In Praise of Men
I spent a recent weekend with my friends Dante, Daniella, and their daughter at their cabin on the Russian River, along with two couples. Sunday morning, Dante invited Gene, the only other man in the group, to go outside and split logs and drink moonshine (out of jar, naturally).
I jumped on that. “I want to split logs and drink moonshine!”
So the three of us went outside and did just that and it was the best Sunday I’ve had in years. I felt like a kid. A happy, free kid.
I have two older brothers. When I was a kid, I figured out very early on that life was unfair and that boys had much more freedom than girls. Still, I did the best I could to work within that system: as long as was with my brothers, which meant doing whatever they were doing, I could be out in the world. And they being hockey players, there were constantly hockey players around. So I did a lot of guy stuff, surrounded by a lot of guys.
And it wasn’t until I swang that ax and drank that moonshine with Dante and Gene that I realized how much I miss having masculine energy around me. All right, I’ll say it: Men. I miss men. I love my female friends and the time spent with them. But the past few years there’s a bit of imbalance in my life, a bit heavy on the feminine. Not by any deliberate choice or design. But it’s going to take deliberate action to change that.
I’m on the left.
