Eleanor Rouse

I don’t read much about football as I’m not a sporty girl.  However, this article in today’s New York Times spoke to me. It’s about a group of middle-aged friends and their Sunday pickup games; it reveals what I love about men. 
 
“People say, ‘Why do you spend so much time in the huddle?’ ” Mr. Lupo said. “By the time you tell the seventh guy what to do, the first guy forgot what he’s supposed to do.”
 
I love when men are confident enough to be humble. I love men who are kind and good. Many men are of course. Yet growing up in a household of six women, I didn’t know a lot of them. 

My Dad was the guy who rode me on his back in the pool, brought home chocolate footballs from Rip’s Cigarettes, and held me when my kitten John died in a shoebox, yet I didn’t know really  know him when I was young. Now, looking back at photos of a 30-year-old with five little girls surrounding him, I see the man. Doing the best he could to provide for and protect us.  Imperfectly, he freely admitted, yet trying.
 
I came to know and respect my Dad’s humility, his goodness, the love behind his anger, his effort to do the right thing, and to right what had gone wrong.
 
I’ve spent a lot of time “learning” about men. Books. Classes. Dinners with girlfriends. What I’ve really absorbed though has come through my brothers-in-law, my friends’ husbands, a fair boss, an octogenarian mentor, a funny colleague, and …. a special few.
 
The few who are committed, honorable, humble and real, and whose paths, I’m grateful, have crossed mine. I look at men with more admiration and wonder now.  Nothing melts my heart more than a man speaking from his.
 
I facilitate workshops and coach the Women’s Circle so that we may feel ourselves as women, fully.  I’m inspired by the men in my life to explore even more what that means.

Tags: men

This entry was posted on February 1, 2010 at 4:25 am and is filed under Women's Circle, Workshops. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.