When The Stage Entrance Matters Most

~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

At times having an absentee father is more frustrating than having none at all. I am sure I am not the only single mother who has come to this conclusion. Sometimes, it feels like all I do is damage control from one or other of my ex husband’s well-meant (or not so well-meant) comments, letters, or gifts.

The latest came late last week in the mail. Robert was so excited to get a letter from his dad in a lightly padded envelope. It contained a card with a picture of a reindeer. Inside it his father drew a detailed picture of a Christmas tree complete with presents underneath and an electrical plug for the lights.

The main thrust of the letter, however, was the “present”. A magic shell that his father and stepmother found washed out on the beach. They put in a lot of effort to make it into a necklace that “will protect Robert from hurricanes and bad wizards”. For the magic to work, the father said in his card, Robert has to sleep with the necklace under his pillow before he puts it on. Now it all might have been good with me if the shell hasn’t arrived broken into a dozen little fragments. I immediately bemoaned the cheap father who was unable to put the thing in a proper protective envelope. Admittedly I wrote a very uncharitable email to that effect, saying that next time please a plain card would do very well, since he cannot afford the expense of good packaging required.

In a later conversation with my mom, bless her kind heart, she gave me a different perspective. She said that it was perhaps a good thing that the shell arrived broken to smithereens, and that the good power of the universe was obviously not happy with the hogwash in the card. She thought that it was not good to bring a child up with superstitions and belief in magic. A child should believe in God and guardian angels, rather than black magic and superstitious stuff. I was amazed at her insight and though that it would have been a burden for Robert to carry this meaningless talisman from his father, whether out of love or duty. My mom said that the way she understands my ex, his actions are ruled by his ego, and that he has to be put centre stage, and that was basically the function of the shell, so that Robert would keep it always, a permanent reminder of his father, like a doggie tag.

My mom also laughed off my fears and trepidations at reading the card to Robert. She advised me to play it off as a joke. His father is joking with this story about the shell. Another of her ideas was to tell Robert that the good angels destroyed the shell en-route because they knew it was fake. I was so relieved to hear this simple wisdom.

As for my ex he will always be ill-equipped as a father. In the old days he used to draw inspiration from me on what to send his children, and that was years before I became a mother myself. Now obviously he draws it from his 3rd wife, who has deep insecurities. I have seen my son’s father wearing a necklace that must have come from her, his own tag. I can see how she might have contributed to the necklace idea.

In any event, my son’s father was never good at choosing appropriate presents. Last year the holiday present he sent his son was sparklers, which may have been an illegal airmail item. Some people simply lack the parent mindset, Robert’s father is one of many.

Do You Know Why?

~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

Why is it that building managers in New York city spare no expense to warn us with bilingual signs of wet floor (piso mojado) and never bother to install warnings visual or otherwise of those gaping trap-doors leading to underground or basement steps. I always find myself dodging them at lunchtime, and wonder how many people ended up in wheelchairs through a wrong-footed encounter with them.

The City of Contradictions

~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

New York city inspires extreme emotions. You either love it, or loathe it, but you can never be indifferent about it. Everyone has an opinion of the city, and the city itself flaunts its  obnoxious self-assurance at a new arrival,  “I am, larger than life, I am the center of the universe, consider yourself lucky to be here”.

The city known as the Big Apple figures it has the right to turn your life upside down and mold its details to her whims, then has the audacity to re-define these details for you. You can still have leisure time, lunch-breaks, traffic jams, coffee breaks, or take walks in the park. But you quickly find out that New York city has taken over these concepts, creating its own unique version. It completes the insult to the stranger by keeping the vocabulary intact while stripping it of familiar meaning.

On arrival, people generally react in two different ways. The first set of people are those who fall under the city’s spell or surrender to its power. This group includes those who were always fascinated by the fame of the city, from the movies, the sitcoms, the books, and its marketing machine, as a city like no other. In the words of Frank Sinatra, if you can make it there you can make it anywhere. The second set of people show resistance to the city. Those are as varied and diverse in their motivation as the first group, some miss the familiar and resent the ways of this mega-metropolis, others begrudge it is affluence and commercial focus, another group still hates the waste, the crowds, the rush, the bustle.  Strangely enough, every characteristic pointed out as a vice by the city’s opponents could be construed as a virtue by its loyal proponents. It has always been a highly divisive place.

I have made no secret of my sentiment in the past few months. I started out extremely critical and antagonistic of the city. However, like all powerful entities it has started to garner my respect. Never mind how obnoxious it is. Never mind its paved parks, its incomprehensibly ugly architecture and equally baffling modern art. Never mind its packed subways and its never ending rush. Amazingly, this city still works.

Consider first its sprawling size, with over ten million residents, give or take a few hundred thousands daytime commuters. I go to Midtown on Sunday, and it is a different place. I walk at leisure chatting to my son, while during the week I have to keep a brisk pace, if I don’t want to bump into people, and I can only hear him if he shouts. Then consider the city’s diversity, the number of people who live ans survive here without speaking one work of English. One has to admit that things break down sometimes, but I have no experience of any other city of this size, and running it efficiently must be a tremendous challenge. I think what I appreciate now most, is that this monster of a city, made out of so many disparate elements and people, a city you would think that no glue in the world can hold together, amazingly sticks together very well. And this discovery makes this place more precious in the eyes of those who never expected it to pull through.

Last year, I met a South African woman who introduced herself as a proud American. She had won the green card lottery some years back and found a niche for herself teaching computer literacy. At the time I profiled her immediately in my mind, she is a disgruntled white person, I thought, running away from a South Africa that has embraced a majority rule, and from the perception of losing privilege. I have revisited my thoughts about her since then. I remember her saying that she became fiercely American after 9/11, and I thought that was an incongruous romantic rubbish coming from someone as hard-boiled as that middle-aged woman.  Now I think I understand her feeling. New York city may look tough and heartless but if you look deep enough she has a soul.

As late as six months ago, I was quite sure that New York was pretentious and soul-less. I even remember sending an email to my American friend Peter telling him how I despised this place. He said that America had a soul, but it was so well-hidden, that you can only find it when you are not really looking. I think he was on to something.

I think I started warming to New York sometime between soccer practice with Robert and lining up costume-less for the Halloween Parade on Roosevelt Island.  When Sandy came it taught me something more about the New York soul. I saw regular people buying groceries for the stricken and volunteering their time. I saw the city pull together and make alternative plans. I found it quite remarkable. This in the city where people walk past a disabled beggar pretending he is not there. There is a sense of community that defies you not to be part of it. Everyone I know has contributed even in a small way.  If 9/11 forged the American patriotism of my South African acquaintance, then Sandy taught me about New York the community, away from the excess and ruin of wall-street, the lobbying and petty politics of the UN-headquarters, the concrete and the real estate.

It can be many contradicting things – cruel, kind, surprising, hot, cold, exasperating, embarrassing, tragic, funny, and entertaining,  but it can never be boring.  There are  always little nuggets of gold, moments that are there to savour amid the rush, the noise and the stress.

Yesterday Robert and I boarded the local bus on 3rd avenue. The driver was announcing the station then saying : “look to left, smile at your neighbour. Look to your right say hi, make a friend”. It was Friday night, so it was perhaps not surprising that the passengers humored him, but I noted that there conversation on this bus was more animated than usual. Before we got out at our stop, Robert had a chance of singing a refrain of the Wheels on the Bus, started again by the driver. That bus driver may have been acting against MTA rules, but he made many people happy.  Welcome to New York. One day you encounter a happy bus driver, another day you come close to getting run over on a crosswalk. Never a dull moment.

The Dilemma of Belonging Somewhere

~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

It has been over a year since my birth country was plunged into a desperate war. When the revolts against the ruling government started, they were only peaceful demonstrations, which were quickly met with disproportionate force. Soon the resistance armed itself and found allies amongst extremist groups, and some Gulf-state governments who were opposed to Syria’s alliance with Iran. The discourse turned ugly. Instead of justice vs injustice and freedom vs dictatorship, we started hearing Sunni against Alawis and their Shiite allies, and “Us” against the”Them”. The morality of the revolution or those who are fighting for it, came under scrutiny.

I for one, was unable to reconcile the aspiration for justice and democracy with the cruel punishment of enemies, or mutilating their corpses. The savagery of both sides intensified as time wore on. And we all know that war is an insatiable beast, and once blood is shed, it feeds on itself in an endless cycle of cruelty and savage retaliation.

I haven’t heard any news about the battle for Syria (or in Syria) in months. I am sickened of body counts,  and it is enough for me now to hear the grim news from my sister. She and her family are fed up with the fighting and just want their old life back. Dictatorship, corruption, and lack of civil liberties seem a small price to pay for safety now. After all this time I see the logic of their argument. And even though I implicitly still support the revolution as a principle I am not sure anymore of the means it employs.

I have left Syria because I had very little in common with the people there. I could neither relate to overt piety, nor to a life of leisure as a socialite. I was often criticized for my  casual dress sense, my inability to apply makeup or style my hair. My sister, in contrast did not have a problem with taking close to an hour “getting ready” every time she wanted to step out the door. Now, she has chosen to wear a headscarf, I think it is easier to just cover up and leave the house rather than get every single hair in place. I have one dry bottle of mascara that I never use, but over twenty years ago, my cousins tried to teach me how to apply, foundation, blush, eye-liner, lip liner, lipstick, and eye-shadow. I think I gave up as soon as that first lesson was through. I could never justify wasting so much time on all this rubbish. Besides, I am happy with the way I look. One of the first things I did when I got divorced was to stop dying my hair. I suffered for two years with my twin stripes, of carrot/aubergine and salt-and-pepper and was thrilled to finally have my natural grey-highlight. Women in Syria would never understand this attitude. They thought I was awfully uncouth when I walked the streets in a T-shirt, faded jeans and hiking sandals. I think they dubbed me as the African savage. Everyone expects an expat to arrive in designer clothes, expensive leather shoes and flawless skin. I only had my casual wardrobe and proudly showed off my arms and legs, tanned by the African sun. After living in South Africa, I became an alien to my country of birth, but at least I had a good excuse then. When I lived there, I tried my best for years. I wanted to belong, but it never worked. In South Africa, I found a place where it was okay to be myself. I belonged regardless of the color of my skin. Most people dressed casually, just the way I liked to dress. Nobody ever asked me what my religion was.  It was a revelation.

I found that I relate to South Africa better than I ever related to my country of birth. I respect and admire the wisdom of its people and the way they transcended their differences and moved along towards a common future. The idea of Ubuntu and the truth and reconciliation speak volumes on the morality of this nation. Yes, there were incidents of bloody conflict, and even the current majority government has made its shares of mistakes and trouble, but none of these come even close to the monumental destruction still under way in Syria.

The nightmare scenario playing out in my birth country does not correspond to any of my views.  I am so ashamed and unhappy about it that I reached a stage of total apathy. Some of my friends write glowing praise of the country they remember, the beautiful Syria, where different sects and religions lived side by side, in peace and harmony. The cynic part of me questions the veracity of such an innocuous image, when the erstwhile neighbors are now caught in an exchange of violence, that causes more bloodshed at worst, or slides into the worst gutter language at best.

I watch in horror, while people I once considered friends defend the indefensible, or hurl obscenities and accusations at others for a difference of opinion. For one group I may be classified as an Israeli sympathizer, a tool of American imperialism. While the others would call me a non-believer, and enemy of Allah. Both groups are fools, and again, I find myself unable to relate to neither.  Before the revolution strayed into sectarianism I enjoyed listening to a few secular voices, calling for a civilian rule, under a liberal constitution. Today, these voices are drowned by the proponents of an Islamic State.

My dilemma is that I cannot openly criticize the religious tone of discourse, for fear of offending my religious friends. Besides, I do not want to look as if I am supporting the alternative (the current bloody regime that continues to kill people with impunity). On the other hand I feel that I do not have any stake in this battle anymore because, in all honesty, I neither want the religious extremists to win, nor can I ever accept the criminal regime to stay.  Unfortunately for everyone, these two sides have the best chances, because they have the strongest foreign support (Russia, Iran and Hezbollah – on the side of the regime, and the Gulf States, and the western world, on the side of the armed religious insurgence). This balance of power has so far kept both sides more or less evenly matched, but sooner or later the scales will tip to one side.

I withdraw again to the safe cocoon of African politics. For all its faults at least the ANC is still ruled by a civilian constitution. It recognizes the rule of law, not the rule of God or the ancestors. The more Syria slides into anarchy the closer I retreat into the safer ground of my South-African identity. One post I recently read likened a birth country to a mother, and an adopted country to spouse. So according to this analogy I am an ungrateful daughter to the mother country.

If this were true then I could argue that my mother country never treated me well in the first place, I felt like I was kept by an evil stepmother, who constantly pushed me into things that I did not want to do. My adoptive African mother was kinder and loved me the way that I am, I call her my true mother. Again, this is something else where I differ from the people in my birth country. Belonging to the birth country is not a choice in their opinion. It is a sacred duty. And blind patriotism makes the best fodder for senseless wars.

The One Who Got Away

~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

Changing tack from the frequent whinging about my ex, let me tell you a story about the man in my life that I never forgot. It seems like amongst the many men that come calling in a woman’s life there is always one who stands head and shoulders above the rest. It is normally one of those lucky ones that got away, someone who never had the chance to disappoint, break a promise or do any serious damage. That particular person seems to be always there, as an idea, unfairly compared in the mind to a flesh and blood husband, a jilted lover, or the person who caused the most recent heartbreak.

Notwithstanding my current cynical view of love and relationship. I haven’t been immune to the feeling in my younger days. In fact, I would say I was rather susceptible to it. During my years at university I even remember devising ways to meet an unsuspecting (or sometimes very much suspecting) object of my affection accidentally on purpose. I was never very subtle about it, so it is just as well that the young men I tried to snare mostly did not turn up for those badly planned coincidences. In time I would get over those infatuations, lose interest or find someone else to swoon over, and nobody would get seriously hurt in the process. Generally speaking, I am grateful that I never hitched myself to any of the men I once admired. Some have changed into caricatures of their younger selves, but mostly it was I who has changed.

At age 28 I left my birth country, fleeing a broken heart. It was an impossible bond with a man already promised to another. He claimed that his marriage will not change what he felt for me but I did not want to become the other woman in a miserable triangle. I now look back and shake my head at the memory of the heartbroken immature person I was back then. I wonder whatever it was that I loved in a man who lacked true backbone. At the time I found him sensitive and caring, we heard love songs together, and cried over their sad words. To him perhaps I am the one who got away, the one he remembers after all the others sank under the weight of their years, or got lost within the folds of their traditional dress and traditional lives. Perhaps I am the equal partner he wants to be with instead of coming home to his servile and hopelessly dependent wife. To me, however, the sun has revolved over a dozen times around the sun, and I have walked halfway around the world, and the simple fellow who once read poetry to me has remained the same sad spineless figure, he belongs to the past to someone that used to be me.

All the others, including my ex, are a story that has been read and written to the end. They came, they saw, and they might have even conquered for a while, but they all left, on their own or on my bidding. Some hurt me, others got hurt, but eventually they will all fade from memory. Even those who brought smiles or happy times will fade, because memory is only worth as much as the person it keeps alive. Sometimes, I cherish the ancient memory of someone long gone from my life, because that person is still dear to my soul. That memory is treasured like the photo album of a happy childhood, and no matter how rarely it is looked at it always tugs at the heart. Other memories, are discarded, like that fancy dress bought on impulse, and worn only once, that inevitably finds its way to the donation pile, because seeing it in the wardrobe always reminds of a moment of poor taste.

And so it was amongst all the heartbreaks I went through, and all the hearts that I have broken. There is always the one who got away, the one I still remember. He was the boy I loved once when I was a girl. We spent the summer of my 14th year with his family, enjoying sun, sea and sand. He was not handsome in the classical sense, but he got me hooked on the warm depth of his brown eyes. He was not tall, but his enthusiasm for gymnastics gave him an impressive broad-shouldered figure. He was also very nimble and agile on his feet. Many years later I would be reminded of him when I looked into the eyes of an African Kudu, graceful, powerful with unbelievably gentle eyes.

The summer we first connected was our first major holiday back home after two years in Abu Dhabi. Our family holidays were always a noisy affair, we spent them with many relatives’ families in a shared block of flats in a coastal resort. My childhood hero and I became friends that summer, he was 18 then, almost a university student and thus worthy of my early adoration. Later, I ostensibly wrote letters to his sister, and was thrilled beyond measure when he sent the occasional reply on feather-light pink paper. I can still see his beautifully penned sentences, with the letters curling onto each other, and twisting in a symmetrical dance between the lines. Those letters were full of his understated somewhat crude boyish humor. I read them over and over again the winter that followed, hearing his deep chuckle in the words. That year I even tried to imitate his handwriting, ending up with a barely legible version of his elegant one for a while, until sanity prevailed and I returned to writing in my own unspectacular manner.

I think I forgot about him for a couple of years after that, when I went through serial crushes on soccer stars and singers. I was mad on pop music at the time, and there were many pretty boys on the charts then, like there is now.  My Greater Kudu would feature again in my life during my first year at university, when my family returned home for good. We became close again, and this time friendship was destined to grow into something more. It was in fact a breath away from becoming serious, but I just annihilated it with one word. I snubbed the first guy I kissed, who was probably my only true soul-mate on the pretext that he was an atheist.  People who know me today would find this hilarious, because the girl who fancied herself then some sort of a born-again Muslim has turned into an agnostic, highly critical of religion. It is also funny because less than ten years after snubbing a Muslim atheist I ended up marrying a Christian atheist, who only converted to Islam so that we could get married.

It has been almost twenty years since I let that boy get away. After my knee-jerk reaction to his love declaration, I think I secretly pined for him for a while and wished my harsh words away many times. But I met the man who would eventually drive me away from home. While my first love lost would move in ever widening circles around me until another woman would know his true worth and sweep him away to another continent. Around the same time I would be swept away too in an opposite direction.

In some uncanny way though, our lives took parallel courses. His wife had a  previous marriage and children from that marriage, and so had my ex. Some twelve more years down the line we now live in the same city. There, the resemblance ends though, because he is happily married, has two delightful children with a wife who cherishes and appreciates him, more so because of what she suffered at the hands of her first husband. Ironically, her status as a divorcee, with children from her first marriage, set his whole family against the marriage for a long time. Nobody even raised an eyebrow when I was marrying a divorced man, who left two young  children behind – but that is different story, for some other time.

My Little Boy Turns Five

~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

I received my last age-based email from BabyCentre today. The site congratulated me and Robert on reaching this great milestone. The implication was that the parenting journey is still long but it can now be enjoyed at leisure, as the years rush by and the little boy slowly evolves into the man he is destined to become. Robert was just a tiny bean when I registered to receive weekly updates, describing in breathtaking detail every development my tiny yet unnamed baby has achieved, deep within the warm darkness of my womb. I would read them with a sense of wonder, grateful at my ability to procreate and nurture, after years of hardly daring to picture myself as a mother.

Shortly after Robert woke up today his father called from South Africa. Lest I confuse myself endlessly with this unexpected generosity, he was quick to explain that he was calling from an office internet phone. He pointed out that he can hardly believe it has been five years. Reminisced about the first time he saw Robert, just before he gave his first cry.  “I remember the doctor saying, what a serious little guy”, he said, “Do you remember that?”. I had to make him repeat this over the static of the line, and then told him honestly that I never heard that, immobile from the waist down as I was, with my head at the opposite end of the table. Robert turned out to be quite a funny little fellow, he cannot resist using daily objects as comic props. Walking along one day on 2nd avenue he picked up the handle of a public phone and mimicked lathering himself in a shower. He cannot stop clowning around at school, but deep down he remains a serious little guy. After posting yet another picture of him on Facebook, a distant friend commented, “does he ever smile?”. Only then did I realize that his smiles on camera are very rare.

If I take a snapshot back at this last year I am amazed at the progress my little boy has made. Only a year ago he was a little more than a baby, who cried almost every morning when I left him at school. Today he walks in happily, starts immediately working or interacting with his friends, and cheerfully waves me goodbye.

A week before his fifth birthday I took him for a playdate with his friends at the Victorian Gardens, a small amusement park for kids exactly his age. Initially I thought that I would have to force him on one or two of the more docile rides, and steeled myself for having to go along with him. To my surprise he ran along with his friends and went on all but very few rides, we left when the last of his friends had to go home.  A year ago this was not possible.

He is still shy with strangers he meets for the first time, but he quickly warms up to people, and I watched him make friends easily with peers and some adults.  I have no worries about him socially as the day of starting in the big new school approaches. He would have some difficulties though in a team environment. He can be sometimes very stubborn, and that could prove detrimental in any group setting. I believe that this fierce individuality cost him a Kindergarten spot at the only private school I applied for.  But I also think that he will be better served in the Gifted and Talented class, amongst equally bright kids. I also have plan for enrolling him in sport, and other creative team activities on the island. The first step is soccer practice, then perhaps creative drama for kids. I think he is a natural performer, I used to be like that as a kid too, but shyness got the better of me.

I know I am starting to sound like an ultra-competitive North American mother, but I will never push him into anything he doesn’t want. This is a time for exploration and experimentation to discover his aptitudes, and his talents. I will be happy when a few years from now, when he would start to tell me what he wants, even if he concentrates on one or two activities he really enjoys, or is very good at. I just hope to help him develop to his full potential, and I am optimistic that I am at the right time and place to do so.

Not For Me

~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

Twice in as many days I have been told that I should be open to change in my life and look for a mate. One well-meaning friend and her mother spoke again about getting me to color my prematurely grey hair. And my supervisor at work told me that I should not let the child rule my life. Sometimes, like today for example, I feel they are right.  My child who turns five tomorrow is a tyrant in the making, he figures he owns me.  When I went on a long-deferred bike ride with him this afternoon, I could not even ride in a circle of twenty meters around him, and he did not want to ride next to me complaining it is too hard. In fact, I can hardly call my outings with him exercise because I normally ride so slow, that I always feel a breath away from toppling over. Not fun at all.

Yesterday I started thinking about relationships again. After breaking up the only dating experience I had since my divorce, I have come to the conclusion that I do not have it in me anymore to invest emotionally in a new relationship, with all the insecurities it brings. If I were ten or even six years younger maybe I would have had no other choice than to go through the endless questioning of am I beautiful enough, tall enough slim enough, or hot enough to be marketable with men.

Today, I do not want to market myself as a commodity or promote my female assets and attractive appearance. Yes, I may be open to love again, but it is a different type of love that I am looking for. When I was still brand new on the marriage market I settled for a second-hand candidate, who is much older but far less mature, so I got duped twice.  Had I married the boy next door from back home, I would have had the wonderful comfort of being with someone I have known all my life, growing with him and through him. I gave this transformation process my best shot with my ex, and I changed dramatically to adapt to him, but even that hasn’t helped keep my marriage together.  Today I feel I have neither the time nor the energy to learn about someone and adapt my personality to suit him, least of all a man who has never gone through the journey of a marriage.

When my supervisor raised the subject, and she is perhaps the nosiest woman this side of the Atlantic (a quality that comes naturally to almost all women of a certain age, from a certain are in the middle east), I brushed off her suggestion of having a boyfriend by saying that it is hard for me to shake off my conservative Arab identity and adopt a free attitude to casual relationships; I only wanted to protect myself from her nosiness. However, I feel that my excuse is not that far from the truth. Middle Eastern culture is one that expects a woman to mold herself to the wishes of her partner, so a traditional relationship is not entirely a 50-50 partnership, the woman does two-thirds of the work while a man, a good one that is, can get away with one-third.  For a long time, women have resorted to various dubious methods to overcome this particular mindset, and they usually get their way by rejecting their men in bed, or denying certain privileges. These soft-power devices can only be used in traditional settings, and are thus becoming less prominent in the modern world. Nevertheless, the traditional role of women in a marriage will take longer to evolve into an equal partnership. Men still expect women to meet them more than halfway on most issues, and what is worse, is that mothers raise their daughters to lower their expectations in regards to partnership in marriage, thus repeating the cycle endlessly.

My parents have a traditional marriage. The role of my mother was mostly confined to raising the children and looking after the home. Thus, I was raised with these lowered expectations and carried them into my marriage. It took me almost seven years to realize that when things went wrong in my marriage, it was not because I could not cook, or did not keep the house up to the standards of my husband. After years of desperately trying, I understood that my marriage was a disaster, not because of my failure to meet the golden criteria of my ex. It just shattered because I was with a man who expected me to change completely to please him, while he was never ready to do so. The lesson was tough, and it took me too long to learn. That is why I am forever afraid to fall into the same trap. And that is why I am afraid of this traditional Arab identity to surface if I ever let my guard down and entered into a partnership where I felt the tiniest bit inferior.

This is perhaps what killed my relationship project. It came down to a woman in the middle of her life, and a younger man who is still starting his first test-run. I feared that at some point I will have to change too much, or sacrifice too much to make it work. I feared that I would be obliged to make myself look younger, maybe try for another child at the eleventh hour, or change too many of my ways to be accepted as a possible partner.

My friend’s mom already flashed the warning signal in my face. No matter how much men tell you they like you the way you are, they always love you in younger or prettier versions. This was true in my experience, and unfortunately it doesn’t even stop at the color of the hair, it went beyond to influence, taste, friendships, and private activities. Even how long you stay awake every night after husband falls asleep.

If my life was a Hollywood movie, I will meet tomorrow a single father, a blameless victim who is trying to rebuild a family for his kid,  or stumble upon a long-lost male friend, who has finally found the courage too look for me after he became free himself. But, eish, as we say in South Africa, Hollywood this isn’t. It is just the drudgery of everyday life, and no matter how I wish for it, It is impossible to have an already broken-in husband, without first going through the pain and blisters of trying to fit a boyfriend. If I really wanted a mate, I will have to go to square one, and look amongst the junk, the flotsam of broken marriages, or the ones nobody bothered to pick in the first place. Try to sift the one genuine gem from mountains of fakes, and go through all the idiocy of dating, pretending, and trying to please. No sorry, not for me. I am particularly proud of who I am now, and where I am. I did not arrive here without pain or sacrifice, and I am comfortable and happy in my own skin. My gray head of hair suits me fine. My boy is my buddy and my companion and I enjoy being around him, most of the time. When the time comes for him to spread his wings and leave me  for his own set of friends I will resort to my work or the activities I normally never have time for. I will not be different from many of my single childless friends, I will still be happy. I will not change to catch a man, I will not change to please or keep a man. I will only change to please the woman who looks at me from the mirror every morning, because she is the only person who is guaranteed to stay with me for the rest of my life.

 

A Yearning…

~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

I want to slip into a fold of time, and steal away a man from my past. I want to come back to this moment, to having him beside me, and the children we could have had. I want him to tell me that he lives through their smiles, and without them his life, is not a life that he wants. I want to raise our kids. I want to grow old with him, a man that I knew for more than half my life.

I want to be where desperate questions have become a certainty. Where I know that he is with me because we are, because we belong. Not because of fear, or lack of options.

I want to fast-forward the groping, the learning, the exploring, the desperate tug of war for boundaries. I want to know and be known to him like the palm of his open hand.

I want to be young again, and choose the right man, and still retain, the place where I now am.