He Has My Back

Well, here it is, the second official day of school, and I have an actual 20 minutes to write!  I said last time that I would elaborate as to why I wanted to share my review of "The Disposable Male" with you all at this point.  I could have included it before but I was waiting.  


Something new has happened.  After realizing that I wanted to run away from Trouble instead of deal with it, I decided to deal with it.  That doesn't mean that Trouble won't come back, 'cause we all know Trouble comes back.  No, it means that when plan A doesn't work and plan B isn't currently feasible, then, like Nancy Botwin, I must choose plan C.  


Plan C involves grabbing the bull's horns, holding on, climbing on top, and riding that sucker (pardon the phraseology) 'til it's broken.  


I was backed into a corner, and God gave me the grace to accept what I couldn't change.  I found strength and I showed courage, despite the spit in my face.


A long time ago, when I was about 7 or 8, I found out that in order to get married, I would have to leave my mom.  At 7 or 8, this was a frightening prospect, so I decided that I didn't want to take any chances of losing my mom, so I was going to be a nun.  Years went by and like a good Catholic girl, I strove to be virtuous.  At 10, I found out what porn was, 'cause it kept showing up different places.  I was intrigued, and thereby my virtue-seeking days were coming to a close.  My soul wanted to be chaste, my hormones were screaming otherwise.  I was totally ignorant about how things worked, but curious nonetheless.


By 15 I wanted to find my special someone.  When a guy would come along, I would think that he was "it".  Needless to say, I set myself up to be hurt, and I got hurt.  My parents didn't help.  I got stuck somewhere there, and ever since I have either been with someone who hurt me, or I've been alone. 


I've spent almost half of my adult life alone, and the other half either in a long term relationship or merrily choosing a random a-hole to satisfy my carnal cravings for the time.  There have been a slew of 'em, many of which I don't remember now.  I've had a love/hate relationship with men.  I crave the intimacy with them but can't quite seem to get there.  I know that I'm not alone.


I am telling all of this, now, because I've had an epiphany.  I have let go of those old expectations and decided that from this day forward, whatever happens, happens.  For years I wanted to get a good job, get married and have a family like my cousins did.  I waited for my turn but all I found was an a-hole because that's where I kept my standards.


After reading the books by Steve Harvey (Act Like A Lady, Think Like a Man) and The Disposable Male by Mr. Gilbert, and seeing the movie He's Just Not That Into You, I've learned a few things.  Communications classes were only part of the puzzle.  I only had the female perspective.  Although the majority of my friends were male, I could relate to them only so much.  I was in a state of confusion for years, even when I was in a relationship.  


Well, God takes you back through things that got you messed up in the first place.  Joyce Meyer made a joke (a while back) that we ought to at least give him as long to take us back through those doors as it took us to walk through them in the first place.  So, here I am.  


Ten years ago I woke up one morning and said to God, tearfully, "I hate my life".  Two weeks later, everything changed.  Ten years, a bad relationship and a daughter later, we are here, her and I, at the threshold of something new.  I'm done trying to live up to others' and my own unrealistic expectations.  It's up to me now to decide where we want to go from here, and up to God to provide the way.  I am thankful that God has my back.  He has shown me again and again that he listens to me.  I am so grateful that he cares, 'cause sometimes it's only been me and God.  It's a new day, and I'm going to be grateful for the one He made.  Currently, I'm reading a book called "The Evolution of Faith:  How God Is Creating A Better Christianity".  It's been interesting.  If there is anything good to share I will.  God Bless You

The Disposable Male is not so disposable

     Today is a new day.  Each day that goes by brings us a little more wisdom and understanding about ourselves and about the world.  At some point in our lives we either take that knowledge with us to the other side or we stop and say, "wait a minute here....".  If the average person gets around 20,000 days to his or her life, there is only so much time to learn and pass things on.
     If life teaches us lessons and we don't get to apply them here, why do we go through them?  If 20,000 days could be thought of in terms of dollars, wouldn't we want to budget very wisely?  Here, 20,000 dollars would buy a descent car.  Is a descent car what our lives mean on the grand scale? To God, we make the best (or not) of our 20,000 and he gets to see what we've done with what he gave us.  It is for Him that I continue to strive.  My life truly has no meaning if all I'm doing is making myself shiny and pretty, without a good engine to support the frame.
     I could write about several things this morning, but I have been holding on to something for quite a long time now, that has not been published to my knowledge.  It is a book review about the book "The Disposable Male".  It was not published in the newspaper because of it's length, but I was never contacted further about it, in order to edit it, after several attempts to get the darn thing to them.  
     The reason I am going here (or there, depending on how you look at it), is because I am letting go of something that I thought I once wanted.  I am going to surrender now to the inevitable change that comes to us all...
     He is not the first person to examine intimate relationships and familial ties, but Michael Gilbert's “The Disposable Male” has evoked the most dramatic reactions from the few males that I have mentioned the title name to.  There is a wince, a turn of the head in disbelief, and finally a “Whhaaaattt?” that is accompanied by the mere mention of the title.  “That's terrible” they say in response.  The subtitle, “Sex, Love and Money-Your World Through Darwin's Eyes” was intriguing to me and won me over because I have heard of this here man named Darwin.  The author, according to the back cover, “is a Senior Fellow at the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California, where researchers track the ways in which digital technologies, the Internet and virtual communities are changing the social, political and economic fabric of our lives.  A lecturer and consultant, he lives in Los Angeles.”  The book was published in 2006 by The Hunter Press, Atlanta, and is 307 pages in length.  This includes an introduction and an index.  Mr. Gilbert heartily acknowledges the many contributions and references he draws upon to make the discussion of male/female relationships more organized and thoughtful. 
“The everyday male is in trouble”  Mr. Gilbert begins his introduction.  He decided to explore these issues and invite readers.  “In addition to generating novel and thought-provoking perceptions, the nature-based thinking proposed in these pages-what this book calls an evolutionary lens-may help us better understand why we feel the way we already do.”  He continues, “For as far back as history records and the natural sciences can trace, men and women have shared common goals even if they often have opposing agendas.  Dependent upon each other, the sexes' unique tasks and specialties have been etched out and deepened over the ages by necessity, chance, and circumstance. During humanity's recent leap from an eternity as primitive foragers to today's city sophisticates, the hard-wired and complementary feminine and masculine energies so essential to our success have been obscured and devalued, weighed down with a paralyzing modern ambiguity.  Men and women have gone from nature's perfect partners to uneasy, cosmopolitan competitors.”
Mr. Gilbert starts at the The Big Bang to explain human relationships.  ponders, “the job of every animal is to survive, but unless we are content merely to exist, our goal as humans must be to get better.  Survival is the first instinct; getting better is the second.  In a crucial sense, self-improvement is a form of survival insurance.”  He makes intriguing observations and  in the first chapter  posits  “Even on a crowded and increasingly dangerous planet, for most of us, launching the next generation is at the heart of our existence, the very essence of our lives.”
He segues “Assured of our own personal well-being, the universal gene-driven compulsion to survive takes shape in us as an urge toward sex.  The fulfillment of our earthbound destiny, sexual reproduction is survival pushed into the future.  If our genes do not find a new carrier, they die off.  That is why we cherish life, crave intimacy, and love sex.  This biological stimulus is the reason why every culture in the world put reproduction at its core.”
In the chapter titled, “Positioning Sex”, Mr. Gilbert examines masculine insecurities.  “The male compulsion to ensure the certainty of his bloodline is the force that has driven men's extensive, often bizarre, and sometimes abominable attempts to control the women around them.  From veils to chastity belts, cloistered seclusion to vaginal mutilation, even the lenient treatment sometimes accorded men who kill because of their wife's infidelity, paternal insecurity is revealed across every known culture...Inflaming this male obsession for reproductive control is the harsh reality that, at least for breeding purposes, we do not ever come closed to needing all the men in the world....This daunting equation of male competition, when added to their vivid biological insecurities, is the source of much male aggression and competitiveness; their fixation on resources, dominance, and territory; even the origins of war.”
Mr. Gilbert emphasizes the male need to develop his masculine role in the world and how not giving them that space and ability hurts us as a society.  “Male initiation provides socially acceptable means for the male youth to gain status and position, something they seek the world over.  These rites act as social pacifiers.  By channeling and cutting down on excessive male competition, and fostering a disciplined response to exterior challenges, these celebrated passages help stabilize society, drawing young men, who are every community's most aggressive and precarious element, into the fold.  Contemporary studies of male prisoners suggest that those with the greatest sex role anxieties commit the more predatory and violent types of felony.”
We are cutting ourselves off from basic human, and natural instincts, and we are paying for it.  In the chapter called “The Cult of the Individual”, Mr. Gilbert builds his case.  “Despite sustained prosperity, Americans say they are overworked and underhappy...At any one time, in what is sometimes referred to as an epidemic, a fifth of Americans report being depressed, lonely, or upset, most often resulting from relationship problems and marital strains....The overall shift to detached, high-tech urban lifestyles has cut us off from the rhythms of nature, distanced us from the wisdom of instinct and the innate sense of our own bodies....Accountable to no one, morality becomes whatever you can get away with.  We drift like ethical flotsam on a sea of moral relativity.  Finally, ego alone triumphs.”
“Despite some pulling back, the broad cultural attack on marriage and the family is relentless and unprecendented.  Social acceptance of casual intimacy discourages matimonial commitment in the first place, and easy divorce promotes its destruction.  Women have been encouraged to make it on their own, and men have been  liverate3d from troublesome responsibilities.  Instead of treating motherhood as the cental axis of our lives and our community, we have run it down.  Rather than trying to attach men to their families and their children, we are driving them away.”  
Females are “encouraged or forced to support themselves and build careers in today's long stretch between puberty, marriage, and beyond.  The contemporary woman has become a hunter as well as a gatherer” he writes.   “Despite all the changes over the last two generations-or perhaps because of them-young women often report that they are struggling to cope in a man's world while many young men believe women get all the breaks.  As a result, America is turning into a culture of severely diminished men without distinctive roles and responsibilities, and overburdened women trying to balance too many agendas.  In the process, masculinity has become a disease, femininity has become a burden.”  
Mr. Gilbert reminds us of the statistics:  “Barely one in three American women held a paying job in 1950: almost three-quarters do now.  And there's not much relief when a husband and children are added to the equation:  two-thirds of women with children under six now hold down a job compared to less then 20 percent half a century ago.  For many of these sleep-deprived women, forced to assume the triple role of wife, mother, and employee, 'you can have it all has turned into a cruel joke.  'You have to do it all' is the not-so-funny punch line.
As children are ever-increasingly raised in single parent households, going without has become a way of life.  “Absent fathers mean absent dollars, which often results in children growing up in impoverished neighborhoods where family instability and crime are more prevalent.  In addition to resource deficiencies, many studies report a significant correlation between an absent father and a child's poor scholastic performance, higher dropout rates, a doubling of emotional and psychological disturbances, and big increases in drug use, teen pregnancy and violent crime by boys.”
As recently as Wednesday, September 1, 2010, on page A9 of The Daily Journal, Mr. George Will from The Washington Post writes about the alarming data publicized by “Nathan Glazer...sociology professor emeritus at Harvard,...writing in The American Interest...”By the age of 4, the average child in a professional family hears about 20 million more words than the average child in a working-class family and about 35 million more than the average child in a welfare family-a child often alone with a mother who is a high school dropout.”  Mr. Will continues, “After surveying much research concerning many possible explanations of why progress has stopped, (speaking about how black families are struggling in the Obama era) particularly in neighborhoods characterized by a concentration of deprivation,” the ETS report says: “It is very hard to imagine progress resuming in reducing the education attainment and achievement gap without turning these family trends around-i.e., increasing marriage rates, and getting fathers back into the business of nurturing children.”
Mr. Gilbert offers some suggestions on how to “bring men back into the fold” of the family.  One thing he emphasizes more than others though, “Honor Men”.  More important than all of the specific measures and detailed recommendations for rebuilding masulinity is the overall social awareness of the importance of preparing boys and honoring men.”
Mr. Gilbert supports commitment.  “For all but the last few thousand years, a man's work has summoned his evolved mental and physical skills as hunter and defender.  Males had a sharply defined purpose, a mission that harmonized with their abilities and held their attention.  Men knew what was required of them...More recently men have learned that being yoked ever so gently to wife and child holds profound rewards, enlarging their horizons and extending their perspective into the future.  Purposeful partner rather than an optional loner, the married man is encouraged to become a responsible citizen, enriched by the connection to his children and the exclusive, enduring partnership of a woman.”
All in all, we are in trouble unless we can learn to work together instead of against eachother.  Mr. Gilbert's observations are concurrent with the general state of things.  I enjoyed his insights and felt his frustrations.  He is pleading with us to get our priorities straight.  As a single mother struggling to balance, I can endorse his observations as hitting closer to home than I am comfortable with, but hearing the truth is never easy.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

I haven't written in a couple of weeks.  Things have been crazy for a couple of weeks.  Every day we are blessed with new challenges and new understanding.


First came the news that my daughter's father was about to get out of prison.  At first this brought apprehension and anxiety.  Then we've been having trouble (perpetually) with some boys here where we live.  We took a trip up to see my grandma who's losing her battle with Alzheimer's.  We spent an afternoon with our favorite uncle, Mr. Mike.  I've been hustling to get my daughter's supplies ready for school in a couple of weeks.  This week my daughter is in a day-camp with a Star Wars theme.  She was very excited to go as she thinks that light sabres are really cool.


The Chicago Bears (football team) are in town and currently holding their training camp across the street at the university.  Their visit brings excitement to the town here, as business greatly appreciates the tourist dollars people spend here this time each year.  


I would like to take some time to talk about role models in children's lives.  I once heard that you can make a child into either a leader or a sociopath, depending on the environment that the child has to live in and the people in their lives.  Role models are so, so important to children.  If they don't have a good role model, they begin to turn, to become cynical and sneaky.  


This is very evident here where I live.  I can hear a parent tell a boy to go outside, but I don't see the parent play catch with the boy.  I see a parent send their children outside, and tell their children "if you have a reason to come back, you'll have to come in", so the child asks my kid for water.  I hear a mother tell another adult, "well, my son's gonna RESPECT me!", and create an environment where the son creates trouble behind her back.  Another girl, 9, was outside at midnight, watching over her toddler brother and infant sister while the mother apparently "wasn't aware" that the kids were outside at that time of the night for a couple of hours.  I can say, with a great amount of certainty, that these children don't feel either safe or protected or valuable in their own homes and that's a real shame.  These are the same ones who turn cynical and begin to resent authority.


I know.  I felt my father was a hypocrite and didn't trust him and didn't feel my mother protected me.  I grew up feeling closer to other relatives than to my own parents.  I became self-hating and self-destructive.  I started smoking to piss off my dad.  I really didn't even like to smoke, but it was an act of defiance that kept my spirit alive (at the time).


I've also heard someone say, "If you don't want to spend time with the child when they're young, they won't want to spend time with you when you're old".  Don't you think that's true?  Who wants to spend time with an adult who abused you, or never came to your baseball games, or was too busy working all the time to take you out for ice cream?  I'll be the first to admit that as a single mom, my energy, time and money are all budgeted.  I'll also say that I have to "budget in" time each day to just hang out with my kid.  On Saturday nights we have a "family fun night", where we watch a movie together, play a game, maybe have popcorn and a pizza.  It's sometimes exhausting to keep the "schedule", but I know that later on that we will both appreciate the time that we've invested.


I remember the times that I played cards and spent time with my Grandma when I was young.  When I would come over, she'd make a favorite food of mine and sometimes she'd let me stay up late with her to watch the news, maybe even Johnnie Carson.  I felt that we were friends.  She still looks at me with those smiling eyes, like she's so proud of me.  I am comforted by the familiarity.  I can't go back home again, but I can remember feeling safe in my grandma's kitchen.   I can only hope my daughter will have the same kinds of memories to keep with her on rainy days.