Thursday, March 3, 2011

The White Picket Fence

I never flipped through magazines looking and yearning for that beautiful white wedding dress.
I never held babies and dreamed of having my very own.
And home for me was seeing my Pop in a white t-shirt and Hanes boxers eating a tub of Cookies and Cream ice-cream with a spoon as my Grammy cooked her very own crab soup with leftover crabclaws from the dozen eaten the night before. The house steamed Old Bay.
I believed that babies were born hearing.
I believed that husbands were supposed to mow the lawn on Sunday mornings.
I believed that wives knew how to cook and clean.

I loved the part of Tom Sawyer where he tricked the kids into painting that fence.
I thought he was so intelligent as he sat there smugly watching the others do his work for him.
I admired him.

I now know that the most satisfying thing a woman can do...
is to pick up a paintbrush
start from the ground
and work her way up each and every single panel
until that fence shines white.

Only then can she truly savor the apple as she sits under the shaded tree all by herself.

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