O.C. tip-toed as quietly as he could through the muggy Alabama night. Or at least as quietly as one can while carrying a ladder. He was at the home of his beloved: sweet, shy, bright-eyed Willie. His mission was to steal her away and make her his wife. Wille’s stepfather was an overbearing man who made many of the children (there were over 10) skip school to stay home to work on the farm. He didn’t want to lose Willie’s household help, so O.C. and Willie decided they needed to elope.
Now, the stairs in the farmhouse were extra creaky. So O.C. devised a plan to bring a ladder and have Willie escape out of her second-floor bedroom window. Once she was safely down the ladder, the two lovebirds would take off across the state line to Georgia where it was easier to marry. But O.C.’s plan hit quite a snag when he stealthily started setting up the ladder and painfully realized it was too short to reach Willie’s window. He gazed up at his darling and blew her a kiss. Forlorn and frustrated, he folded up his ladder and headed back into the night.
O.C. and Willie were my grandparents.
I love this story of their elopement for so many reasons. It’s romantic and there’s the thrilling nature of it, but mostly I admire their perseverance. What did O.C. do when his plans didn’t work out that first night? Why, he got himself a bigger ladder. He went back the next night and had success. Because sometimes, we miss the mark, or our ideas and plans don’t quite hit fruition. Too often, we assign meaning to that failure. We say it’s the universe sending us a message. “Maybe it’s not meant to be,” we think. Sometimes we wonder if we’re just not good enough. We rationalize that, “if it’s this hard, maybe it’s not supposed to happen.”
But in reality, it may be as simple as, we need to get ourselves a bigger ladder.
We need to go back to the drawing board and tweak our plans or acquire another tool. Maybe we’re just a short distance away from the goal. I guess I wouldn’t be here if Willie or O.C. had thought that their union wasn’t meant to be if they hit obstacles. What if one of them had gotten cold feet? Instead, they married and raised four children (and had oodles of grandchildren and great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren). Their marriage lasted over 60 years. I’m grateful for their persistence. And that bigger ladder.
