Because of Fyodor Dostoevsky

8:00 pm December 18, 1999. Baylor University, Miller Chapel. Six years ago. That's sort of the beginning and the ending to the entire story.

I will bring you up on the preface to December 18, 1999. I was to have graduated in December 1998, but I withdrew my name from the graduation list a month before graduation. No, I wasn't failing anything. I took my name off the graduation list because there was a green flyer posted just outside Miller Chapel that said "The Problem of Evil - Spring 1999" and a list of the works to be covered in the class. I saw it - The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky. As a high school student I read the book and it's what had set my mind to majoring in English. I couldn't leave college without reading it in a seminar and my grad school application wasn't going to be reviewed for another semester - my only option was to put graduation off for a year. I ran to the Dean's office and removed my name. The Administrative Assistant asked me why. "They're reading Dostoevsky next semester." She looked at me. The woman asked if I were sure. Yes. Absolutely. Because sometimes you can't let graduation get in the way of your education. "It's your money..." She said as she crossed my name out of the line up.

In addition to Dostoevsky I had to sign up for three other classes to maintain full time status. I will tell you that he was two seats down from me in the only class left open during late registration. I will tell you that I am not a romantic, but he smiled at me and I knew. I never spoke to him. He smiled and I knew. He says I didn't smile back. He says I looked at him and then started talking to some other guy. Maybe. I don't remember that part I just remember a kind, friendly smile and kind eyes.

A few months later we met in the library over a stack of books piled high on a shared table. He was wearing khaki pants and a plaid shirt. It was the last day of February. He asked what I would do after graduation which was a scant 11 weeks off. Grad school. PhD in English Literature. He seemed genuinely interested in my overview an analysis of The Brothers Karamazov.

Long story short - no graduate school for me. No MA. No MFA. No PhD. No dissertation on the correspondence between the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paul Tillich, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and R.S. Thomas. If he hadn't smiled at me that day, if he hadn't seemed so interested in Dostoevsky, if he hadn't signed up for the same class because it was the only other one still open during late registration, there would have been no whirlwind wedding in the chapel where a year earlier a green flyer caught my eye four weeks before graduating. No tiny first apartment. No Wilson. No Reagan. No rental house with unpredictable water and utilities. No mutt dogs who actually validate my compulsion to vacuum everyday. No messes. No excitement. No family of my own. I would have gone on with academia and I wouldn't have known all about Batman, Superman, mutt dogs, Star Wars, seafood, and I would have earned a wall full of framed parchment, but I would have missed out on love and a full, rich life.

The first gift I bought him was a copy of Dostoevsky book in May of 1999. He hasn't read it, but he knows I never really expected him to. It's there on the shelf for Wilson and Reagan to discover one day. They will read the letter I wrote to a young college student who, just 11 weeks before I gave him the book was a stranger at a shared table on the last day of February, 1999. They owe their existences to God and an 1880 book by Russian author whose book ends:
"Well, let's go! And we go like this now, hand in hand."
"And eternally so, all our lives hand in hand!"

Hand in hand. Wouldn't have done it any other way.