I am thankful that I can live in an age

where a woman can achieve so much

without it being thought of weird, against the grain or that

they somehow are inverted, aping their male counterparts,

not through their own actions but because the male brain

cannot cope without turning it into competition.

 

I am thankful, yet I have one eye on the past

where I remember feeling certainly sorry,

but more downright ashamed, that the girls were told they

couldn’t kick a ball and yet when we took them on at

Hockey, they thrashed us with their sticks, they made us appear

stupid and silly, fair retribution for how we collectively treated them.

 

I am thankful that my grandmother had spirit and guile,

the presence of mind in which to walk away from

a bad situation at what was considered to be Middle Age

and whilst leaving behind daughters, no doubt fulfilled the iron resolve

in which she taught me to be feminist was to agree with being equal,

an early task in which I happily played football with my friend Stella

anywhere in Wendlebury.

 

I am thankful, and why should I not be,

that I can watch a woman on stage, playing guitar perhaps better

than any man she comes up against and know deep down

she deserves her rightful place and she hasn’t been positioned

upon a pedestal just because she is of a different gender,

that I can cheer on all who seek equality

and yet I always ask myself,

when will I reach parity

with all my female heroes.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015