In the Company of Women

Having grown up in the South with only an older brother (no sisters), and relating more to my father than my mother, in general I've seemed to look up to men more than women for much of my life. As a pre-adolescent, I hung out with my younger male cousins, leading them into the dense pine woods "in the back" and proving to them (and myself) that I could find a way out again. In high school, I admired and looked up to my brother and his musician friends (and even married two of them).

Conversely, I looked at (and experienced) most women as shallow, interested only in the trivialities of appearance, in vicious gossip or fundamentalist Christianity, or in out-doing other women somehow, whether in gaining power in the workplace (and working head-to-head with paternalistic men) or in their homes, bragging on how they manipulate their husbands.

In this transitional time for me, now that I'm living in the Northwest and have retired from full-time work, I realize that in the fifty-four years I lived in the South, I formed only one long-term friendship with a woman whom I continue to stay connected with on any deeper level. Yet in the year and a half I've lived here, I've met and befriended (and continue to meet) several women of different ages who are willing and eager to connect at a level I never expected possible for me to enjoy----without competition, supporting and reveling in our differences and various talents and gifts.

What an unexpected pleasure it is to be in the company of women and to love it so.