This past weekend, I traveled to Detroit to witness the wedding of two special friends, J and A. J was my best friend in the Korea days, and I functioned as her best man (I even got to sign the marriage certificate as a witness! 🙂 ) She asked me to write a toast for the reception. What follows is an approximation of my introduction to the toast, and then the toast itself, which was written down and can be copied verbatim.
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This is the third wedding toast I’ve given, so I’m pretty experienced, and normally, this is the time when people would expect me to read a list of embarrassing memories about J. But I have to tell you, one of the first things I knew about J was that she did tae kwon do and helped out at a tae kwon do club in Seoul. One day, we’re chatting, and she goes, “Joel, I get annoyed sometimes.” And I said, “Why’s that?” and she goes, “Well, people ask me if I can beat them up, and I get annoyed by it.” And I said, “Well, can you beat people up?” And she looks me straight in the eye and says, “Yeah.”
With that in mind, I’m not going to share a list of embarrassing memories about J. But I did write something I wanted to share, and I hope you’ll indulge me; it’s called “In Appreciation of Two Rad-Ass Ladies.”
I knew almost no one when I first moved to South Korea to teach English. I spent most of my evenings alone, wandering the metro system and reading for hours. I envied the friendships the other teachers had and wondered when I’d feel at home.
Enter J: fellow Midwest native, Stanford grad, and self-described doer-of-things. She was funny, adventurous, and always ready to pull off some silly prank.
Example: We once taped a piece of candy and a note that said “Time for a snack!” to an alarm clock. We hid them under another teacher’s desk in the office we all shared. The clock was set to go off during that teacher’s prep period so that, when she finally found the ringing alarm clock, she would know that it was, indeed, time for a snack.
Example #2: J once anonymously left presents on my desk for about a week, all of them starting with the letter P.
Example #3: My brother was visiting me in Seoul and left my apartment unlocked so J could sew pink buttons on all my shirts.
J had swept into my life with the force of a tornado. Most of my memories from my time in Asia involve her in some way. We went almost everywhere together. We biked around temples in Cambodia and sampled snake wine in Vietnam. We fought bugs in Malaysia and she told me about rock formations in Mongolia.
Near the end of our time in Asia, I asked J what would happen if we went back to the States and never talked again. What if we lost contact with each other?
“Miller,” she said, “you obviously have me confused with someone far less persistent.”
She was true to her word, sending me letters when life had taken her to the UP for grad school and me to Ethiopia with the Peace Corps. That was how I found out about A, and when I got back to the States, I finally got to meet her.
First impression: I wake up on their couch and A says to me, “Joel, I was thinking I’d run down to the store for sausages, and I could make us some breakfast. Does that sound good to you?”
It did. And it was. Leftover Korean stew with fried eggs, sausages, and coffee, and she didn’t even make me help cook or clean up!
We finish eating and A says to me, “Joel, I can’t get anything done until I walk in nature. We could walk together. Does that sound good to you?”
It did. And it was. I quickly understood how J could have fallen for A. Fiercely talented and intelligent, but also an intent listener. She could tell me a story about her artist’s residency in Southern France and in the next breath ask me about my own art. I barely knew her, but she made me feel seen.
Later, J and I went out for beers, and I had to gush. “A is pretty great!” I said. “Like, perfect!”
And I still remember J’s voice softening as she leaned over the bar and ran a hand through her hair. She said, “A, man… she’s it for me.”
I’m grateful for these rad-ass ladies. I’m grateful for their warmth and friendship, and even more so that they found each other. So I want everyone to raise a glass and toast in appreciation of these two rad-ass ladies.
The Mill 