Days of My Life

I’m traveling again, checking on the family. I’ll be back with you early next week and over the course of the weekend to update comments.

Enjoy your weekend, and relish this historic moment in which we live. Isn’t it just GRAND??

There’s an old feminist essay by a similar title where the author espouses the virtues of having a wife, and she goes on about how she wishes she had one to perform all of the duties pertaining thereto. I’m sure that she no doubt could never have imagined that there would be a time when a woman actually could have a wife. But I would like to borrow from her train of thought.

If I had to have a wife, I would want one like Michelle Obama. Everything about her says “class.” She stands by her man. She IS his rock and anchor. Her support, her love–they’re real, and that’s a type of change in the White House we can definitely count on. Just as absolute power corrupts absolutely, absolute love builds absolutely. Mrs. Obama has got the game on lock.

She creates the space for me to touch on an idea that I’ve been crafting for print for some time. Women have completely misappropriated Proverbs 31 as though it was written for them. You know, the virtuous women spiel. In actuality, that was a mother’s advice to her son on the type of woman he ought to choose. Men need to reappropriate that advice and claim it as their own. Mother’s, once again, need to teach their sons the virtuous qualities to be sought in women who are fit to be their wives.

I imagine that somewhere in his lifetime someone taught Barack well about whom to choose and how. I imagine that he listened carefully as did the son in Proverbs 31, and I know that in so doing his choice of virtue became its own reward.

Michelle Obama is what I would want in a wife for my son, or my brother, and even my future husband. I declare to you today that, like Judy Brady in the 1970s, I want a wife. Let me have Barack Obama’s wife as the next First Lady of the United States of America.

What are your views on the use of guns by law-abiding citizens?

Do you believe in the right to bear arms?

Do you bear them?

Do you believe Christians should exercise that right?

What say you dear friends and visitors?

An anomaly on my quiet block, gun shots blared this past weekend, into thin air, but they blared nonetheless. I’m moving, and until then, considering investing in Sm.ith & We.ss.on security systems. Anyone wanna accompany me to target practice?

WW(YOU) do?

Here’s the post:

I am a follower of the teachings of Jesus Christ. I love Him. (I am also about to turn my other cheek and be up out.) However, I am nobody’s fool and certainly not a pioneer of the gentrification ilk that I initially posed to join. God is my protector and provider. That is why I am alive today, but I am not trying to make my angels overwork their wings. Therefore, at the first gunshot sound, the A-meister is well on her way up out of here. Believe that, yall. I no longer do urban, as if I actually ever could. What in the world was I thinking? I begin apartment hunting today and house selling tomorrow.

Peace!!

Ahem!!! Hear ye! Hear ye!!! MAXWELL IS COMING TO DC!!!!!!

And guess where I will be?!! Somewhere in the front row on NOVEMBER 17!!!!

I was going to make the October concert in NY which goes on sale tomorrow until I found out about this.

Can you say ridiculously psyched?!!! I’m giddy all over the place.

My prayer is that if I am to remain celibate I should not go with a man. That’s all I’m gone say about that ‘cause good LaWd that Maxwell puts something on you!!!

Now, just don’t let him turn out to be gay down the line and we’ll always be cool…

I’m done gushing for now, but at any moment between now and the concert, I may do it again, ok?

Glad we got that straight.

Peace, partnas.

There’s this classic scene from Grey’s Anatomy where Meredith decides she wants to fight for Derek’s love after he decides to go back to his wife. She tells him why she loves him and why they should be together, and finally, she pleads with him, “Choose me, love ME.”

For non-Grey’s fans, he eventually does end up back with Meredith who is the love of his life. He and his wife were estranged when he met Meredith. His wife had cheated with his best friend. Their relationship was in Divorce Lane, but the wife showed up in his new town to try and save their marriage. He felt like he owed it to her to try, but it was over the moment he caught them cheating, really.

I often think of that episode in two ways: this is either wildly romantic or highly pathetic. (The scene was a tear jerker if I’ve ever seen one.) I haven’t very often considered a middle ground, but I wonder how men viewing this same scene would react. Would a man find this romantic and flattering or pathetic and pitiful? Would it depend on who was doing the asking and how he felt about her? I don’t know.

I wonder if in this moment Meredith was choosing Derek or choosing herself. Think of the Tamia song, “Me.” The title may be wrong, but she talks about choosing herself when her man hasn’t treated her right. She concludes that if she has to choose between loving herself and him, she’ll choose herself. Who was Meredith choosing? Even though Derrick had never told her that he was married and that bomb, quite literally, dropped in her lap at work, she decided that she really loved him, and that was worth fighting for. Did her fighting in any way diminish her self-respect, or was she really looking out for self by trying to hold on to the first real love she’d ever found? These questions aren’t rhetorical. I’m really not sure, and I don’t know why that scene still plagues me when we’re about to begin Season 4. (That scene was Season 1.)

I think that scene may bother me because I have a no begging rule. My scenario is different from Derek and Meredith’s, but I once had an ex- complain that our relationship didn’t survive because I didn’t fight for him after he told me he’d cheated. Yeah, so, unh huh, I looked at him like he was foolish for real. I didn’t see anything worth fighting for. I saw a way out of a bad situation because we weren’t legally married. I could still get out, and he wasn’t a bad brother–he just made poor choices. Shoot, he could’ve fought for me, but I digress.

My point with the ex- is that I don’t beg people to be where they don’t want to be or do what they don’t want to do. For everyone who won’t, there’s someone who will. The flip side of that, though, is that had my ex- ever, just one time at all, come back to me and was really sorry and gave me the Meredith speech, I would’ve gone back to him and worked it out. He, for some incomprehensible reason, was waiting on me to do that to him. Nope, not ever. I don’t even know if I’m capable. Stubborn as hell I am.

However, I tend to think that most people would be receptive to pleading if it came from someone for whom they genuinely cared. Even when I can’t do what he asks, I want to cave in when I hear my father plead with me. Sometimes all we need is a gentle appeal from someone we love, but I wonder if, like me, most would be too proud to beg. Even when begging might lead to the greatest love of one’s life.