Greg’s Mom never receives any acknowledgment from me on Mother’s Day. From the very first, after Greg’s older brother was born, it seemed to me that such acknowledgments should come from her sons, and not from her husband.  Hence, unlike many husbands, I have not given her gifts or cards or anything else on Mother’s Day.  This is one of many instances where, in my mind, the logic of the situation overrides the emotional content of the situation. Some consider this a character flaw on my part

Greg’s Mom and I have often discussed another issue related to male-female relationships.  It has been brought to mind for me because we have a large flock of wild turkeys living on and around our home, and this is mating season.  Unless you’ve seen one, it is hard to imagine how beautiful a tom turkey is in mating plumage.  When those hormones begin to flow in the spring, the dangling wattle under the turkey’s beak and neck turns an intense bright red-orange from which it is hard to turn away. The beak and head turn an iridescent pearly blue-gray. The feathers become iridescent, and as the toms strut with their tail feathers fanned out, the sun shimmers and bounces and dances off them. (If Greg permits, and if I can get a decent picture this weekend, I’ll post it so you can see some of what I mean. Photographs don’t really do it justice.)

Human beings are members of the animal kingdom also. They have their inborn mating instincts. One of them is, that women are more likely to draw attention if they are physically attractive.  Greg’s Mom tends to object to that.  She feels that male focus on physical attractiveness short-changes many women of good character, high intelligence and charming personality, who would be highly attractive to men on those grounds if they were just given the chance to make those assets clear to the men.  This is all true, yet, despite the advances of the feminine equality movement, the majority of dating advances are made by the men. The men ask the women to whom they are attracted. (Why would they ask a woman to whom they are not attracted?) Attraction is a largely biological issue.  So this is not going to change.

Notice however that I said a “largely biological” issue.  It is not solely biological. Cultural norms do play a part, but again, unfortunately, current American cultural norms reinforce the biological, and do not correct or adjust them. 

All that being said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  How many times has Greg’s Mom commented to me that some actress or person of our acquaintance is “beautiful” causing me to look at Greg’s Mom with astonishment that she could think so.  And how many times have we all seen a truly ugly man with an attractive woman, or the reverse.

But some beauty, both physical and other, is absolute. Keats knew it. Baudelaire knew it.  And how beautiful is Greg’s Mom, still so after 40 plus years together. So, a few weeks in advance, Happy Mother’s Day.