Interracial couple-- Who cares? The disappointing part of it is that the visible opposition is coming from a couple of family members and so-called friends. They know what I went through with my first husband. You think they'd be glad that I now have someone who is good to me. I've gotten a few stares at the picture of us that I kept on my desk at work, but I don't care what my co-workers think. The only ones at work who did matter to me, are cool with it. The rest of them can take a leap. I've gone to my fiance's office, to pick him up for lunch, a few times. We've gotten a few weird looks, but most of them seem pretty cool. If they're not, they mask it well.

This man and I have been to hell and back, in previous marriages, and we literally stumbled over each other at an art festival. We kind of started talking, laughing at some of the crazy art pieces we saw that day, and just hit it off. We've been tight every since. Two years later, we're getting married. We catch people staring at us a little too hard sometimes, but as long as they don't say anything off the wall, we don't care. We know racism is not dead. Sometimes people are overly friendly. We figure something from their past is rearing it's ugly head. I did have a man look at me as though he was going to punch me, once. We had just walked through the entrance at Disney World (we live in Orlando). A man, walking toward us, seemed to notice that we were together just as my fiance' released my hand to walk over to a water fountain. The man continued to walk towards me with this harsh expression. I stopped in my tracks, in disbelief. I'm thinking, "Is this fool crazy?" The man walked pass, looking down at me (as he was much taller than I), as he passed, with a very disapproving look on his face. I let out a deep breath as the man passed. I didn't say anything to my fiance' because he is not the kind of guy to go for some jerk acting all stupid. It's funny, because we see other interracial couples sometimes. People don't seem as thrown off when it's a black man and a non-black woman, but when it's a black woman with a non-black man, it's like we just stepped off an alien spaceship. Regardless to how tourist oriented Florida is, it is still the South, and there is still a lot of open racism here.

The good thing about all of this is that both our moms are very supportive (both our fathers are deceased). I'm an only child, and he has a younger brother who doesn't care about anything but restoring his 1975 Monte Carlo. I'm glad our moms are cool, but it kind of hurts my feelings and pisses me off, at the same time. I expect all of my family to be happy that I'm happy. My aunts won't say anything directly, they just make their little snide remarks, when he's not around. Last Thanksgiving will probably be my last time breaking bread at my aunt's house. I just don't feel comfortable being around them anymore. My fiance' knows the deal, and it doesn't seem to bother him that some of my relatives are not in favor of this whole idea. He says he knows how people can be, and sometimes family is the worst. I just wish they could understand that it's what's on the inside, not the outside, that matters.