Do You Know Love?

Miriam Bell packed her bag and waited inside her parent’s home for them to return from church.

Her mother’s right hand rushed to her left breast as she opened the door and saw her daughter dressed and sitting on the ‘Goodbye chair.’ A few of her ancestors have done what she is about to do.

“Please,” her mother begged. “It’s tradition. You must marry. . . . . .”

“It’s your tradition,” Miriam cried out.

“It’s our tradition!” her father backed her up.

“Do you love my mother?” she screamed, easing off the chair.

Her father’s upper body unconsciously eased back, and with furled brows, he asked, “What?”

“Do you love her?” she points to her mom.

Silence fought back as her parents stared at her.

“It’s a tradition for me not to meet love before I vow to dedicate my entire life to someone I don’t know, never met, and it’s ok with you,” Miriam screamed.

“You young people have no respect for our tradition,” her father shouted back.

“Traditions denied you the opportunity to know love. To understand love, now you want me to marry someone I have never met or know,” Miriam defends. “I must carry on a tradition I despise!”

“You are willing to go to jail rather than marry and enjoy life,” her father asked.

“Marrying someone I don’t know, haven’t met, isn’t freedom, Papa,” she cried out. “It’s a marriage jail,” Miriam explains. “I am supposed to vow to love and honor someone I know nothing about. Isn’t marriage about love anymore?”

“It’s the only life we know,” her father defends.

“You could learn to love him like I learned to love your father,” her mother suggested.

“Mom,” Miriam said, easing towards her, taking her mother’s hands and staring into her eyes. Then she poured from a heart determined to find love, “Your feelings or you didn’t have a chance at love. Your love only had one road, not two. No matter what your feelings were, you couldn’t turn back. You were stuck in the hell or heaven he chose to create for you. I want a choice. You didn’t have one because tradition took that away. Well, I am going to give my love a choice!”

“You can’t let her do this?” her father yelled at her mother.

“She always has a mind of her own and knows what she wants,” her mother reminds him.

“You showed me love. Both of you introduced love to me while raising me. I want that from any man with whom I will spend the rest of my life. I want to know him. Find out what he likes and dislikes. What makes him laugh and cry. What builds him up, and what tears him down. I want to know his purpose for life and living. I want to meet love. To be able to identify and understand the different phases of love. If I can’t get that, I am willing to go to jail, Papa,” she stood her ground. “Being married to someone I don’t know is a form of loveless imprisonment!”

“Well, according to our laws, you have to go work in . . . . .”

“I already packed,” Miriam said, pointing to her suitcases.

In five years, with the help of Dr. Christopher Livingston, Miriam got her nursing degree while living in the Orphanage working with Orphans and critically ill children.

Dr. Livingston had a beautiful heart with which she fell in love with. He, too, fell in love with her heart.

At their small wedding, which had less than twenty people, her parents were shocked to see his parents. They burst out laughing moments before the Minister arrived, grabbing everyone’s attention.

More than ten pairs of eyes demanded to know what was so funny.

“I am the bride’s mother and should be allowed to speak,” Miriam’s mother stated.

“Why don’t we do it together?” Christopher’s mother suggested.

Both fathers nodded in agreement.

“He was the one you were supposed to marry,” her mother informs.

“She is the one we chose for your bride,” Christopher’s mother notified.

Everyone burst out laughing as the minister entered the small Chapel.

We should be given a choice to know and understand love and its phases. Knowing love and its value would make humanity more respectful of and appreciative of it.

This was inspired by a caregiver I worked with who said that when she was sixteen years old, she woke up one morning to go to school and was told by her mother that she wouldn’t be attending school today. She would be getting married. Her husband is older than her. She said she didn’t get a chance to experience love.

She was against marrying someone she didn’t know, but traditions in her world deny females the right to know and love the man they are going to marry.

I am glad I had a choice.

Millions of females have never had a chance to meet love, know love, or understand real love.

If your heart could speak, what would it say?

Every human should get the opportunity to meet and know love.

No heart should be divided or chained!

Thank you for reading this piece.