Thursday, February 24, 2005

The "S" word

I have two grandmothers. Both of them were born in the 20's, married young, had families, lived streets away from one another on the south side of East St. Louis and both had their husbands die within days of one another when I was only three years. Neither woman has remarried and continues to live the single life to this day. My grandma Doll only has my brother and I has her two grandchildren. My grandma Evelyn has over 20 grandchildren and the great grandchildren have been coming, sometimes two or three at a time. And although their lives parallel in many respects, the differ in one important aspect- the "s" word.

For one grandmother, Grandma Doll, the "s" word is "single." She's said to me often and early for me to live out my single days as it they were the last single days I'm going to have. She'd say, "Trust me Caryn. Once you marry, that is the end of you. It stops being about you and becomes about your husband. So please, go out and do all of the silly things you want to do. Travel the world, build a house, move a few times. And when you are good and ready, then marry." Man how I love my grandma!

For the other grandmother, Grandma Evelyn, the "s" word is "settle." Yes "settle" as in "Settle down, you're not getting any younger. And when are you gonna give your momma a grandchild and me a great grandbaby?!?" She never fails to mention it whenever I travel there to visit. She also has said to me often and early, "You need to settle down and get some roots instead of traveling everywhere and being a part of everything. Why can't you find someone and get married and have children? No man wants a woman that can't sit down. We may have to buy you a husband. No man can handle you!" She has plenty of grandchildren to choose from to bother about getting married but her sights have focused on me. I can also say that in the past four years there have been four weddings and six or seven great-grandchildren born, including two sets of twins. ARGH!!! THE PRESSURE!!! Don't get me wrong, I love my grandma just as much as other one, but I like the single philosophy much more than the settle down philosophy, at least now I do. Let me explain ...

As a young girl, I have fantasized about one day being married and having children. So you can imagine my disappointment when I saw firsthand how a marriage that is supposed to be for forever can end. Growing up I saw, more often than not, young girls like myself, and sometimes younger, pregnant. I promised my family that I would do things the "right" way- go to college, graduate, get married, buy a house, have babies. So far I have done that to a point- I attended and graduated from one of the top institutions in the country and I was engaged right before my senior year in college. But in the engagement, I was one unhappy and uncertain woman. There were things I wanted to do that my fiancee didn't want me to do. It was painfully obvious that our lives were in two different directions with no sign of either side conceding to the other, but I was determined to get married- after all it was a part of the order of things. When it ended there was a great relief for me and I moved to a new city. Grandma Doll was happy I was being adventurous with life, Grandma Evelyn was disappointed that I wasn't getting married. Did I fail to mention that all of this was happening before I turned 22?

Once that happened, the "S" (settle) word along with the "M"(marriage) and "B" (baby) words became like cuss words to be. Every time somebody mentioned it, I would cover my ears and start singing. I didn't get it! Didn't people want me to find love first before marriage and children? I mean really where is the love in the equation? Technically you don't need love to have either, but still, if I'm gonna vow my fidelity, I have got to love you and be in love with you, not just like you. Personally I want to love and be in love with that man enough to want to marry him and have his children, not because some clock is ticking away at the possibilities and not because my grandma feels it's time for me to get married and have babies.

Now I am in a relationship with a great man and there are times when we talk around it. We've discussed the possibilities of living together before we even tried to talk about marriage. We mention marriage in casual ways but never to the point of, "Let's talk dates and colors and the do's and don't of our wedding." There's always this pressure of "When will he ask?" from friends and family alike. The pressure for engagement came around the holidays. Everyone but me was expecting a proposal; hell I knew better! They were all disappointed that it didn't happen. Instead, I won a bet and got a webcam out of the deal. Even with his return to the states in less than three weeks, people again are looking for a ring. I think this time people don't want to make a bet because they know they will lose. It can be safe to assume that if he asked me, I would be more than surprised, but don't expect a date any time soon. If anything, I'll wait until some of my girlfriends' children get old enough to play a role in the wedding.

Monday, February 21, 2005

The emails, the laughs, the men

I have a group of girlfriends and we all belong to the same bookclub. There are days when we have all out gab sessions on e-mail. It will usually start with one sending something funny, inspiring or ghastly by our measures, and then we'll talk about the topic until it has spun into something beyond our own recognition. We have our fascination with all things ghetto and ghetto fabulous, celebreality and just plain old strange. It's our way of passing the time when we all should be working or studying or writing (or in my case, all three). It is one of our many ways that we connect with one another until we meet again for our next book club meeting. The one thing we all have in common is our appreciation for man, especially the physical appearance of man. (What? Like women can look at a man like the piece of chocolate candy he is! C'mon!!)

The last big email chain was around a few pictures of Terrell Owens. For those that don't have a clue to who TO is, he's a member of the Philadelphia Eagles and was Nicolette Sheridan's racy partner in crime for a "Desperate Housewives" promotional commercial. I must first say that he is seriously a good looking man. If there was a word that could describe his physical being, that word would have to be ..... DAMN! You can't buy a body like that in the stores through powerbars, diet pills and the like. That's a body that has been put through years and years of hard training and strict diet regimes- what we think is hard work on a treadmill or an elliptical and eating salad every day is nothing compared to his basic conditioning. And even though I too drooled at the sight of his oiled up chest, arms and abs, I got to thinking- men can let themselves go and still get beautiful women, but women have to look like they stepped out of a fashion magazine every damn day in order to get a man to look in her direction. Not even at her, just in her vicinity. Where is the justice in that?

For all we know, Terrell Owens could be a bumbling idiot, but who cares? He's got a body that won't quit! And he isn't the only one walking around God's green and blue earth looking like that. There are countless others, famous, infamous and yet to be known, that can make women climb walls by just looking at them. I've seen it happen and I've been one myself. But the truth is we all know that one day the Terrell Owens of the world may not look like that anymore, there are so many examples of it happening, like an epidemic. Take Marlon Brando for instance, you can't deny that he was very good looking in his "Guys and Dolls" days. But before he died, he was a fat, nasty, balding man with a serious case of the Dunlap disease. More recently, D'Angelo is another example of a Greek god's body gone bad. Mr. "How Does it Feel" now looks like a reincarnation of Ol' Dirty Bastard whose been eating extremely well. Both men in their prime could have any woman they wanted. But now that one is dead and the other possibly on house arrest, the appeal and the body, has dissipated among food, marijuana and good tequila. God rest Marlon Brando's soul, but in the case of D'Angelo there is probably a woman out there that thinks, "No matter! I can get him right again! A good diet, some exercise and he will be as good as new." WRONG! A project of that size is a lesson in patience, understanding and time- it's too much to attempt that kind of undertaking alone, girlfriend. You need a team to work that out! But first though, let him eat the cake. When he is ready either or tired of looking at his own fat ass, he'll shape it up or move on. But in the mean time .... I salute the hard bodies of the world. You're the reason my girlfriends and I can't work, write or study ... Keep up the damn good work!

Saturday, February 19, 2005

Love and Hair

For many of us, our hair is our crowning glory on some days and a nightmare on other days. However, when I look at my hair, I can honestly say that it can chronicle the good and bad romantic relationships I have had in my life.

When a romance is going very well, my hair is also looking it's absolute best. It's healthy and shiny, I don't have flyaways and it is full of body and bounce. You can believe that I am having fantastic hairdays when the romance is blossoming. It does anything I ask it to- if I want it to lay down, it does; if I want it to swoop to the side and stay, you better believe it does. You can see the glow, you can't miss it! But as with most relationships, when things start to take a nosedive, everything else goes down with it, hair included. All of a sudden, my hair can't do anything right, no matter how much gel, mousse, hairspray, etc. that I use. Some days, it's a miracle to get a comb through it. Even my hairstylist can tell when the relationship has gone sour by working on my hair. He can pull it taut to straighten it with a flat iron, but it will still curl up in defiance. It's then that he starts asking the hard questions of "What happened? and "What are you gonna do?" When I am trying to get a relationship to work, my hair also makes me work hard to make it look right. There have been times when I've had relationships that last as long as a "phony pony" only for it to matt up and give me more problems than the $9.99 I bought it for. And then there are those relationships that have made me take a drastic turn by cutting it all off, only to regret the chop, to get a weave to get back the length I once had. Then I get tired of trying to get it to grow, so I take the weave out and chop it off, only to put it right back in. It's a never ending cycle, at least where hair is concerned.

These days, my hair has been beautiful and it's not just because I am in love again, it's because I am in love with me. Sure, there have been days when things have been so topsy turvy that even my hair didn't know what to do. But lately, it does everything I ask of it and more. So I guess if you saw me, you can tell that I am happily in love by looking at my hair.

Friday, February 18, 2005

PMS Is Real ... An account of a mad woman

Mothers who have daughters often try as much as they can to prepare us for life. Our mothers teach us how to put on make up. They can teach us how to cook and clean. Some mothers even teach us how to manage and deal with boyfriends who turn into fiancees and husbands. However most of them seem to conveniently forget to tell us how to deal with a little thing called PMS.

Now many of us who probably had that health class or that gym class that taught us about female health usually gave us the quick and dirty version of PMS- the cramping, the nausea, the bloating. Why don't they ever prepare us for the unbelievable mood swings, the uncontrollable crying and nothing fitting right ever? You know it's bad when your love for shoes takes a nosedive, because it's like if my clothes don't fit, what in the hell makes me think I'll look good in a pair of shoes?! For that week, it's like, "Damn a diet. I need my Ben and Jerry's NOW because those are the only two men that love me right now." And as bad as I feel for my fellow sisters in womanhood, I feel worse for the guys because they never, ever know when a mood swing is coming, unless he grew up in the house with all women and his father was his safety zone. Even then, dad will go out for whatever reason and not come back until the storm has blown over the house, usually in about a week. That poor guy had to catch it from his mom and sisters. So he knows what to say and do, sort of. What's even more upsetting is that it gets worse as you get older. So by the time I'm thirty, I expect my hair to catch afire and the top half of my body to spin around. Yes, for that week, I would be the embodiment of Beetlejuice.

I don't think PMS should stand for pre-menstrual syndrome. I think it should stand for PER MONTH SILLINESS, because every month we all seem to become our worst enemy. No amount of pills can stop that, no matter how much Midol and Tylenol we inhale.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Growing up and out ...

John Mayer has a song on his last album called "Bigger Than My Body." I wonder if he was talking about how bodies change as you get older ...

I remember when I was in high school (not yet even a decade yet), I was a svelte 140 lbs. I was running track and I had an extremely high metabolism. You couldn't have told me I wasn't cute. Then I went to college and the Freshman 15 landed on me so fast, my supportive and loving mom said on a semester break trip home, "Who are you and what did you do to my daughter?" Needless to say, just walking around on campus wasn't doing it. But I managed to stay the same size in undergrad. When I graduated and got my first job, I was introduced to good living ... for those that know, it means three meals a day with snacks in between. All of a sudden, 155 was creeping up to 165 ... 166 ... you know what I'm saying! I knew that something had to be done and fast or else I'd be looking at the way I was as a memory. So I enrolled in a gym. Working out was good, at first. Then it just got expensive! Why, somebody PLEASE tell me why, it costs so much to stay healthy? But I kept on going and I started to see great results until I went through some life changes that kicked me out of going to the gym. But through perserverance, I found a new gym and great group of people to workout with (shoutouts to Dee and Sharon- the greatest motivators). But through even more life changes, I changed jobs and moved to another city for grad school and the spread has begun yet again. I'm doing what I can to maintain it, but when your fat jeans are snug, then it's gotten out of control. I think J. Anthony Brown said it best from the Tom Joyner Morning Show, "You know you are fat when your earrings don't fit anymore." And right now, I don't have the dollars for a new wardrobe for an expanding body. And let's face it, my body at 26 is definitely more mature than the one I had at 16. But that doesn't give me the right to have the Dunlap disease (that's when your stomach done lapped over your belt). SOOOO it looks like I gotta find a new gym and a new workout crew, 'cause I don't want to be "bigger" than my body frame.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

My first blog

Hello all!

This is my first blog and my first entry. I've never had a blog before so this should be an interesting turn of events. I've always enjoyed writing and I have always wanted a place to put my thoughts down so that people could read them. Maybe as people read the things I write down, it will be something that can open up some doors for all of us. So it is my hope that through my blog it will touch some lives.

Simply stated,
Caryn