This is a belated expression of gratitude for the special excitement that women always have stirred in me-a tripwire sprung by a woman`s smile or her cascading laughter.
With six and a half decades under the belt-a necessarily bigger belt-one should have gained some idea of the power exerted over supposedly free choice by hormones and peer culture, duty and loneliness. One also should have acquired a deeper understanding of the costs and benefits of giving and getting. All of this is particularly true of thoughts and feelings about women.
In my boyhood, adults, especially teachers, favored girls because of their superior manners, cleanliness and intelligence. This seemed absolutely unfair because not only could girls not compete with boys in truly important pursuits such as baseball, cussing and bragging about unmentionable subjects, but they seemed not even to want to.
Girls` outlandish psychology was matched by an equally peculiar anatomy. Almost against our wills, we were forced to confront a baffling contradiction: The minds and bodies of females were different from ours, yet they were human, just like us.
Before we could reason out this paradox, our wits were overwhelmed in the rush of puberty`s hormone-inspired yearning, which obscured the flickering of a cooler, asexual flame, one that preceded and superseded pure lust.
After the bewilderment of adolescence, the cool flame revived during young adulthood, fueled by an appreciation of the awesome mission of motherhood and a growing admiration for the classic feminine traits of subtlety, taste and refinement.
I have savored these chaste delights during a career spent working primarily with women of various ages, races and temperaments, and through 37 years of marriage to the same woman.
Recently I have become acquainted with women of my father`s generation-superannuated ladies, many of them infirm and in pain. Yet the aura of femininity perseveres.
I think occasionally of Philip Wylie`s 1940s novel, ”The Disappearance,” which told how one day the world divided itself into two equal worlds, except that in one world all the men had disappeared, and in the other, all the women.
What a bleak tedious life it would be with no women-if men were our only companions, if the only excitement we men could look forward to were sports or profits, politics or war!
Today, women seeking an independent identity rightly point to the centuries of exploitation that traditional economic dependency forced most women to endure. But not all men are exploiters. Some cherish memories of mother, sisters, aunts, and female cousins, classmates, friends, colleagues and neighbors as fondly as remembrances of long-lost lovers. To these men, whatever their ages, the female presence retains its magic-an elixir that can make of the most ordinary moment a beguiling, enlivening, mystifying adventure.
The jealousy and scorn of boyhood have evolved into esteem. The allure and curiosity remain.
