046/100 aka 186/365

EQUALITY
Word Count: 334

Just watched the hummingbird dance his crescent of display for a female sitting politely in the bush. He doesn’t know she’s on the pill. I wink at her and she winks back. A note of understanding.

There is a rhythm that goes beyond the hummingbird’s measured flight, that seems to cut into the air like a knife circling a watermelon on a hot summer picnic table. Finally he breaks his dance and flies off to the trees at the edge of the yard. She, relieved, comes to the feeder but hum and whoosh! and he’s back on her like a magnet. I sympathize, but she knows as well as I that this is life. That’s it and you learn to work around it.

I’ve got to start thinking about making dinner. That, too, is part of life. It’s getting harder; lately he’s been complaining about chicken. After twenty years he suddenly is not too hot on chicken. I sneak it in when I can because I’m tired of balancing beef, pork, pasta and fish–and the fish has been on his “not crazy about” list for the past six years and pasta is so high in carbohydrates.

While he changes, I adjust. Women, I think, always adjust, despite any feminist thinking on either part. It is acknowledgement of equality versus the need to be mothered and cared for. Particularly when he is working and I am not. Or at least, not getting paid much for some of it, nothing at all for all the rest. And to be fair, it isn’t him. I don’t need someone else to hint at guilt. I’ve learned it better on my own a long, long time ago.

And there are good things that he does that counterbalance this relationship. Like killing spiders and the occasional mouse. He also bought a he-man’s mower. And because I hate the noise, he snow-blows the driveway before he goes to work at five a.m.

Still, I wish he would dance.