AGAPE LOVE

Agape love is God’s divine love, and that is exactly what my mother gave to me. My Mother sacrificed for all her children and loved us no matter what. My Mother never gave up on me and I know she prayed for my happiness and well-being. She cared for me when I could not care for myself. She picked me up when I fell, and she was the one I called when something good or bad happened. She was my friend when I was friendless.

As I got older, other people occupied the spaces that once only she occupied. She graciously stepped out the center of my life and allowed me to grow into a strong independent woman.

When I found someone to love, she was happy for me, when I had my son, she told me that now I would never be alone.

My Mother left this world five years ago, and I miss her dearly. The legacy that my Mother left cannot be measured monetarily. Her legacy is the love she gave to me and the home she created. Her legacy resides in my heart, comforts my soul, and eases my mind whenever it is troubled.

My Mother made raising six kids look easy. Being a mother of one, I am in awe of the strengthen that it took to do the things she did for her family.

Now that my Mother is gone, I am grateful for every holiday, birthday, and barbeque that our family celebrated together, because they are the memories that sustains me now.

This Mother’s Day I will think of my Mother and the times we spent together. I will raise a glass in her honor and thank her for loving me.

Happy Mother’s Day MOM!

LUSTFUL DESIRES AND MONOGAMY

Once upon a time a bad boy, (trucker) with bad boy toys (motorcycle) and bad boy friends, (thugs on motorcycle) moved across the street from me. That fact that he qualified for a $600,000.00 mortgage was enough to send me over the good girl cliff. Every time I heard his big rig return home from a haul, I was so excited that you would have thought he was coming home to me. On the weekends that I heard a motorcycle’s motor revving, I would stop what I was doing in the house and go outside to water my lawn. Needless, to say, every old woman and young girl within a one block radius ran outside to water their lawn also. The neighborhood looked like a garden club meets motorcycle club convention. It was comical, we ladies would wave hello to each other with our water hose in hand while surreptitiously glancing across the street looking at the bad boys, smoking blunts, leaning back on their hogs and listening to music.

After a few months of this not so harmless fantasy I begin to seriously wonder what I would do with the man across the street if opportunity presented itself. Would I find myself in an entanglement like Jada? I had finally answered the age-old question can you be in love with your husband, wife, partner, and cheat on them. The simple answer is yes, but…it is a slippery slope that could lead to ruining a relationship that was worth keeping. While it may have been a fun ride, (a ride where you looked like you were, rode hard and put away wet) I doubt if my feelings would not have tried to get involved, and before I knew it, I would have been dab in the middle of an entanglement. Luckily for me the housing crisis of 2008 hit, and my bad boy lost his house, saving my relationship, and I’m sure a few other relationships on our street.

Can you cheat on the one you love? Can you cheat without developing a connection with the other person? Is the sexual act worst than the betrayal of trust?

WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY

Looking back on my life it is easy to see the things that I wished I had done differently. I have made so many bad choices and missteps that I sometimes wonder if I had chosen a different path what my life would have looked like. Would I have been happier, more financially secure or would I have ended up exactly where I am now.

Looking back on my life I can pinpoint a pivotal decision I made that changed the road that I would travel. We all have faced a crossroad where we had to make a choice, and no matter what choice we made we wonder if it was the right one.

Someone that I loved would on occasions express to me how he regretted the bad choices he made in this life. When I spoke to him near the end of his life he still had not forgiven himself for the choices and missteps that lead him down a path that he later regretted.

If I could speak to him now, I would tell him that we all have things in our past that we wished we had done differently. I wish I had told him that he was so much more than the bad choices made.

I would love to hear about what you would have done differently and whether or not you have forgiven yourself for the choices that you have made?

Evelyn C. Fortson