I Met Her in a Bar

“How did the two of you meet?” asked the social worker. She was conducting a home study that would determine if we were fit to adopt a child from China. My wife and I exchanged nervous glances. We had not done a mock interview like a politician prepares for a debate. We had not thought to anticipate what types of questions might be asked. We could have answered this question two different ways. However, as we looked at each other, our anxious faces melted into a shared smile. It was clear that we each knew what the other was thinking. Simultaneously, we answered, “We met at a bar.” It was one of those magic moments when two people in love know each other so well that a quick glance communicates volumes.  The social worker judgmentally clucked her teeth and clicked her pen a couple of times. Then she said flatly, “I’ll say you met at a social club.”

Since our mutual friend, James, had been at the bar with me and had made the introduction, we could have just said that we met through a friend. According to a recent study conducted by Stanford University most people meet through a friend. In 1989, the year we met, forty percent of couples met this way. Twenty percent met at a bar.

I have been telling the story about how we answered the social worker to people for over ten years now. I have wondered to myself about why my wife and I answered the way we did. It was a slightly risky answer given that this person had the authority to deny us the ability to adopt our daughter. I think that maybe because meeting at the bar marked the point where our two separate paths met. It was from that place that we began to walk the same road together. And what a glorious trip we had been on since meeting in that smoke-filled, crowded, and noisy tavern. By the time we were required to sit down with this adoption official, we had fallen in love.  Together, we had hiked mountains, swam in the ocean, and picked wild blackberries. We had given birth to a baby girl. Our daughter had joined us on our path and the three of us had become a family. Together, we had read stories, taken bike rides, and played in gentle streams.  Fine. The social worker can say that we met at a social club, but we know that we met at a bar. And it was a beautiful thing.

Love in a Tavern

A sonnet of sorts by LeGette 

Dream of a diamond in the depths of a cavern

Waiting to be discovered, polished, adorned.

Love may be biding in a back-alley tavern

Still yet to be uncovered, recovered, or born.

Blackberries will always be found in graveyard fields.

We believe rivers will remain easy to cross.

Knowing ever ripe sweetness our vineyard will yield

Stones in our path will be softly covered in moss.

 

And yet diamonds are still forming now as we speak

And blackberry season returns year after year.

Just as the ocean is filled by stream and by creek

From a tap in a tavern, love is flowing like beer.

Abandon not the cavern, keep crossing the stream

Find love in a tavern, more real than a dream.

With the help of Jamie Hoover, this sonnet is now also a song. Here it is: Blackberries!