Every year this time I try to figure out what it is about daylight savings time that irritates me. I know I don’t like it because my daylight and outside time is a whole lot less and, no: I do not suffer from either of the SAD’s: seasonal affective disorder or the nutrient deficient standard american diet which, by the way, usually gets worse in the colder months when most of us start packing on the pounds.



I think it’s that the fall magnifies my aloneness and isolation. My last relationship of eight months ended [amicably] this past February. So when I got to Detroit mid July, I was optimistic about getting out and into the mix. Even though I’d seen very few Black men in my first month or so and never mind the fact that one in five relationships is now begun online, supposedly. I figured my chances of walking up on a man that I’d want to send time with were still pretty good.

Fast-forward to about two weeks ago and all over the news is this new book Is Marriage is for White People. Haven’t read it, don’t intend to. But I have to say that the book ‘s coming just ahead of the fall time change kicked this reality for Black woman up several notches for me. At ‘fifty-something’, I’ve never been married but have had a few really great [live-in] life-partners. The absence of marriage among our women began to stand out vividly for me about five years ago when I started working the frontline at REI. The overwhelming majority of the women who came in were white of course, and married almost as certainly. Now, for myself even at my age – I still have pretty good ‘pulling power’ and do get my share of offers to start relationships. So it’s not so much for me that I am concerned.

It’s because I have been fortunate to experience the difference that a caring and present life partner makes in the overall quality of life and am convinced that the gratification and joy of intimacy are critical for overall optimal function. So, maybe Ralph R. Banks is right that Black women should begin considering mates of other races. Though its not an option for me — [I need a aBlack man and a Black man desesrves me], I know that it beats the heck out of aloneness and just might be a way to lessen the ‘marriage gap’.