MOTHER'S TRIBUTE

She sits there thinking about all the choices she has made, the ones she can remember; of the missteps and the disastrous aftermath endured. Sixty-five years old! It sounded funny, odd, as if it were truly someone else. But, then again, that’s how she had been feeling in recent years … not at all the woman whom he had prided herself in being raised by hard-working, God-fearing Christians in the Baptist church. She had been back-sliding, but only this time at a rapid-fire pace, and she didn’t like it at all. A morning glance in the bathroom mirror often said enough. And now …. Her sixty-fifth birthday was here. Sixty-five years on earth, four children, one husband, if one could even call it that. The “husband”, such as it was, had gone west the same year their youngest offspring was born. So much for love, commitment, and the vows of fidelity. Oh, please! The rumors of hubby’s legendary womanizing ways pre-dated their official union. Marriage did not seem to slow him down either. Actually, truth be told, he had been with so many women, she remembered lying in the hospital bed with their first born and the mother one of his many other “bastard” children in the next room, having just given birth to a child of her own – one of his! Foolishly, she had never remarried though there had been other loves.

Looking back, she had to shake her head in sheer amazement. How did she EVER make it through? And why did she have to be so stubborn and rebellious against her father’s warnings about this man who would become her cheating husband? Was it the need to escape home, or was it simply the fact that she had truly loved the rogue her brother-in-law had introduced her to? So many bad memories, broken promises, hurtful circumstances … Ending up a single parent raising three kids; having to give up the fourth child (the result of an on-on-off relationship years after the husband had left)! The money struggles to give the three children not only what they needed but what they wanted also. Sixty-five years - so full of strife and last-minute challenges. Oh, those challenges to make ends-meet …

She was honestly happy to be alive, to be able to say she had survived for sixty-five years, and the memories, those she could still easily grasp, they revealed more than the very real hardships faced. For, there had been joy and good times also. If only she could now, at sixty-five, learn to focus on those times that had brought feelings of warmth, and even happiness. This would be the challenge of the sixty-fifth year: to let go of the NEGATIVITY and see it all in another, more positive light. Extremely hard work, but not an impossible thing to do … Was she ready to make all the changes necessary?

Lost In Translation

I truly cannot get started. I simply do not know where to begin. I'm supposed to write SOMETHING, or so I have been lead to believe all these years. Am I wrong? Have I been that far off the mark? Am I missing the POINT completely? What the fuck is my purpose here? Just to suffer, and live in a painfilled stagnant state? Sometimes I just don't know!

Last night, in a chat room I had frequented (until last night!), the room-runner and I got into an exchange in private messages, after an earlier incident in the evening, with one of the room's admins. He was making some broad generalizations about homosexual men, and forgive me, I spoke up ... You'd think this would have been a good thing, especially since the room-running, Ron, is a gay men himself. But NO! I should have learned by now, chat room runners take their whole thing a little too seriously, and it's all about THE ROOM, not the individual or civil rights, or any kind of forward movement ... Well, I had left the room shortly after the bull shit started and I made my brief (for me!) comments, but upon my return, Ron approached me in private message, asking what he had already asked me earlier in the main room: "Are you calm (now)?" To which I replied that I had told him before I was already calm ... There was like maybe two minutes peace before he fired off another private message ....and then it started to turn ugly ...

I have removed Ron's chatroom from my FAVOURITES list and I do not see my self going back there anytime soon. He started on about how i was "over-reacting" or "taking it personally", according to him "like I always do"!!!!! Funny how people who know you basically from the your typing seem to THINK they know the heart and soul of you, and your every intent with the words you choose ... (Heavy sigh.) Well, Ron is wrong about me and my intentions and my reactions, but am I wrong to feel that it is my responsibility as a gay person to speak up when injustice is being done? Am I wrong to speak up as a black man when injustice is being done and someone is putting down blacks as a group? Is it more important to keep the peace and keep one's mouth shut than speaking from a place of knowledge, hoping to shed some light that might not otherwise be shone?