A Knight in Battered Armor

Twenty hours in the back of a minivan gives a woman plenty of time to read and think. While thinking about something that happened this year I was trying to figure out the best way to tell my boys NOT to be a Knight in Shining Armor.

Do girls today even want a Knight on a white stead to ride in and sweep them off their feet? Because I feel like there was a time that’s what I thought I wanted, but it’s long gone. Thinking of it now makes me cringe. I truly hope that girls today are not raised to believe they need to be protected, taken care of, or rescued.

Knowing what I’ve learned thirty years later and communications that to my boys with no life experience is hard. Women don’t need a Knight in Shining Armor, they need a Knight in Battered Armor. How do you get battered without getting beaten up by life, or women?

Is it just as effective to tell my boys that women need to be seen, heard, and acknowledged. We need to be equals not only in the housework and raising kids, but making decisions the tough stuff and the everyday stuff. We do not need someone to sweep us up, we need someone to sit with us. We do not need someone to FIX everything - fight the urge to fix it! Just lean in with us, even when its bad, hard, the ugly cry, the unintelligible speak.

My questions is, do girls know what they are looking for? Do they know how to communicate expectations? ( I didn't) Am I pointing my boys in the wrong directions completely?? Both of my boys have talked about how a lot of what girls today are doing on Social Media is male bashing. They come home from school and sports with examples all the time. Last year the girls soccer team literally had a whole season campaign about how they were 10x better than the boys team. still not sure what that was all about.

The only thing I can say, which I have been saying since they were born, is it is my job to keep you safe, and make you a gentleman. I will do my best. The last thing I want is to send these boys out in the world not knowing how to clean a house, do laundry, cook a meal, change a diaper, sew a little, hold a door, pay for dinner, carry on a conversation and most importantly be kind and take care of others.

JOMO - Just one mom's opinion. There is no woman's work and Man's work. It's just work that needs to be done. We don't need rescued: sometimes we need help, sometimes we need company. Kindness wins everything. And their elementary school credo holds true for life: Take care of yourself, take care of others, take care of our wonderful world.

Vacation

 Sighhhhhh…

Can you hear that from here! We are on a family vacation at the beach for five days and I can not tell you the feeling. I am SO incredibly grateful for this time with my family. Getting ready to go on vacation can be so stressful. Just lining up everything at work let alone finding the perfectly most imperfect gap in everyone’s schedule is exhausting.

But we are here. And my toes are in the sand and my kids are playing in the surf, catching fish, and even (Mother Nature cooperating) taking a ride on jet ski’s!! After all the world has been through in 2020, and continues to struggle with, I just can’t put into words how grateful I am to have this opportunity.

I can’t help thinking about the first time we went to the beach with the boys. The cutest part is how little has changed! My oldest is the water baby and is always the first in and last out. And the one who can pick up his mom and carry her out past the breakers. He is also my digger. Building a sandcastle or digging a hole that fits his now 6’4 frame. My youngest is the animal lover, or torturer I am not sure. Digging up sand crabs, holding them, and them watching them scuttle back under the sand. He also loves to chase seagulls, well any bird really. But he will run up and down the beach scattering them in every direction.

I was sitting alone for a bit on the beach and a woman not far from me was there for the second day all alone. As she got her book out I asked what she was reading because I needed a beach book. I struck up a conversation and as it turned out she was alone because her husband passed last year of Covid. She said this was part of her new start learning to do things alone. Her kids were worried about her, she said, if they are that concerned they could give me a few granbabies to take care of! We chatted a while before both going our separate ways.

I am so incredibly grateful for this time with my family and the memories to add to my collection.