When Trevor finds out from his doctor that it is totally possible for a woman to conceive at Rachel’s age if she is having her monthly cycle things change. She has decided to re-explore the dating world again and she enjoys younger Caucasian men and wants to settle down. However, as long as I could show that a Catholic belief or practice that they objected to was rooted in Scripture, they would relent.

When my grandmother died, I helped my mother and her sisters sort through all of the things she accumulated during her 89 years. Rachel says she will allow him to do what he wants so long if he gets her pregnant he has to marry her immediately. My mother wrote my grandmother a letter after the fact, explaining what she had done and that she had given birth to a child—my older brother—and braced for the response. For the majority of her life my grandmother belonged to that church and lived within 30 minutes of that church. It is true that your grandma might not welcome the idea of you marrying from a different race, but remember that, you are the one who is going to stay in that relationship.I’m most nervous to meet Granny, mainly because I don’t know how she will react to her grandson dating a non-white girl.

My grandmother was born over a century ago to a preacher and his wife, each with a third-grade education, who together served a small Baptist church in a textile mill town in rural North Carolina. They fell in love and eventually decided to get married knowing that my grandparents would be irate and that her marriage could cause my grandfather to lose his job at the family church, she did not invite (or even notify) them. My grandfather requested that at his funeral, my brother—whose existence he worked so hard to hide from the church—sing “Amazing Grace,” front and center of the same church. I thought about how this is especially applicable to my experience, and how histories of hurt, discrimination, abuse, imperialism, and racism melt into today’s attitudes and fears, no matter how far removed.And in my eyes, rejection from the matriarch of the family is something that is pretty hard to overcome. My grandmother even cast her last presidential ballot for Obama, although she was a lifelong Republican. Throwaway culture has always been part and parcel of our modern life, but with social media fomenting our deep cultural divides, we too easily treat other folks as expendable.