I scrapped my knee for a second time shaving this evening. I have super expensive Venus Razors and I used one to scrap my knee. Usually the nice razors leave your skin feeling soft and prevents the occasional nicks, but I was careless and ended up with quite the gusher on my hands. Luckily, I have fantastic Nivea lotion to help the skin soften and heal faster. If you haven't used Nivea before, you're absolutely in for a treat the next time it goes on sale. Best lotion ever, hands down.
But I digress from the original reason why I've spurred myself to write after a long hiatus.
Last Friday, I found out I passed the bar.
A momentous occasion marred by a series of bad luck that would make Job look like a four-leaf clover. My mother always told me, that whenever troubles come your way there must be a blessing around the corner.
Speaking of my mother, my parents are celebrating their 40th year wedding anniversary this month. Can you imagine being married to someone for 40 years? I can't even imagine being alive that long let alone being with someone else for that amount of time. Think about it for one second. My parents have been married longer than they have been alive. My father still flirts with my mother and my mother still tries to play hard to get even though she thinks the world of him. He still wraps his arms around her when she's in the kitchen cooking and she still makes him dinner every night. She's been quite sick lately, so he tends to cook more often than he would like. But at the end of the day, she's his best friend and his entire world.
My mother used to be rail thin. She's what many people in the black community would call "high yellow". When they first met she had short, curly brown hair and naturally blush cheeks. She told me she was working at the Cleveland Clinic as a nurse when a young black orderly just wouldn't take no for an answer. She finally accepted a date with him and they've been together ever since. Never mind the little white lie my dad told her when she asked him how old he was. She would find out after the ink was dry on their marriage certificate that she was four years older than him. Frankly, I don't think my dad cared at the time how old she was. I don't think he cares now. She's not thin anymore, after three children, a hysterectomy, congestive heart failure and a bad back, she doesn't have the energy to move as much as she did in the past. She no longer dyes her hair black like she used to when I was a child. I can remember jumping on her nightstand and getting into her hair dye because I wanted to be just like her. Her hair is now a soft silver interspersed with white roots. Even though the younger woman is gone, my father still looks at her as the same hot babe in the nurse's uniform checking in on patients and scribbling down notes in a notepad.
I think that's why God gave us hormones. He knew that as humans, we're a vain species and in order to get us to mate, we would have to have some kind of attraction to each other. That initial attraction, the beating of the heart when we first lay eyes on each other is what helps bring us together. It is also the sweet memory of years of history and chemistry that keeps us together for forty years later when our bodies are soft, our hair turns white, and a fast heart beat is a signal of something bad instead of good.
In a weak moment, I texted my father earlier last week and told him I envied them for what they had and wished to have my own forty year old moment in my life. In the past few years, I've learned a lot from my parents about love. I've read books on break ups and coping mechanisms, but nothing has taught me more than the two people my DNA was based upon. For starters, love isn't perfect. In any given relationship, two people can be wildly different in so many respects, but absolutely well suited for each other. It's whether two people are willing to work towards bettering each other that either makes or breaks a couple. I truly believe the divorce rate is high partly because we have created such high expectations of what a marriage should really be. It's as if we set ourselves up for failure by placing demands that are partner can never hope to obtain.
I spend each night praying to God that I could be humble enough to understand his journey for me and how I can become a better person. I pray that he will help strengthen my own shortcomings and he will bless me with my own forty-year wedding anniversary.
Speaking of commitment, the dog just came in from outside and he's soaking wet. I still can't help but cuddle him like I birthed the little dirt bag.
P. Manolos
