He had just graduated and was spinning his wheels. He could have tried his luck elsewhere -- maybe there was a desperate need for comparative literature majors in Saginaw -- but he took a front desk job at the university and stayed put. Ann Arbor was a beautiful town to spin his wheels in.
She had lived all over the world, including many years in Manila, and now felt stuck in a paralegal job at a California law firm she didn't want to grow old in. She wanted to be a librarian, so she mailed off applications to graduate programs. The school in Ann Arbor said yes.
The department he worked in had a generous deal: they would shoulder the tuition for any employee who wanted to take some university courses on the side. There was an interesting-looking class on Asian American history being offered that semester; so he bit.
She packed up her belongings and her two cats -- a gray and a calico -- and made the journey east, to colder weather and a small apartment on Huron Street and a future unsettled but full of dreams.
The class was eye-opening and set him down new paths of thinking. But the most important part was that the guy who sat behind him invited him to a meeting of the Filipino American Students Association later that week. In all his time at the university, he'd never been to one. So he said sure.
She was walking across campus and happened upon a couple of young women wearing the terno -- the butterfly-sleeved Philippine dress. They were publicizing a FASA meeting later that week. She told them she'd grown up in the Philippines and they said she'd be more than welcome to attend. So she said sure.
The arcs of two separate lives intersect and so much depends on timing: on whether he's running late or stops to grab a bite, on whether she's delayed by chatting with a friend or stops to retie her shoelaces, on the gears of Coincidence and Sheer Dumb Luck causing them to arrive one right after the other --
At the Michigan Union building there was a line to sign up for the meeting. He was waiting his turn and looked around. She was standing right behind him. He smiled a silent question; she explained. They sat together. She had the most wonderfully open, spirited laugh. There was a trivia game, and they knew the answers to all the questions. The meeting ran late. It was getting dark out. He walked her back to her apartment, and they parted at the gate. (He said he looked forward to meeting the cats sometime.) He walked home that night feeling lighter inside, somehow. He wondered if she felt the same.
Incredibly, she did.
They were jigsaw pieces that fit. They moved to New York and built a life together. She married him, and he married her. (Four attempts, two successful; a story for another time.)
And all these years later, he keeps choosing her, and is endlessly grateful she keeps choosing him, every day.
This song is for Michelle, who has made me the luckiest.
Lyrics here.
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