I’d known Kara for ten years, just as a friend of a friend. If you’d asked me where she lived I wouldn’t have been able to name the state, let alone the city.
And then one rainy April afternoon after we’d fallen in love and I was visiting Lexington, we sat in her car taking turns with the aux cable, sharing favorite songs by obscure bands and stealing kisses at red lights. She played a song by Delta Rae and I wracked my brain trying to think of the little band they reminded me of that I’d heard play at a local club a few months before. We moved on to some Parker Milsap or Grace Potter tune, but it bugged me that I couldn’t remember the band and share it with her.
Later that night, as I ran to my connecting flight in the Charlotte airport, one of my go-to playlists in my earbuds, the song I couldn’t remember played — “Lexington” by Alpha Rev. I cried then at the crazy wonder and grace and mercy of all this Love.
And if you’re wondering if I cried again when Kara handed me the album on vinyl a couple of months ago, the answer is yes.
I cry every time I think about that moment running through an airport in the midst of all the madness of falling in love and changing our whole lives for This. Every time I think about being dropped a little line from God, that yes indeed this was right and what She/He wanted for us, what She was saying, “Yes” to in all kinds of ways every time we asked.
I never expected to fall for this woman, or for this city, so fast and so hard. But here we are, and God it’s the best thing.
Magic.
-A