Forgive my romantic drivel.  This will be a light week for me.  I received a letter from the South Carolina Department of Records giving me instructions on how to request birth/death/marriage records but I have yet to work on that as it was a busy week on the career front.

The only chance to sit down last week was to watch the movie “Serendipity” with Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack.  Believe or not I’ve never seen the movie before. Strangely it was after a week long email conversation between my love and I about all the events that led me to him.  I will keep his part private but I had alluded to mine a few weeks ago.

Despite the sadness of my Great Grandma Virginia’s demise, if she had not been murdered, my grandmother would have never been sent to live with her uncle in Savannah, Georgia.  She would not have been in the choir with my grandfather Noble Gwyn, Jr. and my father would have never existed.  This is my point to my Cubano.  Even the bad things in life move us forward to our destiny.  God does not make mistakes and only he know’s our purpose.

So, my dad being fourth born was a troubled delivery for my Grandmother.  She had only wanted two children, a boy and a girl which she had.  My grandfather wanted more.  My Dad was born feet first and they call it a term I do not recall, cloaked or veil over his eyes.  It means he was a special child.  As he also suffered from asthma severely throughout his childhood and unlike my uncles, all over six feet like my grandfather, my Dad was only five foot seven inches, Jeffrey was Mary’s special boy.  He frequently got out of chores and punishment because of his difficulty breathing if over exerted.  This led to the making of a trickster.  A loveable trickster but my father had game.  This behavior led to him renting a cap and gown for high school graduation and walking across the stage in front of friends and family even though my father had been informed in order to graduate he would need to complete summer school.  My grandfather was so hurt and embarrassed that he ensured my father finished summer school and then promptly kicked him out of the house.  Being his mother’s favorite though Mary had already arranged with her brother for Jeffrey to move to Fort Lauderdale, FL and be mentored, supervised, and instructed by her big brother Clinton Aiken.

My mother was in Atlanta on graduation.  She graduated from Roswell High to be exact in the bicentennial year.  My mother was also a special kid.  At fifteen she took it upon herself to jump on the back of a Dodge Charger and take a lunchtime ride down a dirt road.  Her friends nearly killed her and left her for dead.  The ambulance couldn’t get to her.  If not for the help of Sgt. Valentine my mother would have never lived to meet my Dad.  As it was my mother spent two weeks in a coma and months of rehabilitation with the school thinking she had died.  She graduated a year late.  Grad Nite was a big thing to her and she wanted to go.  Her Mom forbid it.  My mother escalated it into getting kicked out the house which led to her first marriage in cabbage town to a Vietnam war vet.  Her father had to rescue her by shot gun and have the marriage annulled.  This left my mother with a need for refocus. To do that she moved back to Fort Lauderdale to attend college and work at her grandfather’s store.  She was there first and three months later my Dad applied for the job of bag boy.  Eight months later they were enroute to Phoenix, Arizona with my Uncle Donald to start a new life together.

I promised this would be light though so I will not give you a blow by blow of how I ended back up at 33, in Florida once more.  Jacksonville to be specific.  I will tell you the story I told my love though briefly.  I was almost 400lbs on vacation with my Mom in Nassau, Bahamas(for those keeping track this is my gateway city). We had come by cruise and purchased a private island excursion.  My mother had become tired and went back to shore and I stood in the water up to my shoulders because I didn’t want people seeing me in my bathing suit staring off towards Cuba (or the general direction there of) asking God to change my life and give me someone to share it all with. I did not know that on a beach, many miles away, hopefully that same day, my heart was also asking God for the same thing.

God does answer prayer and I do not believe in happy coincidence or dumb luck.  I prefer to believe that every experience is part of the journey towards exactly where we should be.