this story is a about being able to pick and choose the good and bad men for the relationships in your life.

I describe my relationship with men much like you would pick a piece of fruit from a fruit basket. I have found in my life that there is good and bad fruit in a fruit basket, therefore one has to choose carefully as to weed out the spoiled fruit from good fruit.
When I was growing up on my grandmother’s farm, she would often have a fruit bowl sitting on top of the kitchen table. I was amazed by the way she carefully arranged the assortment of apples, oranges and bananas so that they would always be fresh and inviting to us kids when we wanted a snack after school. I can remember her telling me to always check for bad spots before eating any of it and it made me wonder why.

I think of what my grandmother said back then and how you relate it to “picking and choosing” what sort of men you want to have in your life for friends, relationships, best of buddies and I can only think maybe my grandmother was trying to give me a lesson in picking fruit and picking men.
I have had several relationships in my forty-eight years of life and some were good and some were down right terrible. I have been in relationships where men were controlling, abusive, and tried to isolate me from my family.
I was in a marriage with a man who was a functional alcoholic and as long as he wasn’t drinking he was fine. When he did drink, he was something else— he later died from a heart attack. I have been in relationships where I have had men who seemed to of needed another “mother”, someone to nurture them. Of course these guys weren’t bad or mean but usually they would guilt trip me to stay in the relationship. I found they just were lacking the qualities I needed for “good fruit”, so I was learning along the way.

I had another husband who told would show me how to do things “his way.” He was a maintenance man for a big corporation. He would tell me to fix things his way so it wasn’t long until I got the silent message “I can’t do anything right”. I felt so depressed after this marriage ended in divorce. I am sure his intentions were good and that he was trying to show me a faster easier way to do small home projects, but in the end it still made me feel small and uneducated. What I later learned from this relationship was this: it is all water under the bridge, so I forgave him and let it go and chalked it up to experience.

Once several years ago I let a good friend and his son come to stay because he and his wife had divorced and they needed a place to live for a while. The boy was a young man of eleven and very tall for his age. The boy had issues with his mother and sometimes took his frustrations out on me. I tried to be a comfort to him and did things for him like take him to the store for school items and clothing. I often bore the brunt of his frustrations when he got off the phone from speaking to his mother. This child was over six feet three by the time he was thirteen he towered over me he was very intimidating to me. I would ask his father to speak to him about his behavior. His father was the sort of fellow who was loving and kind but lacked reinforcing in his parenting skills. Once again I was caught off guard by a situation where I had a abusive relationship, but it was not personal but by a young male child I was only trying to help because he no mother to help him. They later left to get a home of their own.

So, here I am years later with a basket of fruit in front of me and I am sitting once again at my grandmother’s table. I finally found a man worth his weight in gold, maybe more. He totally completes me in every way possible. He is there to help me when I need help, if I am sad, he helps me reason it out. He is not jealous or possessive in any form or fashion. If I want to leave to go shopping he tells me to have a good time and call on the cell phone if I need him. He is unwittingly humorous and his smile is infectious as is the way he wormed his way into my heart. He helps around the house and it doesn’t bother him to do the laundry, mow the grass, or cook a meal.
I feel very blessed when I see him at his computer doing what he does best. I think to myself what a very special man I share my life with. I finally got a good banana.