The Child Who Chose Us - Part 2

This is a continuation of a piece that was published earlier. You may go to Part One to read it from the beginning, if you wish.



10/27/10 The Child Who Chose Us - Part 2


As we made our way into the shop, Deidra stood up from her desk and, walked toward Poppy (our nickname for Clint), looking somehow elegant and casual at the same time in her grey python miniskirt and silk blouse, four-inch Jimmy Choo sandals clicking across the tile floor bringing her up to a full six feet tall. Her blonde hair swinging, she smiled a smile that made her blue eyes sparkle and held out her hand to shake his.

“You must be Poppy! cj has told me all about you. Do you know how much that little woman over there loves you?”

Then, reaching around his neck as he stooped to accept her embrace, she hugged him and said, “I know I’m going to love you, too!”

Well. Nothing like this ever happened to us, not before, not since. We all fell in love standing in the middle of that shop, surrounded by the stuff that people buy to spiff up their houses - not a typical haunt for a girl like me. I just picked a shop and walked in, and all this happened.

“Come, let’s sit down and chat.”

She patted the slip covered, oversized white sofa I had been eyeing with the idea of buying a pair for the great room.

(Aside: Poppy was generous with everything, his time, money, love - everything. I knew he would buy the sofas if I wanted them, but I also wanted him to meet Dej - her family nickname).

“I came to your house when you were on the golf course with whom cj referred to as ‘that bunch of old geezers,’ and I think it has the best view in the island.”

Clint settled into a the sofa, just the right size for his 6’4” frame, and, business being slow, we were there for a hour. He was, of course, enchanted with Deidra, and he held my hand softly in his as we learned about her family and her fiancé.

Her daddy, Wayne, owns and operates at large farm in south central Georgia, 50 miles south of Macon. He also farms corn, and peanuts and has a small heard of Black Angus cattle. Her mother, Kay, runs the business, brokers the cotton and in general, keeps things running. It would be a few months before we met and discovered how Deidra came to be so beautiful. She has one sister, who at the time, was attending Auburn University. She a beauty, also, but dark and short like her mother. Dej is Wayne’s child, through and through.

Her fiancé, John, managed the Beach Club at Sea Island, and Dej was much enamored with him. But something in the way she talked about him made me worry that she might not be making the right decision.

We left the shop with a promise from her to bring John for a sunset cocktail on our deck later that afternoon. When Dej arrived alone, making his excuses, I knew I was right that something was wrong. She wanted so badly for us to all meet. It would not be the last time he disappointed her. In fact, he never had one drink with us - even after they married.



But this story is not about John..........thank God.

© cj Schlottman

The next installment can be found here.