with every inch of that beautiful body that he so desired – taking silent punishment from the combination of her strong legs, her sweet, soft bottom, her flat belly with its occasionally glimpsed navel ring, her breasts and her shoulders, her face and her golden hair.

“How does it look, Marv?” Melissa suddenly asked, having freed her lips from the last of the thumbtacks and unaware that a trembling finger, not some table detritus, was trapped beneath her heel.

“You look beautiful,” he gasped, stupefied by agony.

She burst out laughing.

“I meant the banner, the banner looks great,” he stammered, his face bright red both with embarrassment and pain. “Would — ”

“ -- Yes, I’ll go to the Green Day concert with you, Marv,” she said. “Give me your hand and help me down from the table.”

How ironic.

Still unaware of the possible ruination of the requested digit, Melissa stepped to the right, mercifully and finally freeing it in time for him to extend his hand to help her down.

“How did you …” he asked.

“I saw the tickets on your desk today,” she said. “Linda and Vickie are married. Were you planning to ask Will?”
Marvin fairly floated back to his desk, finger throbbing with the most delicious pain in the world.

She has her own life

Every so often, I hear that lovely oldie by Stevie Nicks, "Leather and Lace."

Great piece of music and poignant lyrics.

She says: "I have my own life and I am stronger than you know."

Every time I hear that, I silently thank her for that reminder. I need to be reminded.

How often, in our natural selfishness and even in the throes of love, a man forgets that very important truth about a woman. She's not just shapely meat or even just his loving companion. She has her own life. She had a life before she met him. She's entitled to a life of her own -- independent thoughts, independent dreams -- even as she walks beside him in love.

Ovid and the law of gravid-y

"The night is slipping by -- unbolt the door!"

--Ovid, Amores

So doth the poet plead to the guard behind the bedroom door of a girl he desires. Presumably, she desires him too, and would admit him but slumbers unaware.

The guard is implacable. He will not be as the "old lamplighter" from an old song I know, who'd "pass a couple in the park and dim the light and leave it dark, remembering the days when he was young." He is no friend to impulsive passion.

Ovid to such a man is a wheedling would-be thief, a fox craving entry to the coop to satiate his animal greed. He cannot sympathize, so he will not yield.

Can we presume to condemn one or the other? Pass judgment on the chaotic ocean wave or the rock cliffs against which it beats?

What if all Ovids won entry? What if all door guards prevailed?

Desire, suppressed, burns in every human breast. I pass a hundred lovely souls, who please my senses, in just a few moments amongst a crowd, but I walk on in silence. Do they also desire me?

In the decades since my own youthful awakening, had I indulged every such impulse, with, of course, the unlikely consent of each fair damsel, a million passionate unions might have been consumated, ten thousand children might today carry my genes.

I met a man the other day, an old man, long devoted to one woman, as our society expects a man to be. He'd written of her, had been devoted to her and only her. Then she passed away. And upon my meeting him in person for the first time, I was genuinely startled to also meet his new wife, to whom he is now devoted. If by some spell, this man lived a million years, might he respectably take a thousand wives in turn, love a thousand women, one at a time, with each being his one and only for that certain indefinite period of time? Or what if a woman were touched by such a spell? Could she love a thousand men, each honestly and completely with every measure of devotion?

What if I were to be reborn a billion times, becoming the soul mate in turn of every woman who ever lived, even the most wicked of women, even the ones judged most plain and unattractive by society? From the Hebrides to the Sahara, Alaska to Patagonia, Tokyo to Turkey? Could I discover the core of beauty in even the most sallow and ill-favoured, the germ of goodness even in a Herodias or a Lady MacBeth?