Simon & Marcie & Harry & Meghan

A Black Eyed Story | January 27, 2023

Me and Simon | Wedding Day, March 27, 2010

---

Let me tell you why there is anything at all. Let me tell you why anything ever existed. Let me tell you why there was nothing, and then in a flash there was something, and something, and another something, and another something. Let me tell you why there ever was the invention of thought, or being, or consciousness, or here-ness, or now-ness, or this-ness, or you, or me, or anyone at all. Let me tell you why it feels so good to breathe fresh air, to feel the warmth of a soft, velvet-pawed sun on your skin, to dream of sleep and to dream while sleeping… 

Love. 

Some-one, unanimous entity—call it God, call her Spirit, call them Intelligent Design, call him Being, it really doesn’t matter—but Some-one, Some-thingness needed to make, yield, connect, bend and fold nothing into something. And once that was done, This Some-one needed (as we all do) some-things and some-ones to bear witness and say, “amen… yes, this!… wow,” to all of it. 

Something in the cosmos, or perhaps beyond the cosmos, needed some-ones to look at the stars, to yearn to count them, to want to name them and know them and even recognize part of themselves within them. Some cosmological genesis-genius of goodness wanted some-ones to smell the freshly laid grass and sink their feet into it, some-ones to notice how the air shifts and even lifts at the shores of the oceans, some-ones to agree that the mountain is not the valley and fire is not rain.

A story began somewhere long ago outside of time—it was an impossible-to-contain, Big-Bang-of-a-tale! And stories like that are meant to be told and heard. 

The beauty-of-it-all—the exquisite, delectable, spine-tingling beauty-of-it-all—is that this making of something out of nothing has made the best story of all time. Every breath in it is a line of punctuation marks. Every act is a sentence. Every thought is a muse breaking open more and more exquisiteness into this delectable, living and breathing, delicate story. 

We were made to love all the things some Beautiful Creator made, and what we love most of all is this well-told story that the Creator began was its beginning, “Once upon a time… In the beginning…. ” 

In the spirit of the best story ever told, let me tell you a love story to add to the cosmic cloud of stories that make us who we are and foretell who we might become: 

Once upon a time, nearly 54 years ago, some Black girl magic was born in 1969 in Cleveland, Ohio, to a mother and father who had no idea who she was except their baby to love and hold and cherish. Four years later, a copper-topped, red-headed boy was born in 1973 in Poole, England, to a mother and father who also had no idea who he was except their baby to love and hold and cherish.

The distance between the two occasions is years—and miles and miles and miles and miles apart. What are the chances this Black girl magic should ever encounter this flaming, rising, red-headed Phoenix? What are the odds that one way or another the two lives should intersect—not in England or Ohio where each has lived and loved all their childhood years—but somewhere else on the planet by chance or coincidence or fate? What would make such a fortuitous union combust or explode into being like a science experiment? What measure of ingredients, set of directions, web of complex equations would be needed for these two to meet and fall in love? According to the American Psychological Association:

“The science of psychology cannot shed much light on the occurrence of fortuitous encounters, but it can provide the basis for predicting their impact on human lives.” 

So science cannot predict the “how” of such kismet connections, but it can predict what a Big-Bang-of-an-encounter will cause us to do: sell all that we have for our pearl of great price, sell-out our hearts, without question, for this chance, love of a lifetime. We’re not talking about something random and forgotten, but love at first sight breaking open.

If only love was a science, but it’s not. If it were, a scientist could draw the equation on a whiteboard: Black girl magic born in 1969 in Cleveland Ohio + Copper-topped, red-headed boy born in 1973 in Poole, England = love².

The greatest love story ever told—the creation of this world, and thus the creation of love itself—doesn’t work in equations. Big-Bang, spontaneous combustion, fortuitous, what-are-the-chances kind of love has only one goal: to procreate more life-giving love. This is a love that doesn’t seek to manipulate or control, trick or tame. It doesn’t consider the status, or race, or ethnicity, or fame, or fortune of its intended. 

When my husband and I fell in love, it wouldn’t have been love if either of our first thoughts had been my Blackness, or his Whiteness, or my single-parenthood, or our divorces, or his bankruptcy, or my being perpetually broke. When you fall in love, you fall without a single rational thought. If you’re thinking about all the barriers, dare I say, it might be not be love. 

But when you come up for air, from that suffocating, full-on binding that leaves no room for questions when you’re falling in love, and you decide you’re ready to share this love with the world because, let’s face it, it’s too big to keep to yourself, you need some-ones to bear witness to the light you’re creating. It’s too big to contain.It’s However, while you’re spooling ribbons of love and light across the entire earth, others will be gathering their chorus of doubts and questions. They’ll see the light eclipsed by all the barriers. 

Believe me, Harry and Meghan’s love would’ve been questioned and doubted and ridiculed and tested time and time again even if they weren’t the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Their love story has little to do with the monarchy, or even the paparazzi and British tabloids, but everything to do with an age old question that humans have been asking since the beginning of time: What are the chances? And once that question is laid bare, the slow roll of others march in: “What are the chances that it’s really love? How do these two seemingly distant objects—American and British, Black and White, Monarch and Starlet, light and dark—make something new that is holy, blessed and good, very, very good? What’s the intelligent design pulling the strings of this new creation? Does it have meaning? Is it everlasting? Or is it just a story, a fairytale or myth, for foolish hearts who need to believe there is something, and all is not for naught and love is a love that conquers all?

We’ve consumed, we’ve picked-over, and we’ve judged the validity of their story. But I bet you a million-to-one there are thousands and thousands of White men and Black women who could easily tell you a similar, if not nearly exact story: a relative who ponders how dark the children will be, a sibling’s misinformation, a bitter brawl of words, an in-law who plays the victim, a severing of center and home, an exile that leads to a one-way flight to sanity. Me and my kismet red-head know all about such things.

We just wanted some-ones to see the love we created and to bear witness and say, “amen…yes, this!… wow,” to all of it. And I can hear Harry and Meghan say, “us too.” 

---