Tea Cake

It's Their Eyes Were Watching God time again.  I love this book.  Zora Neale Hurston in general is a delight, but to watch Janie rise, overcome, and become is powerful every time I read it.  She is one of my favorite epic heroes.

It strikes me this time as I read it that I need to find my own Tea Cake.  I want to find somebody who doesn't try to own me or run me, somebody who will let me stand on my own, but at the same time who will also stand with me against the storms of life when they come.  I'm ready for somebody who tells me that I've got "the keys to the kingdom" and who wants to come along for the ride.  Tea Cake helps Janie realize that she needs to get back to herself, throw off the things that have held her back, and he helps her scrape away all the things that have been piled upon her by others.

I don't see Janie and Tea Cake as an ideal of perfection; they had problems and struggles like any human pair.  I just like that at the base of all of it was a bond of true love for each other, that he was crazy about her and accepted her any way she wanted to be.  He didn't try to put her in those restrictive showy dresses as a sign of status or tell her what she could and couldn't or should or shouldn't say to keep her in her place like Jody did.  He simply let her be the woman she was and loved her for it, told her it was glorious. That's what I want.  That's what every woman should have.