An Open Letter to All the Men who are Not My Husband (Well, almost all!)

Now, more so than ever before in my lifetime, I am beyond, blessed with female friendships. In my younger years, the loss of my mother at such a young age made bonding with other women difficult and tenuous at best.

Today, my women friends mean the world to me. My sister-in-law and my nieces, a beautifully renewed and blessedly restored relationship with my step-mother, and the addition of my son’s fiancé and her female family members have all been most welcome injections of estrogen-based love in my life.

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I’ve written before about how important these connections are to me, how hard I’ve worked to cultivate these friendships with these amazing, empowered, resilient women and at my husband’s urging no less with those fateful words, “Now, Malia, you’re going to have to make some friends.” So, now. Now, I have these friendships, these bonds, where expression of emotion is valued, where it actually contributes to the health of the relationship. Wow! That has blown my hair back!

And, then, there are the men in my life. For many, many years, I was the rare girl surrounded by a family full of males in various stages of maturity; my dad and his lifelong friends, my uncles on all sides, my brother and all of his friends, my husband, his brothers, my father-in-law, my son and his passel of friends. I fondly call it boy-world, and I am a card-carrying, lifetime member of the boy-mom club.

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Before we go any further, I want to make it clear that this is not some sort of treatise on the differences between men and women, if such a thing even exists. I am strictly sharing my experience. Period.

So, let me explain. Living in boy-world and becoming a boy-mom, I found that I had to be a little tougher. My skin had to be a little thicker. Open, emotional expression just didn’t carry weight in that world. Please don’t get me wrong. We certainly had two-way communication where we shared how we felt about subjects, but the men in my life just didn’t commonly use the language of emotion that is so skillfully wielded by the women I know and love. It’s not at all that I couldn’t or wasn’t allowed to be emotionally expressive. It’s just that I found that it wasn’t productive. It didn’t move conversations or situations forward. So, I adapted. I adapted my style of communication, the way I expressed what I was feeling.

Honestly, I used to love it when Paul or our son would complain about me (yes, really!), would shoot each other knowing looks when they were using an extra measure of patience with one of my big ideas, or would lovingly joke about my little eccentricities or quirks.  To me, it meant they loved me fully, me and all my imperfections. It was a great comfort for me, a bit of a perfectionist, to know that I didn’t have to be perfect in order for them to fully love me. They got me. They completely accepted me, and took joy in me.

All of this to say, I am so thankful for all of these men in my life, too.

I love that my son now offers me wise counsel. I have sought his input on numerous occasions in the last two years since his father passed away. He never flinches. He never fails to tell it like it is and protect my best interest.

And so, so many other men in my circle of family, friends, neighbors, church family, and colleagues have stepped in and stepped up to help me over and over again. It feels good to seek and receive their assistance and guidance when needed; like when the hot water heater quit working, when the garage door broke, when the dryer vent needed replacing, when a hurricane blew out the porch screens, when I needed advice on how to handle situations. And, then, too, when my emotions were too high, and I needed an objective point of view to help me sort things out, or when I needed protection from others who were trying to take advantage.

I value their honest feedback (you know who you are!), their words of encouragement (you know who you are!!), the challenges they’ve presented me with (yes, you!), and even their gentle correction when my perception was in error or I was just plain wrong (thank you, that would have been a huge mistake!).

I.am.thankful.

I can certainly, absolutely take care of myself. I know that now, but thankfully, I don’t have to. Not all of the time anyway.

Malia

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About Paul – About Us

On February 12, 2018, I took my husband, Paul, to the hospital with severe abdominal pain. Three days later he was diagnosed with stage 4 adenocarcinoma. Cancer. Rare and aggressive, and on March 18, he passed away. He was brave and strong and faithful to the end.

When I met Paul, I had just turned 18. He had just turned 30. Now, I know what you are thinking because it’s what everyone thought. But thirty years later, our relationship had endured and born fruit, real fruit in our precious son and spiritual fruit in our own lives, and, hopefully, also in the lives of others. So, in that way, one of the first things he taught me, or tried to teach me, was not to be sooooo concerned with what everyone else thought and to chart my own course, our own course. That lesson has served me well. When I met Paul, I had never been west of Atlanta. That was the second lesson. Get out there! Learn new things, have new experiences, enjoy the world! He certainly did. Whether it was gardening in his own back yard or exploring new places, we always enjoyed it more when we were together. He was interested in and fascinated by the world…nature, science, history, people, how things worked. One of our first great adventures together was white water rafting. It was a beautiful summer day in Tennessee. I was excited but also nervous, and by the time we were in the raft and heading for the rapids, I was more than nervous. I was scared. He looked over at me, and it must have been written all over my face because he nudged me and said “Hey, you’re ok. It’s fun!”, and it wasn’t long before I was having the time of my life.

When I was with Paul, I was always having the time of my life. That’s how he was. He made everything more fun. He lit up the room. He had the easiest smile, and holy smokes, those dimples! One day during our hospital stay, a nurse asked how we met. We were telling her how our story began, and she turned to me and said, “You must have been helpless!” and the truth is, I was helplessly in love with him. He was the best thing that ever happened to me. His family took me in, and loved me as their own. His friends took me in, and loved me as their own.

Paul had a generosity of spirit that belied the personal struggles he had endured. He was always so quick to offer encouragement to others. He encouraged me in everything. He gave himself to others so completely. He loved working with kids. He was patient and understanding and lifted others up. He even offered encouragement to his doctors particularly students and young residents. He was intuitive and perceptive, and he had a powerful gift for changing others’ perception of themselves. He had that ability, that amazing ability to make people feel better about themselves. WOW!

He had a quick wit. Cancer took everything from him, his very life, but it could not take his sense of humor. He retained that until the end. He often had his doctors and nurses smiling and laughing. He drew people to him. Doctors, nurses, and technicians came to his room “just to visit”. He was always so easy to be around. Near the end, he woke only briefly from time to time. It was on one of these occasions that he asked for our son, but he had gone home for just a little while to shower and change clothes. I told Paul that he wasn’t there, but he would be back soon and that he was “stuck with me” in the meantime. Paul said, “It could be worse.” I replied, “Yes, I suppose it could be worse.” Not missing a beat, he responded, “There could be two of you”, and smirked. That was Paul, flattering but always reeling you back in.

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Paul was not afraid of dying. He was tired of the struggle, and he was ready. He was sad about leaving us. He was worried about how we would manage without him. His last piece of advice to me, the last thing he had to teach me was this… “Now, Malia, you’re going to have to make some friends.”

Fred Rogers said, “The greatest thing that we can do is to help somebody know that they are loved and capable of loving.” And Paul certainly did that. Scott Hamilton, four time cancer survivor, said “We are designed for struggle. We’re better off. We are more in touch with who we are as individuals in the struggle much more than we are in our good fortune.” I have discovered that true healing has occurred when you can be thankful for the suffering, and I am thankful!