Romantic diversity



Clay and Charlotte
1998

 It was this time of year on a crisp, windy, overcast day like today in 1998 that my boyfriend invited me to go on a picnic in the woods behind his house.  There, in the secluded oaks, surrounded by a rainbow of changing boughs and flying leaves, on the tailgate of a shiny red Ford F-150, he unpacked the lunch, and unable to resist until dessert as he had planned, pulled out the beautiful ring inside that, before he had even uttered the words, made clear his intention.  It wasn't until much later that I realized why, just weeks before, he had taken a load of his prized Angus to the OKC stockyards to be sold in their prime.

I'm lucky to be employed at a very ethnically diverse work place.  One coworker recently showed me her wedding ring.  Though not nearly as fancy or shiny as mine, it was very pretty.  She beamed as she told me her engagement story.  She and her fiance spent a weekend panning the streams of her homeland after a flood.  Though the diamond mines of central Africa are owned and heavily guarded by foreigners, no amount of policing can stop mother nature from sweeping through the caves with her seasonal floods.  What ends up in the outlying streams is free for whoever is patient enough to look.  Her perseverance paid off nicely.

Another coworker fell "victim" to an arranged marriage.  The thought horrified me at first, but listening to the tail unfold; the initial meeting, everyone waiting to see if she would give her consent, the loooong engagement, the various rituals, feasts and celebrations, and finally, the wedding itself which lasted for days, not hours; left me feeling almost a bit jealous.  I realized how shallow I had been to think that the "American way" of choosing a mate, based upon some arbitrary thing such as how a person's behind looks on the dance floor, was so much better than having a small group of people who love you and have only your best interests at heart spending years searching for your lifelong mate.  We Americans claim to love the mystery of discovering the perfect mate ourselves, however, what often happens is, after the wedding, the mysteries begin to unravel and reveal that you chose a narcissistic neanderthal with a nice behind as your lifelong mate.  Congratulations!

So, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the USA, you can find 3 women, about the same age, one with very dark, coffee colored skin and black, cottony hair, one having skin resembling the color of heavily creamed coffee with long, straight shiny black hair, and the last with skin the color of buttermilk and yellow curls, working together like a well oiled machine.  Each with a very different engagement story, and each really thinking her own to be the *most* romantic.