…She wasn’t the one
A short while before hipsters invaded Austin, Texas, circa 2002, I was debating whether I would move there myself to follow a girlfriend. She had moved back there (her home state) from where we lived together in California. We were attempting a distance relationship after a spring hiatus, under the solid understanding that it was now up to me to decide. She wasn’t coming back to California and that was that.
That night at dinner, my ex and I were uncomfortable. We knew it was doomed.
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On one of my visits out there, we went out to dinner with college friends—an engaged couple set to be married that fall. The bride was my ex’s sorority sister, and the groom, my fraternity brother. They represented all that my ex wanted back then: the happy young, Texas couple, living in the best place to be in Texas. I wasn’t protesting, but I just wasn’t convinced. Sure, I could see myself settling into this state which wasn’t me, but would eventually become me, growing up alongside a built-in network of college friends, extending our shenanigans until we had to become real adults. We’d party together on Friday nights, go out to dinner on Saturdays, and watch football together on Sundays, our Bloody Mary’s needing freshening up as the day withered away. It would all be just like college.
That night at dinner, my ex and I were uncomfortable. We knew it was doomed, but being with our best friends, so much in love, out with the groom’s parents, seemed like the right thing to do. And then something happened. The groom’s father was telling a story about his mother, how eccentric she was, how she held nothing back. Once, she was waiting in line at a grocery store and saw a young black family with a little girl. The groom’s grandmother was admiring the little girl, cooing at her, making faces, as any grandmother would, but after she left the store, she told her son, the groom’s father, “Wasn’t that the cutest niglet you’ve ever seen?”
I thank God for those moments that led to so many other better ones.
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Our dinner table roared with laughter. It was so funny that Grandma would even say that. But wasn’t it even funnier that Dad would say it right here, again? I didn’t laugh. In fact, I had to excuse myself and go to the bathroom. I had to look in the mirror and realize once and for all who I would be spending my life with if I chose to live there.
I can’t say it was that dinner conversation that decided it all, yet it was one moment amongst many that tipped the scales. Time eventually marched on and ways parted. I haven’t looked back, but only once in a while, when I thank God for those moments that led to so many other better ones.
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Photo credit: Robert Couse-Baker.