Out Of Darkness

by Smith, Stephanie Jean

  I soon realized that GPCP was a microcosm of the Presidency of the United States; I was the most powerful person in the group with no power. Oh sure I had the power of veto, but without the support of the officers everything I proposed would fall by the wayside.

  I stressed the importance of meeting monthly; how could we as a group grow and network effectively if we only met six times a year. I proposed that we move the meeting time from late afternoon to noon. I suggested that free lunch be served since we had more money in the treasury than the law allowed for a non-profit organization. Soon proposals and suggestions became reality.

  I was President of GPCP for two years, under my reign membership increased 40%, we changed the by-laws to expand the office term from one year to two, and we increased disaster awareness in the city of Omaha creating partnerships with the Red Cross and Omaha Safety Council.

  In my presence, the members thought I was brilliant and innovative, behind my back I was an uppity black woman wasting the group's money on lunch. The female members of the group felt as if I could have done more to spotlight the immense strides women have contributed to the Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Industry. The few black members felt I should have addressed the lack of financial support for natural disaster plaguing the "Black Community". The good old white men's network did everything they could to undermine my success with the help of the two before mentioned groups.

  Now I was dealing with 70 companies with approximately 140 members. Can you imagine the enormous expectations that 313 million Americans have for one President? Every socioeconomic group has an axe to grind or unrealistic goals that the President has not met. I sure as hell couldn't make 140 people happy; certainly not all the time. So, how can one man make 313 million people content? It's never going to happen, especially when our state representatives cater to their own self-serving agendas.

  Until people become serious about wanting to change the conditions of their communities and turn that pointing finger, aiming it at their own chests nothing will ever change.

  Prodigal Son: Identifying With the Other Son (Of course this is just a story)

  I come from a large family. I am the youngest of ten, and my parents adopted two of my nieces. I was a quiet child observing others served a tremendous source of amusement for me (still is). What I came to learn in my earlier musings as a child is there are some family members whose sole purpose in life is to create havoc.

  I’ll tell you what I mean; some of my older siblings are some of the most selfish people I’ve ever encountered in my entire life; especially when it came to raising and acknowledging their children. What I couldn’t understand is how they came to be that way. I mean we came from the same family, with the same set of parents, and the same family values so why did we end up so different. It all comes down to choosing, regardless of how people were raised, they decide to be a decent person or a janked up piece of trash.

  The parable of the prodigal son tells of a man who has two sons, and the youngest one wants his inheritance now. The father relents and gives the younger son his inheritance and the younger son leaves and squanders his inheritance with every type of debauchery known to man. He ends up in an animal pen eating slop that was not fit for swine. The younger son reflects on how he wasted his inheritance and his life on ephemeral things. He came home begged his father and God for forgiveness and proclaimed that he would be a servant for his father.

  The father was grateful and filled with joy at the return of his son. He had fine robes placed upon his son and gave a feast to celebrate the return of his son. Now the other son, the oldest, was faithful to God and his father, did everything thing that was asked of him. He stayed with his father worked the fields, labored with the other servants and he couldn’t understand why his father was lavishing all this attention on his brother.

  I never actually cared for the parable of The Prodigal Son, probably because I’ve always identified with the other son. I understand his pain and frustration and the need for him to give his brother a beat down. In a household where many children reside, each one is always fighting for their place at the table (not the dinner table). The children in the family constantly fight for their position in the family (i.e., the pretty one, smart one, athletic one etc...). My role in my family was to stay out of trouble and do well in school.

  I can always count on someone from my family cause problems. I can even set a stopwatch with a few of them. Somebody’s in jail, running from the feds, sexing up someone else’s husband, about to lose their car, or need help with the rent. For some reason, they never have money when their children needed coats, school clothes, lunch money, shoes, boots, haircuts, and most of all attention. No matter what, my mother still embraces them as if the sun doesn’t shine until they wake up in the morning.

  Like the other son, no one remarked on my straight “A” status, academic awards, and college graduation. No one cared that I always did the right thing, took care of my parents, cooked for them and took care of the yard work when my father couldn’t. I was just doing what a child is supposed to do for her parents. I learned a long time ago that no one gets credit for doing what he or she is supposed to do. No one genuinely appreciates you until you've totally screwed your life up and then finally get yourself together.

  On the flip side, when a brother gets out of jail we have a barbecue to celebrate; when a sister gets her own husband and stops sleeping with everybody else’s, she gets a white wedding with all the trimmings. Why do they receive praise after all the drama and suffering they’ve caused?

  One day I got my answer: if the other son’s heart had been in the right place, he would have understood why his father was so happy when the younger son returned. My parents love their children unconditionally. It doesn't matter what they've done, or whom they have hurt. Parents can't give up on their children because they look at is as a failure on their part.

  My family didn’t give me praise for what I was doing in my life because I didn’t need the praise. They knew that they didn’t have to worry about me going to jail, vamping someone else’s husband, or not taking care of my child.

  Therefore, instead of being envious, frustrated, and angry that I didn't receive accolades I thought I deserved. I thank God that I didn’t experience all that drama to become the person I am. Now, I can look at my siblings and not see deadbeat mothers and fathers, sociopaths, tramps, liars, and thieves. I look past all that and view them as my parents' children, worthy of love despite their faults for no one is perfect.

  Respect

  I have noticed that when people get a certain age they feel that they’ve earned a sense of entitlement? Especially with older women; older women love telling you what’s what. The reason they feel safe in saying the things they do is they know my parents instilled in me a sense of respect for the elderly. There are many reasons to knock an old woman out of her chair or kick her down the stairs, just don’t do it.

  Entitlement:

  Several years ago, while working my way through college, I used to work at the mall. The store I worked at sold real crap: jelly shoes, lace, birds and fish, etc. We used to sell Blow-pops (hard candy suckers with gum in the middle) for 17 for $1.00. Well one older woman had a bag of suckers, with a lot of attitude and nastiness she told me there were 85 suckers in the bag and told me to charge her $5.00. Granted had there been 85 suckers in that bag she would have been right. Had she come to me with a better attitude, I would have just taken her word for it and rang the suckers up accordingly. My mother taught me to respect my elders; however, she didn’t say I had to listen to their lies.

  I picked up the bag of suckers off the counter it was so heavy I had to use both hands. I told her I was sorry, but I had to count the suckers. I dumped the suckers out onto the counter, and there were 132 suckers in the bag. I asked her did she wanted all 132 suckers or did she just want the 85 she told me she had.

  That woman cursed me out and called me everything but a child of God. She told me I c
ould take those damn suckers and stick them in a not feasible place (I’m sure it would have hurt real bad). I saw her from time to time at the store, but she never came through my line again. I guess she found another sucker to fall for her routine.

  Manipulator:

  I became a junior usher at my church when I was eleven years old; someone came up with the bright idea of making matching pink dresses for the girls and pink jackets for the guys. Now my older sister Fern can sew. She used to make dresses for me and my sisters, and sometimes she would even make all of my school clothes. One of the extremely older heffas on the usher board wanted my sister to help make the dresses for the junior usher board, or at least my dress.

  I didn’t tell my sister or mother about the situation with this church member. I don’t like it when people draft others for things they don’t want to do. In addition, I was thinking about how this would affect me, when my sister sewed I got the dubious pleasure of doing all the pinning and cutting. I certainly wasn’t going to do this for an ugly pink dress I didn’t want anyway.

  This woman asked me on several occasions until finally I just told her my sister worked and didn’t have the time. That old turtle told me it was just as well because Fern probably wouldn’t do an admirable job anyway. I could see the satisfaction on her face that she had just slammed my sister. I didn’t say anything disrespectful to her or it would have gotten back to my mother. I just smiled politely and told her that I’m glad she understood, and walked away.

  The turtle ended up making my dress and she told me that she added extra material in the skirt part to accommodate my massive butt. I did tell my mother this time. I don't know what my mother said to the woman, but she didn’t talk about my massive butt again, well at least, not in my presence.

  Misplaced Admiration:

  When my nephew was a smaller child, he used to love older people especially if they had white hair. There was one particular elderly lady at my church that he would run and speak to every Sunday. As he grew older he grew out of his fascination with white hair, but he still went out of his way to speak to the elderly lady in question.

  Several years ago, I was planning a dinner at the church for my mother’s 80th birthday. I was calling and visiting some of the older members looking for a specific picture of me and my siblings that my mother had sent out as a Christmas card years ago. I went to visit this same elderly lady that my nephew has so admired, and we were sitting in her basement talking as we looked through pictures. I didn’t realize that she was such a hateful old woman; one by one, she began tearing down members of the church. Then she said something about a friend of mind, about how he didn’t take care of his daughter and that it was all a front. I realize how much trouble my friend went through to gain custody of his daughter, and I began getting pissed.

  For some reason, we began talking about food and how people didn’t cook anymore. This lady went on to say that women were just too lazy to cook for their husbands and children. I told her that times were different, and most women work outside the home, and some of them have two jobs. I went on to say that most kids liked simple meals anyway; my nephew could eat pizza or hamburgers every day. Do you know that this old heffa told me that my nephew was chunky, and he looked as if all he ate was pizza and hamburgers! I was already pissed about what she’d said about my friend, now I flat out wanted to slap her out of her chair for her comments about my nephew. I stood up abruptly and told her I have to leave. All the way up the stairs I chanted to myself not to slap an old woman out of her chair over and over again.

  At this woman's funeral, only one person got up to say anything positive about the women. A choir member had the audacity to suggest that the lady in question was misunderstood. No, she wasn't, everyone understood that she meant the horrible shit that she said, and she was a hateful old bitter bi-atch.

  I’m always thankful for the home training I received from my parents, or I would have been sent to prison years ago for kicking an old lady’s ass.

  Silent Approval

  Don’t you just hate it when your friends make it impossible for you to take their side? I try to be a supportive friend; however, there are times when my friends are wrong and this puts me in a precarious position of offering silent approval. Silent approval means being a sounding board as your friends rant on about a situation in which they think they’re right when you happen to think they’re wrong. Let me provide some detailed examples of what I mean.

  Every year without fail I have a friend who gets bent out of shape because her husband hosts a Super Bowl party for his friends and co-workers. My friend doesn’t like most of her husband’s friends and doesn’t want them in her house. Now I perfectly understand the dislike of a spouse or boyfriend’s friends, especially the lifelong friends. In his defense, this is the only time he invites all of his friends over. So this forces me to offer silent approval, unless my friend complains a little too long then I have to rein her in; she’s been known to piss and moan for weeks about being a football widow.

  Now I could understand my friend’s position better if her husband was a lazy bum, never takes out the trash, doesn’t wash clothes and doesn’t help with the children. I had to remind my friend that she hosts a lot of birthday parties, baby showers, Tupperware parties, Avon parties, bake sales, and picture parties. I’ve had the pleasure or displeasure of being in attendance to most of these events. I think she should let her husband host his party in peace and stop involving me in dumb crap and exposing me to her obnoxious behavior. My job as a friend is to offer moral support when her husband is being an ass not when she’s holding that title.

  I have another friend whose son received a basketball scholarship to Marquette University. What should have been one of the happiest days for this family quickly turned into some heavy-duty momma drama. He’s my friend’s oldest son, and she wants him to attend a college that isn’t so far away. So she started putting pressure on him to attend a local college instead, at least for the first year.

  Normally my friend is an extraordinarily sweet lady, but on this issue she was wrong on so many levels. What should have been a terrific celebration of her son’s accomplishment, turned my friend’s family inside out, and she became mad when no one took her side. I’m her friend so automatically I’m supposed to be on her side no matter what, right or wrong. Bickering amongst the family continued for a couple of months until her oldest son moved in with his grandmother. My friend has three sons the youngest is twelve, the middle son is fifteen, and the oldest son will be eighteen before the end of the school year.

  I was seriously conflicted with this situation. I realized how hard my friend works to provide for her sons; her oldest son is revered around the house, his brothers’ look up to him, he does well in school, and he has a part-time job. Everyone was in a crummy mood and at one point the youngest son wanted to move in with this grandmother too. My friend had several confrontations with her sons’ father too. As much as I love my friend, I couldn’t support her position like she wanted. I understand her position and her hesitancy to send her first born to an out-of-state college. How could she deny her son an opportunity that she took advantage of, but her parents paid to send her?

  Eventually, she came to see reason and gave her son her blessing in attending Marquette. The oldest son is still living with his grandmother, but he comes by to have dinner and visit with his brothers. I know he loves his mother, but it’s taking him a while to forgive her for the turmoil and guilt she put him through. Once again I blame my friend for causing unnecessary drama and how dare she put me on the side of her ex-husband (king of asses), and her mother (the wicked witch of the North).

  Sometimes it’s hard being a friend, but being a good friend means telling the truth even if your friend isn’t receptive to what you have to say. If you share a true friendship, eventually you’ll be forgiven.

  Twisted

  Your words are sweeter than brown sugar

  Your proposition mimics my hopes and drea
ms

  So excited am I about our future together

  I didn't understand the word twisted

  Day after day, I wait here patiently for your texts and calls

  Ignoring all other influences in my life because you are my star

  The sun doesn't shine for me until I see your face

  It was all designed to get me twisted

  Empty promises echo through my mind

  I have no friends left, and my family is fed up

  For you are the reason in which I live, for me there's nothing else

  Oh Lord yes, you've got me twisted

  I'm hanging on by a thread, but I begin to fade

  Setting in a room all alone with my phone clutched in my hand

  Too nervous to eat I'm just a shadow of my former self

  How was I so twisted

  Years have gone by, I still sit and wait

  The love I have for you is so deep

  I await the moment your recognize my worthiness

  Making an honest woman out of me

  Still twisted

  What A Fool Believes

  You tell me lies that become my truth, am I a fool to believe.

  Your smile the most lethal weapon in your arsenal, but you use it sparingly.

  You're chocolate eyes, mesmerized me at first glance, all I could see is the beauty without intent.

  You're calm demeanor never wavers under pressure, ooh you sexy control freak.

  You weaved a spell around me fulfilling all my dreams, a little too easily it would seem.

  You're the tempter come to ravish me, pretending interest in everything that is me.