Don't Show Me Your Ass

As my mom, Patricia, tells the story, my dad pulled her aside one Saturday afternoon and said: "P, you know you're the most beautiful woman in the world to me. But for the life of me, I'll never understand why Monday through Friday you get dressed up for those people at work and on Saturdays and Sundays you walk around here looking like a mess."

But before you become mortified, my mom is quick to clarify that my dad wasn't asking her to put on stockings, high heels and full face of make-up topped off by a fresh-out-the-salon hair style. He just really wanted her to put a little curl in her hair and maybe put on a little lipstick and mascara. Nothing inconvenient or unreasonable. After all, the weekends were about cleaning the house, taking care of the lawn, doing laundry, getting groceries and getting back in time to watch Soul Train at noon, right after Fat Albert. (Hey, hey, hey!)

Now, don't get it twisted. A lesser woman would've cussed my dad out, snatched up me and my younger brother (I couldn't have been older than 7 years old) and moved on about her business hollering something about female liberation the entire way. Instead, my then 20-something mom understood that my dad was, at least, being honest with her. He could've kept it inside, slowly begining to resent her for not maintaining the vision of beauty with which he first fell in love. Worse yet, he could've grown to resent the fact that she was looking good for everyone else, except him. Men, after all, are visual creatures -- let's not deny this key fact. My dad could've also sought beauty elsewhere. I thank God my dad wasn't that kind of man.

I must've been in my mid-30's when mom told me the story over the phone one evening, and it was just a few years after he'd passed. Hearing that story, for me, was like a golden nugget of information about my dad who was no longer with me. As mom and I giggled about how dad had sho' nuff told my momma to get it together, it suddenly reminded me that dad had told me something similar to what he'd told mom. When I was a pre-teen, he said that I was not to be seen walking around the house without passing a comb through my bushy unpermed hair and still in my jammies. No, I wasn't at that lipstick and curling irons stage, but he was telling me the same thing, in essence. GET IT TOGETHER!

Fast forward to the year 2010, and I'm no longer an 11-year-old girl. I'm a much wiser 38-year-old woman. And dad's been deceased for 12 years now. But the story hit me in a way I'd never seen it before. What my then-young father was telling his young bride is this: don't give your best to people OUTSIDE of the relationship -- give it to me.

And then POW! I got struck with all kinds of revelation.

Dad's message to mom, at its core, was to not give your best to people outside of the relationship and then come home giving less than your best. Moreover, don't assume the people in the relationship with you will accept you at your worst all the time.

Then I applied this new understanding to my own dwindling, dying, damaged relationship with a man who was going through so many things he'd begun to show me his worst after promising me his best. But what really lit my fire was knowing this same man who was basically showing me his ass was getting up every day, going into the office and giving customers and colleagues, supervisors and strangers his BEST!!! It really infuriated me. Why? Because those people at the job wouldn't have cared one way or the other if he was present or not. Had he been fired or resigned, it would've been "on to the next one!" As for me, I offered this man my financial assistance. And when I did, he never responded. Nor did he ever accept the help.

Again, this man that I cared about was going through some major life-altering events. But then again, we all do...eventually. And while I don't deny him that, I cannot ignore the fact that he still got up every day and gave the people at his job his best and damned near ignored me. He showed me his ass.

The bottom line is to keep a relationship in tact, you have to give your best. And while we all fall down and we all sometimes give our worst to those who love us best...you'd better be sure the people who love you are willing to deal with it for prolonged periods of time.

After my dad sat my mom down and asked her to share some of "the pretty" with him, mom took the time to make herself up every weekend. Some weekends, she looked spectactular -- and for no particular reason.

My dad would see mom applying mascara and putting on a little lipstick some Saturday mornings. And he'd ask: "P, where you going?"

She'd say, "Nowhere."

And dad knew she was looking good just for him.

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