Our Joy Cannot Be Contained!

We first encountered each other in New Hampshire, at St. Paul’s School. It was my senior year and Raymond;s junior so…essentially we only spoke to each other if we had to at events. Teen rules! He’d started St. Paul’s in his 4th form or 10th grade year while I was in France doing School Year Abroad for my 11th grade year. Apparently he heard a LOT about me while I was gone. The most memories we have of that time period was during track practice. Let’s just say, we were completely watching each other from afar. Ahem. I graduated and went to the West Coast. A year later he headed to D.C. and that was that. Out of the orbit of the school —almost everyone went to an Ivy League for college—we never spoke or heard of each other again, until Agatha Njoku started gathering Mid-South Paulies of Color at her house. There were a number of us who went to Concord, NH from “Memphississippi,” a fact that still makes us proud. It’s was at one of these dinners that we reconnected in 2017. Actually, it was our first real interaction as adults! Raymond was constantly traveling, so sometimes we’d plan an event and he would email from another country to cancel. He’s got jokes. I hadn’t fully moved back to Mississippi from Los Angeles yet, so I was just as ridiculous with my RSVPs for the gatherings. Eventually by 2019 we were both in the Mid South, but otherwise occupied. Our group had plans to go to brunch in Oxford, but I had to attend graduation at Rust College, where I teach. Raymond made a joke about how I could still make it that set my hair on fire. I was so mad, then all of a sudden VRY curious: why did I care? How was I that invested in what this character had to say? Why was he mad that I wasn’t coming to brunch. The questions the questions. I didn’t make that brunch, but I made all the other events. It was like a all of a sudden we could completely hear each other, see the full picture of our lives apart and recognize where and how we completed each other’s pattern. The wedding is at Foxfire Ranch because dancing together on hot summer nights to incredible blues music helped us find the courage to finallllllly talk. What a revelation. There is a Yoruba name, Ekundayo which means the tears that brought joy. It sums us up. So much living has transpired independent of each other, but we fit like a hand in a glove. We are glad you are here for this next part of our story, where our courage and resilience allows us to be deeply in love and still committed to our community. Thank you for being here!