Losing You

I knew some white girls who exclusively dated black guys back home. I didn’t think much about it. Since I dated white men, it didn’t matter to me who dated who. I figured it was all good if we just all dated each other and didn’t worry about what color we were.

But I noticed something that did bother me. A few of those girls came from little towns out in the country and once they started dating black guys, suddenly when they talked, they sounded more black than I ever did. What was that all about?

I expected to hear “,,,gurl, let me tell you…” or “….no he didn’t’!” from the black girls I talked to. Not from the white ones.

I finally asked one of them why she felt she had to change the way she talked. She blinked and looked at me like I was stupid.

“Cause I’m with a black guy. I want to sound like what he’s used to.”

“Chile, please,” I said, “if he wanted a black girl, he’d be with one. He’s dating you so I don’t see why you think you have to try to sound like me.”

“Don’t you speak different with the white guys you date?” she asked.

No, I didn’t, I told her.

And I had to think about that one for a while.

As most black people who live in an integrated society must, I did speak two dialects. I always liked to say I am multi-dialectical. Yes, I do speak one way with my black friends and I do speak another in mixed company. It’s not that I am trying to be white or sound white. I recognize that I have never really spoken with the “ebonic” accent many white people assume we all have.

I did, however, have southern parents and I of course learned to speak from listening to them. The way they spoke was comfortable to me and I felt secure with it. But I went to an integrated school and I had white teachers and they made sure I did not say “dem, dose and dat”  I said them, those and that and always have.

I did have a lisp, and truthfully, I still do but I know how to control it. I had years of speech therapy to correct it. Most of the time, my “sss” roll off my tongue effortlessly.  But when I am angry or upset, that “sss” sound does become more of a “th” sound.

My parents were on the job about it too. If my brothers and I got lazy and mispronounced a word, they would stop us and spell the word the way we said it.

Example: “Look, Mom, he’s buck naked….” only it didn’t sound like that.

Mom would glare at me and say, “Buck nekkid? B-u-c-k  n-e-k-k-i-d?? Don’t you know how to speak?”

Or “Ooo, look at that!” Which would sound like “lookadat!” That would really get her goat. She would spell it to Dad who would give us the look and say we sounded like ‘field hands.’

I explained to them that I knew how it was supposed to sound and I knew the right way to say it but if I was at home, I wanted to be able to say it the way that felt like home. I didn’t make those mistakes when I was out and about. When they recognized we did know the difference, they were all right with it. They were concerned that we would be held back in society if we didn’t know how to speak correctly. And so we learned.

I didn’t think much about the way I spoke for years until I was in college. I was having a discussion with a white friend and a black friend came up and I turned to her and spoke to her and then she left. When I looked back at my white friend, he had this look of amazed puzzlement on his face.

“What?” I asked.

“When you turned to talk to her, it sounded like you were speaking a completely different language. I didn’t understand a word you said,” he said, still staring at me with a very strange look on his face.

I hadn’t realized I had done that. It was such a second nature to me that I had never really paid any attention to it. But I became aware of it and knew it was true.

Part of me wanted to say, “You weren’t supposed to understand it.” There was that desire to have a conversation that white people didn’t get. Something of our own, you know.

But what it really was came from a desire to conform and belong. Most of the black people I knew did not speak the way I did. They accused me of being too proper, of putting on airs, of ‘ackin’ white” and other such rubbish. I wasn’t. It was the natural way I spoke.

If I was going to get along with black people, I was going to have to speak the way they did and so I used the dialect I was used to using at home with my parents.

And if I was going to get along with white people, I would have to speak English the way it should be spoken. It’s a fine line that most black people have to walk. Many of us learned when we were young that we had to be multi-dialectical in order to succeed. We had to be able to conform to the crowd we were with.

For some of us, like me, it becomes second nature. We go back and forth all the time without missing a beat.

Look, the way black people talk is rhythmic, musical and colorful. We have a way of describing things that is instantly understandable even if you have never heard the term before. And the way we speak becomes part of the daily lexicon.

Sounding black has become cool. And a white person who uses the terms we do almost always elicits laughter. Remember “Bringing Down the House” with Queen Latifah and Steve Martin? Eugene Levy stole the movie and had us all in hysterics with some of the things he said in scenes with Queen Latifah.

So in that case, for conformity, yes, speaking a different dialect is acceptable.

But I do not change the way I am for the men I date. I speak the way I speak and when I have been with a guy for a while, I have lapsed into my “Sistaspeak” with him. And every one of them has loved it.

They knew it meant that I was comfortable with them and knew I could be me and say whatever I wanted to and I wasn’t making a difference because of them. They took it as a form of acceptance and perhaps it was.

And this goes for this weight thing too. We have gotten in a total kerfuffle about this. Here’s the deal:

Black women are built different from white women. Yeah, we have the same basic equipment, but there are subtle differences. We tend to be a bit rounder than white women. Our thighs are rounder, most often our butts are and we can carry weight better than they can. A black woman can weigh more than a white woman and look just as good as she does.

Now let’s be realistic. There is an epidemic of obesity in our country. Way too many of us are overweight. We love our 72 ounce Cokes, our super size fries and those big Hershey bars.

We do.

Admit it.

Not enough of us like to exercise and we sit at our computers or at our desks at work and we don’t move around like we used to.

You know it’s true.

It’s not just black women who are overweight. White women are too. And yes, black AND white men. So let’s not make this thing all about us because that’s not true.

The truth is we all look better when we are not overweight, regardless of our race or sex. Men like to look at women with a trim waist and long shapely legs. We like to look at men with buffed bodies with a six-pack. So let’s not get our undies in a bundle if someone says he or she prefers us to be in shape. We ALL look better when we’re in shape.

Being fat is not sexy. It’s not attractive and it’s not healthy. Too many black women have let their weight go and still want to slide into a skin tight dress and 6 inch heels and think they should still be able to “pull” the best looking men.

Yes, there are exceptions to every rule but it’s not the norm. Most of the time, the big girls who think they are sex kittens will find that people are laughing at them behind their back. People can be cruel to fat women.

White men like women who make them look good. If a sista wants to date white men, she needs to look good for the one she wants. But mostly, she needs to look good for herself. That’s true no matter who she dates.

But for someone to say that all white men like skinny women and expect for black women to all be skinny is a damn fool. There are a lot of plus sized sistas walking around with white guys who love that big booty more than anything on this earth.

And yes, there are a lot of white men who like skinny athletic women and God bless ‘em. If that’s what he wants and you know that’s not you, pass him right on by. Leave him for the skinny woman.

And trust me, I’ve had more than my share of fat white men drooling at me. No thanks. While I don’t expect all the men to look like Gerard Butler, I am not turned on by men who look like John Candy. At. All. A few extra pounds is fine. Chris Farley is not.

A man who loves you loves all things about you – even the way you speak and especially the way you look. He knows there are things different about black women and it is perhaps because of those things that he loves you.

The biggest mistake a woman can make is to lose herself trying to please a man. Who are you when you are trying to be someone else? You’re not the person he fell in love with and you are not the person you are. You soon become uncomfortable because you are pretending. And you find you are in a relationship that doesn’t work because nothing is real about it.

I realized a long time ago that I had to be me and if that is different, so be it. I was not going to change for anyone. I didn’t care what anyone said. I will speak the way I want. I will dress the way I want. I will move the way I want. I will dance the way I want. I will sing (off key) the way I want.

All those things make me the unique being that I am and you either accept me or you don’t.

It’s all the same to me. 

That Awkward Moment…..

I’d known ever since I first realized that boys were kinda cute. I had dealt with my own demons about it. But no one had ever asked me and I had never actually expressed the fact that I preferred white boys. I just knew I did.

I tried to pretend that I liked a couple of black guys I went to school with. I thought it was what I was supposed to do. Both of them were on the basketball team and they were like the Big Men on Campus and they had their choice of almost any girl they wanted.

I had known one of those boys for years. Our parents had been the best of friends and I suppose they thought we would end up together. Nope. He had his eye on a girl who was much lighter skinned than me and she already had womanly curves and most important – she had “good hair.” She had long thick wavy black hair down to her shoulders that never needed to see a hot comb or a perm kit. No matter that she was dumber than a box of said hair. She had what it takes and I didn’t.

The other boy’s mother thought I was “too dark” for her son and not cute enough. (She regretted that later when I matured.) But it didn’t really bother me. I heaved a big sigh of relief and figured that this was a sign that I should not try to pretend any more. So at that point, I said to myself, “I like white boys.”

I thought about it for a long time. Was I missing anything when I heard other black girls swooning over some guy and saying, “Ooh, damn I love me a chocolate brother!” or “Oooh, that n&*%a is so fine!”

Was there something about black men that was alluring that I was missing? Did my preference set me up to not get along with other black women? I didn’t really have any close friends that were black at that point in my life. I didn’t share their enthusiasm for “bruthas.” And did it make me some sort of “race traitor” because I didn’t like “my own kind?”

Was there something wrong with me?

Over the years, a few people including my mother tried to set me up with guys they thought I would like. I didn’t.

When I left home, I met some other black girls who felt the same way I did. We all preferred white guys. I had never met any other black girls who felt the way I did and it was great. We might have felt like we were different with other black folks, but we were totally comfortable with each other. We didn’t have to explain or say anything. It was all right to like white guys.

One night I was in a bar back in my hometown with friends and one of the guys I grew up with came and sat at the bar next to me. We started talking because we hadn’t seen each other in years. He asked that question that you know is going to preface another question that you probably don’t want to answer: “Can I ask you a question?”

I said yes.

“What did us brothers do to make you hate us? I mean I know we kind of gave you a hard time in high school, but was it enough to turn you against us all forever?”

I suppose it’s simple to always think there is a reason or that you’re turning against something. But that wasn’t it at all. There was no reason. I don’t hate black men. There was nothing political, no cultural or revenge based reason why I like white men. I just do. That’s all. I just do.

I laughed and told him that I just preferred them and that was all. And then I asked why he would ask me since he was married to a white woman himself. I guess it was all right for him.

I went on never really putting voice to it but handily getting out of dating any black men who crossed my path. I am sure all my friends and family knew it but since I didn’t say anything, they didn’t either.

I noticed that some of my white girlfriends were actively dating black guys and seemed happy. But some of them were friendly with black men but never got serious or even considered dating them. So I asked one of my friends why she didn’t. She hemmed and hawed and said that she didn’t want to do anything that would upset her father.

I knew that was a crock. Her father would have been just as pissed if he knew some of the things she was doing with white men and I said that to her. And did that mean her father thought he was better than me? I recalled a conversation I had had with her father a few years before when I went off to college.

While she and I had been friends for years, she had been the one who got pregnant when we were teenagers. She had been the rebellious one who had started drinking and sleeping around with various men. Not me. I had gotten a job and had stayed with it for over 10 years. She had been unemployed just as much as she had been employed. And I went back to college and got my degree. She had dropped out of high school.

He smiled at me one night and said, “There must have been a mistake when you were born.”

I asked what he meant.

“YOU should have been my daughter,” he said.

All this was leading up to the moment when my Mom and I finally brought it out in the open. We were arguing over something and she brought up my only dating white men. She couldn’t see it at all. She grew up in the Jim Crow south and she had had a hard time at the hands of white people. While she had raised my brothers and me to be tolerant, she didn’t like the idea of us dating or marrying outside our race.

I told her I could do whatever I wanted to do.

She said, “No white man is going to marry you. They will sleep with you but they won’t take you home to their parents.”

“Maybe I don’t want to meet their parents. And maybe they won’t care. Everybody isn’t a bigot,” I said.

“They just want to use you,” she persisted. “They will never love you. It will only be sex. You will get hurt and I don’t want that for you. You deserve t be loved. You are loving and sweet and you need a man who will love and cherish you.”

I could have made some comment about how her first husband beat her till she left him and my father cheated on her constantly. I didn’t. Not yet anyway.

But then she said, “Don’t you ever bring me some peckerwood and tell me you are going to marry him. Don’t bring me some zebra kids either.”

I didn’t want to fight anymore so I said, “Fine. When I do get married, I will keep my husband away from you and my little zebra children too. I don’t want any of them infected with your hatred.”

She went to my father in a huff and told him what I had said. He got very angry with her and came to me and said, “Don’t you think for a moment that you can’t come home no matter who you marry. You are my child and I will always accept your choices. Your mother is wrong.”

She grudgingly accepted the fact that if I did get married, it would certainly be to a white man. We never argued over it again.

Years later, I overheard her talking to a family member. One of my cousins was dating a white guy and nobody in the family liked him. He was unemployed and lived in her apartment and was so broke he was wearing her clothes.

My mother said, with some measure of pride in her voice, “My Brenda dates white men but she has never dated any trashy ones. I know I will never have to be ashamed of any man she chooses. She has good taste and she is very classy and I trust her to not embarrass us all like your daughter has.”

Ouch.

Mom took a trip to Scandinavia with some of her friends and she came home telling me about the gorgeous men she had seen there and that I should go there because I’d be sure to find a husband there.

By then she was hinting almost daily that she wanted me to get married and have a granddaughter for her. My brothers had had only boys so far and it was my job to give her that precious little girl she wanted so badly.

“Mama, you trying to set me up with a Viking?”

She grinned and said, “Why not? I need a son in law kind of bad. A Viking will do. Some of those guys are so big and gorgeous! I showed a few of them your picture and they wanted to meet you.”

My Mom, the Matchmaker. 

I Didn't Go to Woodstock

I didn’t. I should have and I could have but I didn’t. Here is the sad tale.

I had been living in Chicago for a year and I had made some new friends. We had been running around having fun all that time and hadn’t thought things were going to change but they did. The reason I was in Chicago in the first place is because I was supposed to be going to college. I wasn’t. I was “out in the streets” with my friends.

I started out right. I was going to class every day and doing what I was supposed to do. But once I made new friends and started hanging out with them, my days consisted of working at a part time job for a little money and hanging around Old Town every free moment I had. That was where all the cool people and the hippies hung out.

One of the new friends was an Asian girl named Lori and she and I got to be very close. As soon as I got out of school and she got out of work, we would meet and walk up to Old Town and we’d look in the head shops, the record stores, the boutiques and the bars. I don’t know how we did all the walking we did, but we did it every day and night for months.

We started planning to travel and we had a few trips in mind. I had started cutting classes to work more and get more money. Lori and I decided we wanted to go to London for Christmas and so we saved and we got student passes that allowed us to get stand-by tickets on the airlines for half the price.

Mom didn’t want me to go to London, but I was grown and I could do what I wanted, or so I thought. I went to London against her wishes and I had the best time I’d ever had. Of course, it was my first vacation on my own away from family. We found a cheap hotel with no elevator and we had a blast. This trip was so much fun, we decided we had to take another one and we planned a trip to New York in August.

My parents finally realized I wasn’t attending class and that I was just running wild in the city. I had a job and I was working, but they decided it was time for me to come back home. They came to get me in July and we sat together in a bar and watched the men walk on the moon and then they took me home to Galesburg.

A month later, Lori and I flew to New York. We had a friend who had an apartment on the Lower East Side and that is where we stayed. When we got there, she told us about this big concert that was happening about 60 miles north of New York in this place called Woodstock. The Who were playing and so was Jimi Hendrix, Santana and Sly and the Family Stone. It sounded good till I realized it was going to be outside and that the concert would last 3 days. What the hell?

Look, I admit it. I’m prissy. I don’t like being dirty and I never have. When I was a child, if I was outside playing and my hands got dirty, I had to run in the house and wash them. My Mom was trying to put us out so she could have some peace and there I was coming back in every 5 minutes. I guess it irritated her endlessly.

But anyway, I was going to have to sit on a blanket for 3 days and nights?? Use a port-a-let? What would we eat? Sleep? What if it rained? I said no.

Lori said, “Brenda, it’s the Who. Roger and the fringe. Keith Moon and those eyes. You remember.”

Yes I did. We had seen them just a few months before at the Kinetic and we fell even more in love with them than we had been just listening to their music. And we had gone to the hotel afterwards and talked to them more. Yeah, I remembered.

But did I want to sit outside on a farm in the dirt with ducks and crazy people smoking God knows what and walking around naked and ….well, you know. And no, I didn’t.

Another of our friends agreed with me. She wasn’t enthused about an outdoor concert either. I didn’t mind if it was a concert that was over in one day. I could take that. But three days? The tickets were kind of high for us young chicks to swing especially since we’d just flown to New York and wanted to have some fun there. We could go hang out in clubs in the city and dance and meet cute guys and not have to sit in the dirt.

We talked about it all day long. A friend came over who had a car and he was going. He had room for us if we wanted to go. We looked at each other and asked again. Should we go to Woodstock? Did we want to see Sha Na Na? Did we want to see Canned Heat? How about Ten Years After? We did want to see the newest supergroup, Crosby Stills and Nash. But did we want to see them bad enough to sit in the dirt for 3 days?

No.

Our friend left with two girls and the rest of us stayed in New York. We dressed up and went out that night and had a blast. Later the next day, we heard that thousands of people had shown up at the festival. They were coming from everywhere. The freeway was closed and the concert was free because so many people were knocking the fences down and climbing in. It was all over the news.

Lori said to me, “Maybe we should have gone.” I was beginning to realize I’d been wrong. We should have gone. We thought about hitchhiking up there. Yeah, we did that. It was safer back then than now. But our friend reminded us that the roads were blocked with traffic and that we’d never get there.

And then it rained. It rained and rained all night long. We didn’t go out that night.  We ate pizza and sat around listening to music and talking. We thought about what it must have been like to be sitting out there with a howling driving storm like that and once again, we were glad we hadn’t gone.

When our friends came back, yes, they were dirty, but they were lit with a happiness I hadn’t seen in years. They said it was the greatest moment of their lives. They couldn’t describe it, but it had been life changing and though they had been uncomfortable for a short while, the love they felt from everyone, the way they all helped each other and the amazing music they heard made it worth a little dirt.  It was one of the biggest events of our generation and we missed it because I didn’t want to get dirty. I was ready to kick myself.

When the movie came out, we went to see it and we must have seen it 4 times in a row. I was ready to cry. I felt the peace and love just watching the movie. I saw the happy faces and I was angry with myself all over again. We just couldn’t believe that we had been so close and had missed that concert. We loved every moment of that movie and I am sure that we all have seen it at least over a hundred times in our lifetime.

Lori was a good friend. She never once said, “Brenda, we really messed up.” She didn’t blame me although I blamed myself and I still do. If I hadn’t been so prissy and worried about getting dirty, we could have been right there at the greatest concert ever like thousands of other people my age had been.

We could have seen Crosby Stills and Nash perform for the first time in front of people. We could have seen Janis Joplin late that night and Grace Slick early in the morning. We could have seen Jimi play the National Anthem. We could have been there for it all. We had no inkling that hot weekend in New York that it was going to be one of those moments that would change everyone’s lives whether they had been there or not. We didn’t know it was the end of an era. We just didn’t know.

Eventually though, I did go to Woodstock. Years later, when I was married, my husband and I visited a friend in Monticello, We were driving around and she took us to this little shop that was a kind of Woodstock museum. The real one hadn’t been built yet and they were seeking donations to make it come true. I bought some posters and post cards and prints and then we drove over to the sight where the concert took place.

There is a huge marker there with the names of everyone that played and I sat there looking at them and closed my eyes and thought about what had happened there all those years ago. This was hallowed ground now. You could still feel the love and peace that had been there. There was no one there but us and I just sat with my thoughts and realized I really HAD made it to Woodstock after all. Many years later, but I had been there.  I took pictures of the marker, wiped away my tears and left.

I do wish I had gone with Lori. She died last year and I felt even worse that it had been my fault we missed Woodstock.

I think about something Graham Nash said; if everyone who said they’d been to Woodstock really had been there, the Earth would have tilted on its axis. Well, I’m not one of them. I wasn’t there.

I didn’t go to Woodstock. 

And Now What?

One night a few years ago, I noticed an ad on the Internet asking “Could You Have Lupus?” I took the quiz and answered the questions and the results were, talk to your doctor, you may have lupus. No, I said. I’m just stressed and tired and I put it out of my mind.

A few months later, my right hand and arm suddenly swelled up and I could not bend my fingers. If I tried to move my fingers, it hurt. I went to the doctor after nothing seemed to relieve the swelling and I began a battery of tests to determine what the problem was. Was there a blockage to my lymph glands? No. Was it linked to the shoulder surgery I had had a few years prior? No. Were my nerves working properly? Yes. I had an MRI, x-rays, and the whole 9 yards. No answers. I went to a “hand” specialist. Eventually, my doctor suspected rheumatoid arthritis and sent me to a rheumatologist.

All this time, the joint paint had increased to a dull pain level that never stopped. I was born with Beta-Thalassemia, so I was used to some level of pain and I kept going even though I was having more pain and I was getting more and more exhausted from the simplest things.

I could not stand on my feet and lecture my students for longer than 10 minutes before I got dizzy and felt like I had run 50 miles. I was getting more and more cranky and ill tempered since exhaustion and constant pain were becoming a steady part of my life as were the persistent rashes.

I had inexplicably begun to have rashes on my chest and I thought it was from wearing silver necklaces and I had stopped. But I broke out no matter what kind of necklace I wore and soon, even if I wasn’t wearing a necklace!

After two visits to the rheumatologist, she said to me very matter of factly, “You have lupus. It’s a low level right now, but it’s there and you have it,” and she moved on to another subject like it was nothing.

I felt like I had been slammed in the face. I couldn’t think. I just heard those three words, “You have lupus,” and I froze. I thought of people I knew that had lupus that had died. Was this a death sentence? Much later, I realized that I had not stopped her and asked questions.

I went to the Internet again and began to look up all the information I could find. Did this have anything to do with all that I had been through? The problem with my hand, the rashes, coughing, heart racing and the pain? Was it why my hair grew so slowly and was suddenly so thin?

I found this information: “Lupus is an autoimmune disease where the body's immune system becomes hyperactive and attacks normal, healthy tissue. This results in symptoms such as inflammation, swelling, and damage to joints, skin, kidneys, blood, the heart, and lungs.

Under normal function, the immune system makes proteins called antibodies in order to protect and fight against antigens such as viruses and bacteria. Lupus makes the immune system unable to differentiate between antigens and healthy tissue. This leads the immune system to direct antibodies against the healthy tissue - not just antigens - causing swelling, pain, and tissue damage. (* An antigen is a substance capable of inducing a specific immune response.)” (Medical News Today)

Sometimes I think it‘s just a cruel joke and that it’s not real. Then I reach to pick something up and that biting pain in my arm is REAL. I wake up feeling like someone took a baseball bat to my whole body and it takes me a while to get going. Or I go for a walk on a good day and I get halfway home and the fatigue hits me like a sledgehammer and I wonder how I will make it home.

A visit to the doctor drains me so completely that I have to force my legs to keep going and to ignore the pain and the fatigue and somehow I make it home and up the stairs to my bedroom and I fall into bed just barely able to breathe. I ask myself again: Now what?

Lupus is incurable. Because it has so many symptoms, it can be difficult to diagnose and it is hard to treat. More women than men suffer from lupus and African-American women more than white women. This makes the fact that the first drug released for lupus works better for white women than black women baffling. Shouldn’t they have worked to help those who suffer the most?

Since there are different strains of lupus, there are different drugs that we are often given to alleviate the pain, the swelling and other symptoms of the disease. But many of us suffer because some of the drugs have awful side effects or really don’t help that much. And lupus is one of those diseases that does not alter the way you look so you may be in horrible pain and still look pretty good. Try telling someone how you feel when you look good. They often think you are either a hypochondriac or just plain crazy.

Living with lupus is difficult but we keep in mind the alternative and we  remember that having lupus used to be a death sentence. We find a way to go on and have a good life. We have no choice.

Are We Too Old?

I left two jobs in the past ten years because of age discrimination. My position had been eliminated from one company but I could not help but notice that many of my fellow ex-employees were all over 40 years old. There was a lot of gray hair in that room. I wanted to believe that age had nothing to do with it but there were just too many people in that room who were noticeably older. I had a bad feeling.

It was obvious in the second job too. The supervisor that hired me had moved on and a younger woman took her place. She was uncomfortable with us older employees and she’d been there less than a year before all the workers over 40 were gone, me included.

She brought in other younger workers like her and they all hung out together during and after work hours and the rest of us saw the writing on the wall. Her friends came in early, stayed through lunch, went to dinner together and often worked until late in the evening. They were single, lived alone and work was their lives. They were aggressive and pushy and the rest of us were out in the cold.

They were noticeably uncomfortable with us older workers – they didn’t know how to properly address us and because we didn’t share their overwhelming drive, they regarded us as slow-moving losers. It didn’t matter that we knew what we were doing and usually were better at it. We just didn’t fit in. Being with us was like hanging with their parents.

Now that the economy has bottomed out, many of us older workers find it hard to find a job. The unemployment rate for those over 55 has been around 6 percent according to figures obtained by the Government Accountability Office in December 2011. And it takes older workers longer to find new jobs – nearly 35 weeks as opposed to 26 weeks for younger workers.

We have the skills, experience, talent and drive but often, we can’t even get an interview. When we do, we often find we are facing employers who are young enough to be our children and the reality that no matter how good we are, our age will keep us from getting that job. Or we see a job we know we can do but suddenly, there are requirements added to it that we are unfamiliar with. For example, most public relations jobs now want applicants to also be skilled in desktop publishing and graphics. I’ve learned to do some graphics work, but it was never the focus of my training so I don’t even apply for those jobs.

Mature workers are being pushed aside and it’s not even subtle anymore. Many have been without jobs for extended periods of time and what little unemployment they had has run out. Life has suddenly gotten very scary for a lot of people who should be easing into retirement, but are suddenly forced to try to get Social Security or disability benefits way too soon and are often rejected. Everyone is ready to put us on the shelf, but we are not ready to go. We still need to live and pay bills.

Older workers are often excellent workers, are patient, work well with the public and have a strong work ethic. They are willing to learn new skills and can work with much younger supervisors. And yes, we don’t mind teaching younger workers what we know and we can learn a lot from them. It’s a win-win for everyone involved, so why is there so much resistance to hire mature workers?

Some of the reasons given are that older workers want more salaries than some companies are willing to pay. More experience often translates to more money and employers are balking when they can get younger workers for less money. There is also the thought that older workers drive up the cost of benefits because of higher incidents of medical care.

Some employers think that older more experience workers will accept a job while they are looking for another higher paying position and don’t want to risk bringing them on. Looming retirement is another cause for concern as is inability to work with a younger boss.

But one serious problem older workers face is unfamiliarity with the current technology. Many find working with online resumes and applications difficult if they are not familiar with modern job searching. They are at a disadvantage of they have not learned to use the technology available such as computers, tablets, smartphones and social media.

But many of us are very technologically savvy and can work with younger people on an equal basis. And many are energetic and want to work past retirement age. Some will have to as their pensions have vanished in the inclement economic climate.

Employers and employees both will have to forget the assumptions they have about older workers in order to right the wrongs that are keeping qualified workers from having jobs.  

This should not be an Us vs.Them situation. Finding jobs is hard for all of us and we should be willing to work together. Companies benefit when all the employees work to ensure their success.

The Good Wife

Why is everyone piling insult upon the injury in Holly Petraeus’ life? Because she doesn’t look like a hot young model? Because she looks like a 50+ year old woman who raised her family and moved numerous times because of her husband’s job?

Why is it expected that she is supposed to take the blame for his indiscretion? It’s her fault because she isn’t hot? She “let herself go” so it is understandable why he wanted a younger hotter woman ?

What kind of thinking is that?

Maybe it’s because I’m over 50 and I know how drastically the thinking about women changes once we are no longer young and hot. Yes, I know, I don’t look my age but the truth is, I know how old I am. I’m no young hot babe anymore either. 

But should I work harder at the image because it’s “expected” of me? Do I owe it to the world to look desirable way past when it should matter? Why can’t I be loved because I am a kind and loving woman? Because I am intelligent, funny, self-confident and sensual? Why does being older render a woman unlovable?

Life is unkind to women in many ways but to me, one of the coldest realities is that regardless of how good your heart is, how smart you are, how efficient and capable you are, no matter what, if you aren’t “beautiful,” nothing else you are matters that much. We are always first judged by our looks and everything else is secondary.

This becomes especially difficult once you reach that point in life where those pounds are really hard to get rid of. Hard when those lines creep into your face and that gray is taking over your hair. Very hard when those once perky breasts start to go south, that cute butt starts to sag and the waistline has expanded. Yes, there are some women who can delay this aging thing for a while, but let’s be honest, it catches up with all of us eventually.

But does it make you less a woman? To me, it is one of life’s ironies that just when your self-confidence is highest, when you finally get what it’s all about, when you no longer worry about little middling things that really don’t mean that much, when you are at your sexual peak, when you know what you are doing and are most likely to be the best lover ever, you are no longer considered attractive or even desirable.

The men who should be available to you are now attempting to grasp onto their own flagging grip on age are chasing girls half their age. It keeps them young, they say. They want girls who are still able to give them children even after they have raised a set with you and should be anticipating grand children instead. It makes them feel the very thing they say we aren’t – desirable.

We all know what is going on when we see an older balding or gray haired man with a young girl half his age, and we know it isn’t true love. General Petraeus and George Clooney are two different animals. Younger women want George for the same reason older women do – the man is famous, intelligent, rich and he puts the G in gorgeous.

General Petraeus is no George Clooney. Let’s face it, he’s no hunk of burning love. He’s rather skeletal and nervous looking for my taste. But he’s a powerful man and probably has a nickel or two to rub together. Power makes him attractive to younger women. I guarantee you Ms. Broadwell would not have been willing to engage in a verbal catfight over him had he not been who he is.

Men delude themselves every day by thinking that a young hot woman wants his old worn out butt because she loves him. Not true. She wants something from him. She sees him as being some form of security for her and she is willing to offer up her young hot body and even have a child or two in order to get it.

I have had numerous conversations with young women who find the thought of sex with an older man repulsive, but add they will choke back the gag factor if he has enough money.

But all this is overlooked while everyone happily bashes his wife for not being “beautiful.”

Doesn’t it matter that this woman has done valuable charitable work, she has given freely of her own time to help others, she has raised the value of her philandering husband and has suffered in silence over these 37 years of marriage and now must endure public derision because she looks like a 50 plus married woman with children and a life should look?

Why is his cheating her fault? If she had concentrated on her own looks instead of her marriage, her family and her life, we’d say she was shallow and selfish. Did she break some vow by “letting herself go?”

Have we lost sight of the fact that she is the one who was wronged here? If he is prosecuted for his completely ludicrous behavior, it is entirely possible that he will lose his pension and that her life will be economically impacted as well. How is that her fault?

Now he is sitting at home in disgrace. He had to leave his powerful position in the government. He’s right in the media storm as more and more distasteful information comes out about his ridiculous behavior and the silly self centered woman he risked it all for.

And who is sitting by his side, undoubtedly wondering what she did wrong, feeling the pain of knowing her husband cheated on her with a younger, more attractive woman and questioning her own femininity?

And who are we, the public, to add to her pain by blaming her because she isn’t beautiful?

How much does the poor woman have to suffer?

Holly Petraeus did nothing wrong other than marrying a philandering, selfish, lying childish man.

Finding Him……

Once a friend said to me that she hadn’t expected to be single and childless so late in her life. I have to admit, I hadn’t expected that either. I figured though I was having all the fun I wanted, at some point I was going to find a man who loved me and wanted to be with me the rest of our lives. I ran into lots of men, and loved some of them, but none of them turned out to be the one that would light up my life.

Oh, I thought a few of them were. I thought I had gotten lucky a few times but that didn’t seem to pan out. Nothing really wrong with them. I was at fault too. They were good men and there was love involved, but not that kind of love that can weather all the storms. When it got rough, it got really rough and I couldn’t handle it. I realized I had completely lost who I was in the midst of trying to keep him happy and it wasn’t working. He wasn’t happy at all and neither was I. What was I doing? Why?

I met another one and thought he was going to be the one who saved the day for me. Things were sweet for a while but when I really needed him, he wasn’t there. He gave one excuse and then another but nothing to really explain his absence. It became clear to me that he wasn’t the one either. I figured men were in my life for a reason – to teach me a lesson and I hope I learned those lessons. But that didn’t change the fact that basically, I was still alone.

I met one other man who just snatched my heart out of my chest. He was everything I ever wanted except for the fact he wasn’t as honest as he should have been. And apparently he was looking for something other than what I had to give. He wiped his feet on my heart and left.

So here I am. Still alone and hopeful. And yes, older. Am I too old? I don’t think so but I guess some do. I don’t look my age and most of the time, I don’t feel it. Yeah, I have days when the body just doesn’t want to cooperate but don’t we all? That doesn’t always have anything to do with age.

I use the Internet a lot. I know about online dating. I met all the men I had been involved with the past few years online. I had been successful before so I thought I would be again. I was wrong.

I prefer to date white men. If I was a white woman that would be just dandy but I’m not. I’m a black woman and white guys have always been my preference. I’ve not had to face a lot of ruckus over that fact but that’s because I had already embraced my “different-ness” from most of the people I knew and I didn’t care what anybody thought. All those things I liked and did were all a part of my own unique identity and I had no thoughts about changing any of that for anyone.

My parents were of course alarmed and distressed and we had discussions over it but they both realized I wasn’t going to change and they took a deep breath and faced the tact that their baby girl wasn’t going to make their lives easy at all.

Some of my friends understood it and some didn’t. They did what they did and I did what I did. Some thought I was brave because I made the choices I made and I thought some were cowards because they didn’t. It didn’t change anything. We remained friends even if we didn’t agree.

While I wanted a man in my life, I was quite clear about what I wanted and what I didn’t want. The guys I grew up with were just not ready for prime time. They might have been curious or playful, but they weren’t ready to think about having a long term relationship outside their race. That was ok. I really didn’t want to think about that with them either.

Racially, things looked all right in the place where I grew up, but if you scratched that surface, racism was still strong and alive there. No matter what, they still thought they were better than me. And I knew better. I left home as fast as I could for greener pastures. I came home off and on for different reasons and I played around with guys, but I never really got serious about any of them. It just didn’t feel right for me.

I didn’t meet anyone that I wanted to get married to. I didn’t meet anyone that I wanted to reproduce with either. I didn’t sit up at night dreaming of having a big wedding and wearing a white gown or any of that. I thought of it once in a while, but it wasn’t a big thing to me. I wanted to travel and see the world and meet different people. I wanted to have a great job and make money and buy a house and have all the cats and dogs I wanted to have. I wanted to have an active social life and do all kinds of things and have lots of friends. I went to college late and got my requisite degrees and went on about my life. Not one of the men I met was a keeper.

Was this my fault? Was I purposely not looking for men to be lasting and loving mates? I’m not sure about that. It just didn’t happen and I didn’t question it. I went on with my life.

A couple of years ago, I sunk into an awful depression. I had a lot of setbacks and it threw me for a loop. I’ve had moments and perhaps a few weeks where I was down but nothing like this. I lived every day not seeing the sunlight or feeling the air from outside. I sat in my room and though I communicated with people online, I rarely saw anyone outside the people I live with. I didn’t want to. I felt like my feet were stuck in tar and that I couldn’t pull them out. My insides were full of black goo and I couldn’t move. My eyes were coated with darkness and I couldn’t see. I was hopelessly stuck. And I didn’t know it.

It wasn’t until I had to take a trip and get out of the house for almost two weeks that it became clear to me that something had been wrong. I saw a young couple that I loved very much starting their lives together and joyfully expecting a baby in the future. I saw my young nieces, ready for life and not even sure of what to do or where to go. I realized I had lost my voice and I had lost my way. When I came home, I sought help and got it. I’m still struggling with it, but I’m coming out of it. I can move and I can see and most importantly, I can feel.

Ok, I’ve always been a late bloomer. I never did anything on the same timetable as everybody else. I was late finding out about sex. I was slow to have a serious boyfriend. I went to college later. I found my career later. I got married late in life. I know my pattern.

Now I am ready for the man who stops the breath in my chest when he walks in the room. I’m ready to listen to him talk and just smile. I want to see the devilish twinkle in his eyes and feel the love when he looks at me. I want to have the sex that leaves me breathless and sated. I want to laugh with him till I have to run to the bathroom. I want to wake up and look at him and marvel that he is there with me. I want to have fun with him. I want to fight with him and I want to make up with him. I want to share my life with him.

But first, I have to find him. And right now, I don’t know how. Sometimes I’m afraid I will never find him. Other times I think I will spend the rest of my years alone, that I am too old and that it doesn’t matter now. I hope that is not so but I just don’t know what the next move should be. But I won’t give up. I know he is out there, and that he is looking for me too. That’s what keeps me going even when things look bad. Maybe I’m late…but I’m ready.