Climb by Michelle Gadsden-Williams

Author:Michelle Gadsden-Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2018-04-24T04:00:00+00:00

7

Having It All—The Boldface Lie

“Shonda, how do you do it all?” The is answer is this: I don’t.

—Shonda Rhimes

MGadsden-Williams @mgadsdenwilliam 30 Aug 2016. Twenty years ago today I married my best friend David Jamal Williams @high55lander. Looking forward to growing old with you!

That was the tweet I sent out on our twentieth wedding anniversary. Yeah, David and I are each other’s confidant. We talk about work and life—communication is one of our strong points. We are very, very close. We’ve done everything together. We’ve always traveled everywhere together. After all, we practically grew up together. We were young when we first met—I was just twenty-one years old. We got engaged at twenty-four, and married three months after my twenty-seventh birthday. So we’ve known each other a long time, during some formative years in our lives. Many of our friends and family would characterize us as having the perfect marriage. I think those perceptions are mostly based on how David and I support each other; we’ve always been there for each other.

I am very fortunate that with everything I have gone through in my career and my life, David has had my back. In this regard, I couldn’t have chosen a better mate. And to think that it started with a blind date. All thanks to David’s coworker at AT&T, Reginald Rufus.

My mother and I were in David’s office building; Mom, who is an entrepreneur, was delivering merchandise to a client at the AT&T headquarters in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. I had no real interest in going with Mom to see her client. So I decided to have a seat in the lobby and wait for her to return from her meeting. Not to mention, I had just broken up with my boyfriend a few weeks prior, and as such, I was in no mood to meet or greet anyone.

David was traveling out of town and his buddy Reginald decided to play matchmaker. He thought, Oh, she’s a nice-looking woman, let me go over and chat her up. Reginald was fair-skinned, clean-shaven, short-statured, nicely dressed, and very soft-spoken. He approached me and introduced himself: “Hello. How are you? I’m Reginald Rufus. Are you waiting for someone?”

I was slightly intrigued: “My mother is in the building meeting with a client, and I’m waiting for her to return.”

We continued with the small talk and he continued to pepper me with questions: “Are you a recent college graduate? What school? Where are you from? You look like a nice girl. Are you seeing anyone?”

“No,” I said, slightly irritated.

He then told me: “I have someone I’d like you to meet if you’re open to it.”

At first I politely declined. I had just gotten out of a bad romance and was not interested in pursuing another relationship.

In the back of my mind, I was wondering if he was making up this story so that he could ask me out on a date, when I noticed that he was wearing a wedding ring. Of course, I gave him the side-eye, because I was not about to get involved in a relationship with a married man.

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