Woman's Gift

There's no question about it. I've become as bitter and mean spirited as I have ever been in my life. It comes from constant fear and being tired and being alone and from having any part of life as I knew it torn away in about 45 minutes. And don't say I'm not bitter. Half the time I can't stand being in the same room with myself.

And let me say, I've never really liked women. I grant you I didn't have many stellar role models, but there's always been something in me that made it easier to talk to men... straight or gay. That's not to say I haven't had a few estrogen filled spirits in my life. My dearest friend in high school was Leslie, a beautiful scarred woman who as best as anyone can determine (thanks to her Godforsaken parents) died in her late twenties of AIDS.

And there is Kevin. I kind of had to half like her for her masculine name, but she made her own impression fast enough and we've known each other for about 25 years. She knows too much about me.

Then there's Reva. Let's just say I would not be sane today without her.

...........

As I've gone on this journey of change, bucking and kicking all the while, almost every male has made his departure. Keith (my Happy Homo) is doing his best, but he's going through his own brand of hell.

........

I say that to say this. I sit here three nights before Christmas and it's quiet. Years past it would have been filled with busyness...getting ready for the party, or the Holiday itself. House would have been full of light, banked with Poinsettia's, filled with food, wrapped gifts from the ten foot tree halfway into the room, music playing.

You can't help but compare them.

As I was putting away the things I brought home tonight from the store and work and wherever... a gratitude filled me.

There were cookies. I've eaten more damned good homemade cookies this year than I have in life.

There was candy. Really good candy.

There was a handmade journal, just for me. Beautiful in it's leather lustre, perfect card enclosed.

There was a handmade pine cone wreath to hang somewhere, she said.

There were loaned DVD's, to turn me into a Geek.

And I glanced over to a needlework flower with the word 'Grow' made by certain, pixie hands and remembered in my freezer was a gift for guests who will arrive... in time.

And the gratitude rained down, because that's how it feels, gratitude. Like a warm shower sluicing from your head and down your back. It warms and opens you. A priest friend of mine said it's not gratitude unless it truly gives you chills. Well, I had them.

And it was because of women. Every one a woman from work, a retail environment that's fluid at best and divisive at worst.

But these women have helped sustain me when I've been distant, angry, sorrowful and petty and couldn't give anything in return. They could have 'read' me all these months the way I've 'read' women most of my life but instead they've kept giving because as one of them so aptly put it, " That's how I roll".

Without sarcasm, thank you all. Merry Christmas to me.