Eve

Effing Eve. Did she know how she would doom the rest of her kind when she bit into that red apple? An apple for God's sake! Not even a minty mojito or a hopped up IPA or a piece of good, rich Scharffen Berger dark chocolate. An apple! Hope it was worth it sister cause you screwed us. You were stuck in paradise and we are stuck, well not exactly in hell, but we are stuck somewhere between middle school boob insecurities and menopause. We chicks are burdened with physical discomforts, emotional surges, and the expectations of our Mother in laws. We muddle through cramping, pregnancy, childbirth, aching boobs full of milk, and then to top it off, a good five year window of night sweats. We are the ones expected to send the thank you notes, the ones expected to have the bathroom clean, and the ones expected to make sure the kids get to the dentist every year. All of this is expected while we get our own asses dressed and out the door in order to make 77 cents to Adam’s every dollar. Effing Eve. My cousin’s theory is that the grl in the garden was bored. “God! If Adam starts to go on again about how much his big toe is killing him, I am seriously going to lose it.” Or maybe it was more like, “God! How impressed do I have to be that Adam lifted those three big rocks and moved them away from the pear tree?” My cousin says Eve didn’t have her girlfriends around. She had no one to talk to. She wasn’t interested in sitting around eating grapes and strawberries all day, watching the elk run up and down the forest walls. I didn’t mean for this to be a diatribe against men. There are many good uses for them. Sperm is one of them. And if you get a good man, like I did, he is the stable in the crazy, the calm in the frenzy and the beautiful accompaniment to a pretty decent song. I just feel like if I come back, I would rather come back as Adam. I know there’s a lot of pressure on men too. They're expected to make money, exhibit toughness and strength and know how to throw a football. I just feel that something about the Y chromosome leaves them with quite a bit more control over their bodies, their moods and their lives. A lot is written these days about the high expectations of women and mothers and the hows and whys about it. Is it the woman’s fault? Is it the man’s fault? Society’s fault? I don’t know. I do think my cousin was on to something though when she said Eve was missing some good girlfriends. I appreciate that these days, a grl can admit to feeling overwhelmed and inadequate without fear of being ostracized. Maybe that’s it! Maybe I’ve been looking at Eve in the completely wrong way! Maybe Eve took one for the team! Maybe she didn’t doom us to pain and agony! Rather she freed us to make our own decisions, albeit not the best ones. She freed us from the pressure of perfection and a clean bathroom! She freed us from the boundaries of a man’s paradise and instead shouted to the heavens, “I WANT MORE!” She might have been banished from the garden but she wasn’t banished from the story. And she lives on and well that she should. Eve! I’m sorry! I had you wrong sister. You did it! You freed us to be women! Emotional, crampy, imperfect women. You freed us to make our own decisions and lead our own lives. In the process, yes, you did condemn us to some worldly discomforts, but the pain passes, the cycle ends and what we end up with are lives of our own choosing, adventures of our own taking, and passions that compel us to at once love and scream. And I realize now that I wouldn’t want it any other way. Eve, thanks sister.