Women

This is what I wrote before I went to the pool this afternoon:

My Lieutenant talked to me today about choices. She’s of Chinese and Indonesian dissent, around five feet tall, and has a huge dark bubbly mole on her chin. She wears bright pink frosted lipstick. Her voice is loud and strained with an Indonesian accent and is like nails running down a chalkboard. She isn’t popular unless you count imitation as flattery; everyone has a Lt. M imitation that they love to whip out at the slightest provocation.

But today in her office I identified with her and the connection was strong. She showed me photos of her boys, ages 11 and 9, told me about moving around with her husband, some of the things she had learned in her forty years of life, and explained why she might or might not stay in the Navy. And then she told me that her husband, a lawyer, stays home with the kids because having a parent at home full time is something they both value. And tears started welling up in my eyes.

I’ve never been one to wish for something I didn’t have. But that changed last summer when for the first time I admitted to myself what I wanted, and now I’m sitting at home still wishing. I thought it would go away. I thought I could stomp it out, could distract myself, and then pretend that what I have was what I want. But it’s not. And I don’t know how to change it.

In the Lieutenant’s monologue proper choices are the road to happiness and they are the result of careful logic and an iron will. I disagree.

And now that I've spent a few hours knittin' with the women I'm feeling much better. Not fixed, but not in a funk. It might just be that I had the chance to show off the girls (rave reviews, all around) but I think it's more than that. Women, as a group, fuel me. Men, in general, not so much.