You learn a few things if you live long enough to watch three generations of people try to outrun their own loneliness.
First, the moments that change a life rarely arrive with brass bands. They slip in like dust under a door. A Tuesday. A too-hot afternoon. A choice so small you don’t even realize it’s a hinge until years later you look back and see the whole house of your life swung open on it.
Second, being chosen and being seen are different animals entirely. Folks choose cattle for muscle and milk. They choose land for water and shade. They choose spouses the same way if they’re careless. But being seen… that’s when a person looks at you and somehow finds the part of you that’s still alive beneath whatever the world tried to bury.
I was standing on the depot platform in Dry Creek, Texas, in September of 1882 when I learned the difference. I wasn’t there to buy a wife, mind you. I was there to watch the thing happen, the way a man slows down when a wagon’s broken on the roadside. Curiosity is a sin, the preacher says. Yet the Lord made us nosey and then told us not to be. That’s either humor or cruelty, and I’ve never been able to decide which.
