JUST BECAUSE

I am not a mall shopper. I am a solitary sort, easily overstimulated. Recycled air brings confusing blends of perfume and coffee, mixed with odd colognes, incenses and lotions, new shoe smells and food court snackeries. Women with arched brows resembling crows stamped across the sky come at me too quickly, offering make-overs and samples of foundation that I have no interest in wearing. Artificial lighting makes me hungry for the outside, limiting my ability to concentrate on the purchase at hand. Talk is too loud into cellphones; my head hurts from receiving TMI (Too Much Information) about who-shot-john and which lover slept with whom and reminders of soccer practice and dry cleaning and tampons in need of picking up on the way home. The walk is painfully slow; a steady shuffle of feet resembling a herd of farm animals headed for slaughter. The price tags annoy me, knowing that 99.9% of the time the mark-up is three hundred percent of which the workers---poor women in impoverished countries---are only paid pennies on the dollar (if that) to make. The styles are redundant and sorely lacking originality. And perhaps worst of all is the people. One finds the saddest lot in malls, dressed in ill-fitted clothing spending hard-earned wages to look and smell and feel and be like anything, anyone but themselves; identified by the name inscribed on the tag, carrying vinyl purses that cost a small fortune yet bearing someone else's initials. But I endure it today because:

I know that in this mall there is an item you've wanted for some time now;

Because I love you and I want you to have it;

Because you are, to me, the greatest lover and the kindest friend;

Because the love we have given and the love we have made has blossomed into the two most awesome and amazingly beautiful children I could have ever imagined;

Because you are the father I only wish I could have had and yet, the gift I know he has sent to stand in his place, giving me the unconditional love he would have given;

Because you are a true example of a man and the perfect role model for our son;

Because you are the type of man I wish for our daughter;

Because you negate every tired and disgusting stereotype ever hurled upon men who look like you;

Because you give unceasingly, unflinchingly;

Because you hold out both hands and pull me closer and closer to my dreams everyday;

Because you teach me, through your own sacrifices, what it means to be a family;

Because you showed me that it is okay to stand still;

Because in you I have discovered that it is possible and it is healthy to trust;

Because you are strength when I am weary and balm when I am wounded;

Because I feel so fortunate to have found love.

Happy Father's Day honey. I love you so very much,

Just because ....

---A.