Safa means tranquil, serene, calm…I try

There’s really nothing going on today but I haven’t posted in a minute. This is the holy month of Ramadan in my religion and the fasting month. So, things are a little quiet on my end. Ya know, trying to be SAFA (tranquil, serene, calm…). However lol!…

My 5 year-old continues to push the limits on what can be viewed as cute and precocious or just grown and disrespectful…what do you think?

1. When told that he was going to my husband’s grandmother’s house, he says “I don’t want to go to that stink dirty house”. When he was reprimanded, he asked us “we shouldn’t fib and you know that so how come you yell at me”. When I told him her house was not dirty (just cluttered) or stink (just old), he said, “OK, but I’m just a little kid so if I have my books all over the room it’s cluttered now”.

2. He had no idea (now he does) that whenever he mentions my “dead mother” over and over, it makes me sad. So he asks, “Is my dad not really a grown-up since his mom is not dead”? “You are really a grown up because you have no mother, you know that?” “She’s dead, you know that?”, “You no longer have a mother, you know that?”….he gets on my last nerve!

3. As we played ‘what hand is the-blank- in”, he would hide a nail clipper for me to guess. I kept “guessing” correctly. For real, I could see it in his hand and his facial gestures gave it away. He asked me, “How you keep knowing what hand, I mean, you’re not that smart”.

Enough about my boy; who by the way, just lost his first tooth and is taking it like a champ!

I read about the mother who slapped the bully on the school bus for messing with her child. It got me to thinking again about these “new” breed of parents. I was at a DC high school yesterday for a meeting. As I waited in the main office, a mother and daughter came in and sat beside me. I couldn’t believe that the mother (sitting beside me) would tap her daughter to “jone” or make fun of other girls who came into the office b/c of their clothes or hair style. At one point, the daughter (about 15) told her mother to shut up. What is the deal?

Also, I saw kids in that school with tattoos and clothing that were off the hook. Now I totally recognize that at some point, kids will just do what they are going to regardless. However, if a child of mine came home with a HUGE tat glorifying her love of a same sex body part, I would with post haste tie her behind down to a table and laser it off MYSELF.

Personally, I think some of this stems from parents who want to be friends with their children more than parents! Anyway…off this soapbox and on to another…

Mi.chae.l V.i.ck. No one in their right mind (or heart) would believe that what he was involved in was anything besides animal cruelty. I don’t care for dogs that much but hearing about some of the practices of this “sport” brought me to tears. My point is not this however. My best friend and I were discussing the fact that the public’s outrage, hysteria, and umbrage over dogs is amazing considering…that people were not this outraged when blacks were hosed down, our women raped, pics of lynchings put on postcards and mailed through the US Postal Service.

Really, we (blacks) were used the same way….as perverse entertainment. I mean, whole families would gather around the ole’ oak tree to have a picture taken with a hanged black man. There are pics where you can plainly see picnic spreads..pic a nic….yeah right we know. It just made me so disgusted to remember that these people who are so outraged by dog fights might include a now 60 year-old who at the age of 4 was party to what I mentioned. Finally, where are the federal prosecutors to look into those persons who are clearly seen in pics taken at these hangings? Are they not complicit? Anyway…I am off this soapbox as well.

I’m thinking about asking hubby to take the family for a weekend getaway camping…I love the fall season!

I had a conversation with friend who told me about some health issues her 80 year-old mother was having. After naming various health problems and procedures, she ended by saying her mom had a masectomy.

Ok. She tells me that she and her mother got into it because some surgeon had called her to see if she would be interested in having a cosmetic breast reconsruction procedure. The elderly mother was considering it and told her daughter so. My friendsaid she told her mother that the doctor was just trying to make money and that she didn’t need a new breast since she was 80 years old.

I felt so bad. I tried to tell my friend that age has nothing do do with a person’s sense of their womanhood or whatever. She then tried to tell me that her mom was already small chested so no one would notice…that she never wore a bra anyway. Oh, she ended her arguement by telling me she reminded her mother that her dad had been dead 10 years so don’t waste her money.

She didn’t even take it seriously when I mentioned whether her mom might be depressed over this surgery.

This is why people fight for the rights of children and the elderly. We sometimes forget that our elders still have dignity and may feel beautiful and whole regardless of their age or diminished outward attractiveness. I say, a woman who’s lived 80 years has a right to have her body look the way she wants, without her insensitive child passing judgement.