WHEN LAVETA caught me in her smoldering stare for the first time, we fell in love. I still see those memories in her eyes.
Those eyes take me back to a time before children and bills, before heartbreaks and disappointments, before triumphs and tears, before books and columns. Those eyes – like honey sparkling in the midday sun – return me to a time when we believed love could survive anything.
And, indeed, love has done just that.
Some years ago, LaVeta printed out the proof of love’s endurance and placed it beneath her nightstand. There, in a stack of emails 100 pages thick, is the evidence of just how deeply we fell for one another, back when we were drunk in love.
Our first date was July 5, 1997. I was 29 and she was 30.
We were both in college and living with our parents. LaVeta had spent most of her life in church. I’d spent too much of mine in the street. We were both looking for something that went far beyond the physical, and what we found in each other opened windows to our very souls.
Click here to read the rest of the story.
Solomon Jones is an Essence bestselling author and award-winning columnist. He is the creator and editor of Solomonjones.com and morning host on 900 am WURD radio. Click here to learn more about Solomon
