Tag: laughter

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My Eggs & Such

Note: This post is from blogging I did February 2016 for another writing space. I’m curating my content from past years and putting my work from different places all together on my blog here. Enjoy the read.

Sister friends are the best. These are women who decorate your life with glittery sass, sharp wit, and frequent “girrrrrrrrrllll, did you hear about…” moments. You laugh with them, you cry with them, you shop with them.

And occasionally you talk about your eggs with them.

Yep, the ones in your ovaries.

A recent lunch with my sister-friend Ashley included one such egg conversation. Ashley is a spunky and hilarious black girl who enjoys her career, loves being married to her college beau, and nurturing their two young boys.

While enjoying our food we talked about life, relationships, and kids. She mentioned a married couple we’re both friends with and wondered if they’d started working on a family.

That question led to some words about our eggs, how they don’t get any younger and how a friend told her, “Everybody ain’t gonna have a testimony like Sarah’s from the Bible…”

Well, she right.

After more conversation about our ovaries, she asked, “Mel, how old are you?”

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Photo by Brian Chan on Unsplash.

“36,” I replied as I ate more fried chicken.

“Mel, your eggs ain’t getting any younger either,” she shared, with a raised eyebrow, in her Chattanooga southern girl accent.

“Well, that may be true, but whatever babies the Lord has destined to come from these eggs, He’s already planned them out in eternity past and when He says it’s time they will enter into eternity present,” I responded as I ate even more chicken and dashed on some hot sauce.

“Girl, you right,” Ashley laughed. We finished up lunch. But her words stayed with me and I thought more about my eggs.

In this week of Valentine’s, there’s pressure some single women feel to jump into coupledom and find their happily ever after.

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Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash.

Especially if you’re in the land of the 30s and people keep asking you when are you going to get married? Or do you want to get married, do you want to have children?

But life is not a Hallmark Channel movie where love and “the perfect man” find you when you want them to. Happily ever afters don’t always materialize. Often you have to trade the happy for the real ever afters.

I believe the real ever afters include surrender. God invites us to willingly enter into the story He’s writing for each of us.

This means laying down our expectations and entitlements.

As I choose to lay these things down, the life I live becomes richer than the life I felt entitled to receive. New developments in my story continue to encourage me.

Trusting God with my eggs and my future sounds pretty funny to say. But it’s true. I’m eager to invite Him into my rollercoaster ride of romance and relationships. His undeniable wisdom guides me well.

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My Mama Taught Me to Kick Butt & Take Names

“I don’t think it ever occurred to me before how much and how often women are praised for displaying traits that basically render them invisible. When I really think about it, I realize the culprit is the language generally used to praise women. Especially mothers.

She sacrificed everything for her children…She never thought about herself…She gave up everything for us…She worked tirelessly to make sure we had what we needed. She stood in the shadows, she was the wind beneath our wings. 

Greeting card companies are built on that idea.

Tell her how much all the little things she does all year long that seem to go unnoticed really mean to you.

With a $2.59 card.

Mother’s Day is built on that idea.

This is good, we’re told. It’s good how Mom diminishes and martyrs herself. The message is: mothers, you are such wonderful and good people because you make yourselves smaller, because you deny your own needs, because you toil tirelessly in the shadows and no one ever thanks or notices you…this all makes you AMAZING.

Yuck.

What the hell kind of message is that?

Would ANYONE praise a man for this?

Those are not behaviors anyone would hope to instill in their daughters, right?

Right?

I’m not saying MOTHERHOOD shouldn’t be praised. Motherhood should be praised. Motherhood is wonderful. I’m doing it. I think it’s great.

There are all kinds of ways and reasons that mothers can and should be praised. But for cultivating a sense of invisibility, martyrdom and tirelessly working unnoticed and unsung? Those are not reasons.

There are all kinds of ways and reasons that mothers can and should be praised. But for cultivating a sense of invisibility, martyrdom and tirelessly working unnoticed and unsung? Those are not reasons.

Praising women for standing in the shadows?

Wrong.

Where is the greeting card that praises the kinds of mothers I know? Or better yet, the kind of mother I was raised by?

I need a card that says: Happy Mother’s Day to the mom who taught me to be strong, to be powerful, to be independent, to be competitive, to be fiercely myself and fight for what I want.

Or Happy Birthday to a mother who taught me to argue when necessary, to raise my voice for my beliefs, to not back down when I know I am right.

Or, Mom, thanks for teach me to kick a** and take names at work. Get well soon.

Or simply Thank you Mom, for teaching me how to make money and feel good about doing it. Merry Christmas.

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Where are the greeting cards for the kind of mother I try to be? For the kind of mother I need my kids to see? For the kind of mother I want my daughters to one day be?

And if there is no greeting card, what is there?

There is me.

I have to be my own greeting card. And to do that, I have to at least be able to take a compliment.” – Shonda Rhimes, “Year of Yes.”

I would like to take this beautiful moment in time to honor my mama Gloria, who’s taught me to kick butt and take names in all aspects of my life:

Find your inner warrior: “Life may get you down Mel, but it never has to get you out.”

Dealing with challenging humans: “Who she THINK she IS? She ain’t no betta than you.”

Maintaining better health: “Did you take a cod liver oil pill? I keep telling you to do this.”

Being aware of one’s surroundings: “Mel, secure your pocketbook, lock your doors!”

Perspectives on social media: “I think I may want to get on Spacebook.” (Um, it’s Facebook woman).

Mama, I honor you on the day you entered this world and celebrate your birthday with many who love and thank God for you. You are a jewel – a hilarious, sometimes crazy, but always brilliant one! Happy birthday to the woman who’s been a real-life greeting card in my life, showing me what womanhood, personal excellence, and #blackgirlmagic looked like before that hashtag even came to be.

I love you mama.

You are my #1 she-roe.

Always your girl,

Melody Latrice

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Randomness: Cougars vs. Pumas

If women over 40 are considered cougars for dating men who are younger, I think men who are over 40, and definitely those 50 and 60 year old ones who date women who are like 18 years old, them dudes ought to be called pumas.

*Clarification: My friend Rob says men who are over 40 who date 18 year old girls are actually called perverts.

Well there you have it. Happy Monday good people!

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Mamas & Aunties

When I’m wanting her to listen to me or give me something I want or have her stop telling me something I told her I already know, “mama” is what I call her. Mamas just have a flavor about them. When I’m laughing with her, laughing at her or giving her my perspectives on the world and just shooting the breeze, “momma” is how I see her. She’s the same lady that called me one day and asked, “Is your phone — that 229 number — still working?”

Me (curiously): “Um, yes.”

Momma: “We’ll, I’m just checking ‘cause it just rings and rings AND rings…”

Me: “That’s ‘cause I didn’t HEAR it so I could pick it up!”

Momma: “Oh, okay, well I’m just checking.”

She is a verified hot mess. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. My mom is one of my best friends. She gets me and I get her. I learned from her early on how to carry myself with grace, poise, intention and also enjoy life with plenty of humor and tons of wit. She is one of the wittiest people I know! She is the Queen of Wit. Man, she is sharp and brilliant and loving and so wonderfully amazing. She’s been a great mom to me.

Not everyone can raise a daughter as a single parent with God’s guidance the way she has with me. Every accomplishment, success, endeavor and privilege I’ve been afforded took place from the lift she gave me to climb upon steps she laid in advance for me. She sacrificed her needs to make sure I had mine met.

My mom was one of the first two African American civilian employees to integrate the City of Atlanta’s Vehicles for Hire division in the 1970s. She’s an Advanced Toastmaster and can lay it down with her oratory and sharp communication skills.

She’s served as the president of her homeowner’s association for several years and leads with style as an usher at her church. Oh, and the woman can bust a baaaad Michael Jackson moonwalk-ish routine when Thriller comes on. I have the video evidence to prove it. Incriminating? Maybe. Hilarious and will I plan to keep it to show my kids one day? Absolutely.

As I get older I’m thinking not just about the family I desire to build in my life but also the ways I plan to care for her and bless her as she gets older. When one of my books come out and it’s best selling and good things begin to happen, I can’t wait to give back to her plus so much more all that she’s blessed me with through her love and sacrifices. I am the woman I am today and in all the days that will come because of my mama.

We have a regular time to connect each week and chat about life, usually Sunday evenings. I missed last week and was trying to find a time this week to talk. She was picking Friday and Saturday night and I was like, “Mama, I am young and single. My evenings are busy…I’m am not sitting around with nothing to do.”

Her reply: “Well alright then Mel (in a slightly little huffy voice)! When do you want to talk???”

Me: “In the morning!”

We both are a mess.

I don’t know when I knew to call her auntie but I was young enough to know that’s who she was and who I needed her to be. My mama’s younger sister. The woman whose birthday is just two weeks ahead of mine. The breast cancer survivor. The one who shares a similar gentleness and heart on her sleeve as I do for the world around us. The lady who wants people to know about Jesus and uses opportunities to keep telling the world about him.

The lady who has the same eyes and smile as my mom. The one whose kitchen cabinets I would crawl in when I was very little and play in after I’d go around, ask for and get the fuzzy fuzz lint balls in my Uncle Randy’s pockets. The woman I respect as my aunt but love as my “Auntie.” Aunties just have a swag about them.

She’s the same lady that told me once, “All these men who are downloading…this is just horrible Melody, downloading and all this stuff.”

I believe she meant to describe men who were on the “down low” hiding their bi-sexuality from the women they were sleeping with. But I knew what she meant and I was not going to say anything different.

Mamas & Aunties. They are some kind of amazing.

Originally written August 30, 2013.