He’s Just Not Ready For You
Twice in the span of about a month, I have had the good fortune to spend time with my friend Joanna. She moved away from Charleston more than a decade ago. Now, she’s in Denver.
It’s hard to keep in touch across the miles. Through PhD’s (hers). And twins (also hers). And abject craziness (mine).
Life gets in the way of so many of the connections we make. It makes us too harried to stop, and breathe, and tell people what they mean to us.
Joanna doesn’t mean something to me because we *almost* met Justin Timberlake together. It was quite something to *almost* share a wine chiller with him and Jessica Biel.
No.
Jo stuck with me through an awful break-up. Through its aftermath, when I was an abomination of self. She listened to me rant and vent and cry for far longer than any sane person would.
And, when my other friends told me things like “if you’d just stop looking, you’d find the right man” or “you’re just not ready, and that’s why you haven’t met him”, she said something else, something that didn’t make my singleness in my thirties my problem.
There’s a man out there for you, Andra, and he’s just not ready for you. When he’s ready for you, he will show up. I know it.
She said that late one night after a party at her Charleston house. I remember how the lights cast the shadows of palmetto trees over the room. And, I wondered about this man who wasn’t ready for me. Where was he? Was she even right?
Of course, she was.
He was living in Barcelona. Starting an architecture program. When the administration told him he had to come back to the States a year early, he interviewed for a job in Charleston from a phone booth in Austria.
And, that’s how he found me.
I’ll never forget that advice Joanna gave me. She is a special person, and I am fortunate to call her friend.
