"The Right One"

I recently got married (more to come on that!) and in one of the many conversations recapping the event with my mom, she told me a story she’d forgotten to share during her toast. (Don’t worry—her speech was awesome and very, very thorough.) It was back when I was about 11 or 12 and she was on the board of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in San Diego. She was at an all-day JDRF training program and Mary Tyler Moore’s husband (who is pretty well-known in his own right for being a rockstar cardiologist) was one of the speakers. I had been diagnosed only a few years earlier and after turning over all of the information she’d learned about the burden that diabetes can be, she couldn’t help but wonder if the disease would not only threaten my body, but also break my heart. I’ll explain—in a stolen moment from the crowd during a break, she told him, “Your wife is so lucky to have you. I worry that my daughter will grow up and some day fall in love with a man, and he will not want to marry her because of her diabetes.” And (now this is her favorite part!) he said, “Then he’s not the right one”. She says that after that, she felt immediate relief. Sure enough, low and behold, the right one did come along! And he has more emotions about my lack of sportsmanship when I lose to him at Dominoes than about the fact that I have diabetes.