What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Ashley Strahm
5 min readJun 4, 2021

Do we make love or does it make us?

“Girl, you so fine, someone ought to put you on a plate and suck you up with a straw.”

Imagine someone saying that to you. That someone is a middle-aged, graying man in larger-than-necessary cargo shorts and typical Caribbean-dad sandals… who has been mistaken more than once for Cedric the Entertainer.

Martin, circa 1982

That’s my father. And that’s the same line he’s been using on my mother since they met at 18 in 1984. He still believes he has this (←) swag.

Hey—according to her, he still does.

It’s a funny thing, being the product of two folks that are still embarrassingly in love. It’s been over 35 years, and they’re still snapping towels at each other’s backsides in the kitchen, still reminiscing about first dates in hoopties and road trips that ended with windswept hair from open windows because air conditioning was a luxury in a ’72 Chevelle.

My brother and I were planned, almost to the day. Four years after they met, Martin and Diana tied the knot. Then, they had me. Four years and four days after that, my brother came along. Though both from families of eight, dad…

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Ashley Strahm

Jersey roots, Durham fruit. Committed to justice, enthralled by stories, and inspired by an equitable future for us all.