I grew up thinking men were superior to women. I was taught to think that, not only by the way our entire society was arranged but by the way my mother treated my father, with trust, admiration, deference, and the best of whatever was on the table. It wasn’t so much a power thing as it was a worthiness thing. Girls of my generation were led to believe that men were wiser as well as stronger, that they would carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, fight the wars, make the decisions, and we women need only worry about matters of the home. Men didn’t cry, men didn’t show neediness, men—the men in my life at least—treated women with gentleness and courtesy and an entirely different kind of respect from the kind they showed for other men.
Author Archives: Lela Brown
Best Card Game Ever
The card game 500 has been a tradition in my family as far back as I can remember. A variation of whist or euchre, it has been around since 1904, according to Wikipedia. Apparently it was very popular until contract bridge came along, but I’ve only known two or three people outside of my family who have even heard of it. It’s easier to play than bridge, but harder than rummy or canasta and in my opinion more fun than pinochle. Fast-paced and challenging, it’s about equally dependent on luck and skill. The rules can be found in Hoyle’s Rules of Games and on the Internet but they’re not quite the same as ours, and we consider ours sacred.
Absence
I got an inspirational email yesterday about a college student who argued with his atheistic professor concerning the existence of God. The student said that there’s no such thing as darkness, just the absence of light; no such thing as cold, just the absence of heat; and finally, no such thing as evil, just the absence of good, or love, or God. The pupil turned out to be Albert Einstein.
Mindsight
I have read Dr. Daniel J. Siegel’s book Mindsight once and then again, and I still keep it handy for reference. Right now I’m making my way through some of his other books, though they were written for professionals so that much in them is beyond my frame of reference. The author has a gift for making the difficult comprehensible so I’m learning.
The Palest Ink
I have been writing all my life and I’ve kept most of what I have written. Now the question of what to do with it all is very real. Whatever that writing lacks, it is a history of my life, and as an old proverb notes, “The palest ink is more accurate than the sharpest memory.” Published or not, it’s my body of work, the fruit of my efforts, the summing up of what I’ve learned and lived over all these decades.