My Eyes Were Watching Michael Ealy last night!

Good Lord!

While my Mom, my sister and I were watching Oprah Winfrey’s television production of Zora Neale Hurtson’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, I think I fell in love again (Sorry Nick Cannon).

All I got to say is DAMN, DAMN, DAMN!

Now that was a GOOD movie!

It followed Janie, played by Halle Berry in her search for freedom of mind and spirit. Janie was beautiful, everyone recognized that, but she was held hostage by the stress of society and the expectations of women in her day.

Women were to be given to men, not being allowed to follow their hearts. Following this principle, at the fragile age of 17 she married an old ass man who she described as loking like, “a skull from the cemetary”. She married him anyway, at her Grandmother’s urging and soon found herself tucked away queitly, married to a man she found repulsive.

When she met up with slick talking Joe Starks, she left her wretched husband and followed him to Eatonville, a newly developing Negro town. After their arrival, the town flourished and their hard work earned them the stature that Janie always dreamt of as her husband was appointed Mayor of Eatonville. When her husband began to pressure her to “act like the Mayor’s wife” Janie felt sullen. He tried to hide her beauty from the watchful men by making her wear a headwrap to hid her beautiful hair. This stifled her personality and she was soon relegated to sitting on her porch by herself in a lonely but

After her husband died, she said she finally felt, “freedom”. She lived and worked alone in her big house until Tea Cake breezed into town. He was 12 years younger than she was, full of vigor, alcohol and sex appeal. The women warned her he was gonna be trouble, but Janie took a risk. She allowed herself to melt in the arms of the handsome young man and leapt at the chance to run away with him when he invited her. Amidst the sobering warnings of, “He gone take all yo money,” Janie held her head high and walked right out of Eatonville, leaving behind her home and her fortune to travel haphazardly with Tea Cake.

I must admit I was afraid for her. I was afraid Tea Cake would be just like all the other men who were captivated by her beauty and spirit and then tried to bottle her radiance like an imprisoned firefly. But he didn’t. He allowed her light to shine before them as they ventured through town after town, living off of the money he made and making passionate- make you squirm in your seat- love all over the place. She had finally found satisfaction in him.

Their love story doesn’t have a happy ending but her story does. The movie ended with her basking in the glow of her complete satisfaction while floating on her back in a river, eyes gazing toward heaven.

And my night had a happy ending as I drifted off to sleep, my mind full of mouth watering images of the delicious Mike Ely and those amazing eyes.

Tea Cake? Naw baby you’re a three course meal…