Be a Man

I wrote a little about my father here. One hot summer night when I was 15, we went out for ice cream, just the two of us. I sensed he had a serious talk in mind as we sat on a picnic bench. "Susie," he began, "your mother is sick." He went on to tell me that the abuse she dished out to me was not my fault. My head understood that, but my heart felt differently. By the time you tell a kid "it's not your fault," a lot of damage has already been done.

I asked him why they had not divorced. They disliked each other a lot; hate would not be too strong a word. He replied that then he would have had to divorce me and my little brother, because men just did not get custody of kids. I thought back to the times I lay in bed at night, listening to them fight, and on several occasions I had heard my mother tell him that he would never take us away from her, that she would not have people in our little town gossip about her being a bad mother. It would have been difficult to have her deemed unfit, because I had no scars or broken bones, she was not an alcoholic or drug addict. I cringed to think about a life completely at my mother's mercy. I knew what it was like when he was at work, but she knew he was around and would be coming home. It was bad enough, but it would have been scary terrible to be alone with her. He went on to explain about how he felt he had failed with my much older sister, and tried to do better with me. I was quite aware of the ways in which he tried to mitigate the abuse, and I think to some extent he was successful. As we talked, I felt sorry for him as I saw things from his perspective. Looking back, I think I should have been sorrier for Susie.

My dad was the first man I ever loved. He died many years ago, but I love him still. Always will. I'll admit I am envious of people my age who still have their parents around. But you know what? If he was still living, I would be taking him out for ice cream and a serious talk. Because as much as I appreciate all he did for me, the sacrifices he made for me, and as much as I understand that he did the best he could with the tools he had, it was not enough. As all of us women do, I evaluate men based on the first man in my life, my father. What does it mean to be a man? My mother ran the show in our home, controlling all of us with her rages and venomous words. My father was definitely not the leader in our home. He protected me by trying to manage all the dysfunction, and I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but he was not the protector that a father should be for his children. He should have gotten me and my brother out of there. He should have just put us in the car and driven away, courts and custody and such be damned. Fast forward many years later, and when my marriage had gone from bad to worse, I put myself and my dog Jake in the car and drove away. If I could do that for me, why couldn't he do that for me?

Susan

"Father Figure" written by George Michael

Be a Woman

A reader told me she has a friend who writes beautiful poetry, about what it means to be a girl growing up and a woman living in Mexico. I met a young woman Friday whose name is Anaïs. I asked her if she was named for Anaïs Nin, one of my favorite authors. Her mother had named her after Nin, a woman who wrote about some uniquely female experiences. My ten-year-old granddaughter writes poetry. A while back, I put some poetry in Hero In Your Soul. It enabled me to express some very powerful emotions about my older sister in such a cathartic way.

Across the world, the girls and women of Mirman Baheer bravely compose poetry in Afghanistan. Eliza Griswold wrote a compelling piece about them in the April 27, 2012 issue of New York Times Magazine. How different my life would be if I would have been born in Afghanistan instead of here in America. It's likely my date of birth would not even be recorded because girls are just not that important, and that I would not have been allowed to go to school. I can't even imagine how awful that would have been, for school was my saving grace, as I have written in a previous post here. If I did learn to read or write, it would have been in secret. Doing something as brazen as composing poetry could get me at the least, beaten, or at the worst, killed. What I have taken for granted, the privilege of expressing myself freely and openly, is something that is denied many of my sisters around the world. I believe I need to do something about this, but I haven't figured out what to do yet. It just isn't right that I should have this privilege and they should not.

We women in America have finally arrived. We are now afforded all the privileges that men have enjoyed. The struggle here is over, thanks to our sisters, aunts, mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers. But we haven't come this far to become complacent. We should not rest until every little girl in the world is allowed to go to school, until we have created such a place where every woman can be a poet.

When I was a little girl, the older girls had good-smelling cedar chests called "hope chests." They would collect things to be used later in their homes, when they married. A silver teapot. A beautiful tablecloth. A baby's rattle. In England, a hope chest is called a "glory box." Hope chests as furniture have sort of fallen out of fashion, but hopes and dreams in the hearts of little girls have not.

I challenge myself as I challenge my female readers. What can we do to give these women hope? What can we do so that they can experience all the glory of being a woman?

Susan

"Glory Box" by Geoff Barrow, Beth Gibbons, Adrian Utley and Isaac Hayes