What if I'd been born fifty years before you in a house on a street where you lived?

today, i fell in love with a woman i do not know. a woman, who i heard on the radio. to be more precise, the radio station that was picking up my FM transmitted ipod podcast playing This American Life. this woman lived through the great depression, and is therefor, around 50-60 years older than me, at the least. she was amidst a bunch of interviews from people giving testimonies about growing up in that time. she was one of the more positive and awesome of the bunch.

she only attended school through 6th grade, when she dropped out to get a job. she was married at 15, and she and her husband began hitchhiking around america looking for jobs. this woman was so free spirited, and the only negative things she had to say, were about herself, and how ashamed she was of herself in those times for being so racist. she talked about how it took her living the life as the poorest of the poor, picking cotton alongside black people, to realize that she was just like them. however, she didn't come to this realization until years later. this was surprising to hear, after hearing from other old ladies who were still vehemently raciest, and started choking about how mad they were when people said it was ok for black people to get jobs.

this woman talked about working in the valley of texas, picking lemons and grapefruit in orchards, while living in government housing. and about the kindness and generosity of strangers in a time where people didn't even have food for themselves, let alone two drifters. listening to this woman talk was like having Ben Folds' The Luckiest and Jeff Mangum's My Dreamgirl Don't Exist blend together and unfurl before my eyes. My dreamgirl does exist, the person that is my one and only, is a woman i've never met before, and is at least as old as my grandma.

que sera sera, but my heart will not go on.

love,