Cooper-Ackwood Family Archive

2013

Three words and an unexpected beginning

I'm a man.

The story of the Cooper-Ackwood family did not begin with a grand introduction, an elaborate first date, or even a particularly romantic opening line. It began on Facebook in 2013 with a long message from Domonique and three remarkably short words from Kashaun: “I'm a man.”

At the time, Domonique was building an inspiration and motivation platform for women called Women Empowering Women. She reached out to Kashaun to tell him about it and invited him to listen. Kashaun, noticing that the platform was very clearly created for women, responded with those three words. Domonique already knew. She simply replied, in essence, “Yes, I know. However, I would still like for you to listen.”

And somehow, from that slightly awkward, wonderfully ordinary exchange, a conversation began that would eventually become a marriage, a blended family, and a story neither of them could possibly have predicted.

Domonique had discovered Kashaun through something he had written. Around his birthday, he was promoting his book, What If I Am the Four Stages in Life? A Facebook friend reposted it, the post found its way onto Domonique's screen, and a connection was made between two people who, at that moment, lived hundreds of miles apart.

Spring 2013

A weekend measured in minutes

They began messaging. At first, the conversations were simple: likes and dislikes, interests, personalities, backgrounds, and the ordinary questions two people ask when they are slowly learning who exists on the other side of the screen. But the conversations kept getting longer. And better. Eventually, typing back and forth no longer seemed like enough.

Sometime around May 2013, Kashaun suggested that perhaps it was time for them to actually hear each other's voices. The phone conversations began, and they were anything but brief. During one of their first weekends talking, back when cell phone plans still counted minutes and “free nights and weekends” actually mattered, Domonique and Kashaun somehow managed to talk for approximately 1,200 minutes in a single weekend. And yes, they checked. Fortunately, many of those minutes were free.

What was remarkable was not simply how long they talked, but how effortless the conversations felt. Two people who had technically only recently met found themselves speaking with the comfort, curiosity, and ease of old friends who had somehow missed a few years and were trying to catch up.

Then came one of the stranger details of their story. Domonique was living in Atlanta, Georgia. Kashaun was living in Baltimore City. Yet years earlier, Domonique had lived in Maryland, not far from where Kashaun lived. At one point, their lives had existed within the same ZIP code. Even more remarkable, Domonique used to shop at the Food Lion in Owings Mills, Maryland, where Kashaun worked. Same community. Same grocery store. Possibly the same aisles. And somehow, they never met.

Life has an interesting sense of timing. Sometimes people can live only a few miles apart and remain complete strangers. Then years later, from different states, one reposted Facebook message can finally introduce them.

June 2013

A Greyhound bus headed south

I don't wear glasses and I can't see. How in the hell can this woman drive through this?

After weeks of messages and marathon phone conversations, they decided talking from hundreds of miles away was no longer enough. In June 2013, Kashaun boarded a Greyhound bus from Baltimore to Atlanta to meet Domonique in person for the first time.

There was no airport arrival, no dramatic movie scene, and no perfectly choreographed entrance. Domonique was late picking him up. And when she finally arrived, she was wearing pink sweatpants and glasses. It became one of those delightfully ordinary moments nobody realizes will become family history while it is actually happening.

That first weekend was filled with food, conversation, laughter, exploration, and the slightly surreal experience of finally sitting beside someone whose voice had already become so familiar. And then Georgia decided to welcome Kashaun properly. It rained. Not a quiet summer rain. It stormed. The sky became dark, the rain poured, thunder rolled through the night, and the roads disappeared beneath the kind of deep, pitch-black Georgia thunderstorm that makes even familiar streets look different.

Kashaun sat in the passenger seat while Domonique drove calmly through it. He looked through the windshield, looked at the rain, looked over at Domonique wearing her glasses and thought to himself: “I don't wear glasses and I can't see. How in the hell can this woman drive through this?” But she did. Through the rain. Through the darkness. Through the thunder. Domonique kept driving.

Years later, it became one of those small scenes that remained vivid, partly because it was funny and partly because family stories are often preserved through moments nobody would have thought important enough to document at the time.

Atlanta, food, and three slices of cheesecake

That weekend also became a small tour of Atlanta through food. They ate at Steak 'n Shake. They visited Gladys Knight's Chicken & Waffles. And somewhere between the chicken, waffles, conversation, and excitement of finally being together, they discovered a dessert worthy of becoming part of the official family record: sweet potato cheesecake.

They did not have one slice. They did not have two. They had three slices. Perhaps every family origin story deserves at least one unnecessary amount of dessert. For the Cooper-Ackwood family, apparently, it was sweet potato cheesecake.

It was an extraordinary weekend made memorable largely through ordinary things: meals, rain, conversation, laughter, driving around Atlanta, pink sweatpants, glasses, and the strange realization that the person who had existed inside a telephone for weeks was now sitting beside you.

2013–2014

Distance, a new child, and two family worlds

After that first visit, the distance between Atlanta and Baltimore became something they learned to work around. Kashaun would return every few weeks. Sometimes four weeks passed. Sometimes five. Sometimes six. Domonique traveled to Baltimore to see him as well. Visits became more frequent. Conversations became deeper. Dates became memories. And two lives that had once existed independently began slowly moving toward one another.

By the end of 2013, they learned that they were expecting Jabari. Suddenly, what had begun as Facebook messages, curiosity, long-distance conversations, and a Greyhound ticket was becoming something much larger. A family was taking shape. Jabari was born, and in 2014 Kashaun officially moved to Georgia.

But this was never simply the story of two people moving in together. Children came with them. Histories came with them. Routines came with them. Expectations came with them. Two adults were not merely learning how to live together. Two existing family worlds were attempting to become one.

And that part of the story was not simple. Blending a family rarely is. It meant bringing together different approaches to parenting, different household rhythms, different expectations, different philosophies, different methodologies, different experiences, and different ideas about how everyday life should work. Domonique had her way of doing things. Kashaun had his. The children had personalities, needs, relationships, histories, and adjustments of their own. Love did not magically erase those differences.

There were disagreements, frustrations, misunderstandings, good days, and some days that were decidedly less good. There were moments when becoming one family seemed natural, and others when it required considerably more patience, compromise, humility, forgiveness, and persistence than either of them probably anticipated. It was not always sunshine, gumdrops, and raindrops—although, considering that first weekend in Atlanta, there were certainly plenty of actual raindrops.

But somehow, through all of it, they continued. They adjusted. They learned. They disagreed. They laughed. They tried again. And slowly, not perfectly but genuinely, they built a family.

Thanksgiving 2014–2015

A proposal, a marriage, and a continuing story

On Thanksgiving 2014, Kashaun proposed to Domonique. And in 2015, Kashaun and Domonique were married. The Cooper and Ackwood family lines officially became part of the same continuing story.

Over the years, some of their best memories would come not from enormous occasions but simply from experiencing life together: birthdays, celebrations, family outings, ordinary evenings, trips, arguments that eventually became stories, and moments that probably felt insignificant when they happened but became precious simply because time passed.

One experience nobody had trouble remembering was taking the entire family to Walt Disney World. There was something beautiful about that trip beyond the rides and attractions. A blended family that had spent years learning how to live together was now traveling together, navigating Disney together, laughing together, eating together, waiting in lines together, making memories together, and continuing the never-finished process of becoming a family. They had a ball.

And there would be many more chapters after Disney: some joyful, some difficult, some hilarious, some painful, some ordinary, some that would only reveal their importance years later, and chapters still unwritten.

Why the beginning is worth preserving

That is one reason this archive exists. Years from now, when children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and generations Kashaun and Domonique will never have the opportunity to meet explore the Cooper-Ackwood Family Archive, they will be able to trace their history through names, dates, photographs, documents, and family records. But we hope they discover more than that. We hope they discover how it began.

Their family began with two people living in different states. A book. A Facebook repost. A woman building something called Women Empowering Women. A very long message. And a man who replied: “I'm a man.”

It continued with a response. Thousands of minutes of conversation. Two people discovering that years earlier they had lived in the same ZIP code. A Food Lion in Owings Mills where one worked and the other shopped, without either knowing the significance the other would someday have. A Greyhound bus headed south. A woman arriving late in pink sweatpants and glasses. A pitch-black Georgia thunderstorm. A man in the passenger seat wondering how on earth the woman beside him could see well enough to drive through it. Steak 'n Shake. Gladys Knight's Chicken & Waffles. Three slices of sweet potato cheesecake.

It continued through long-distance trips between Baltimore and Atlanta, a pregnancy, a baby, a move south, children learning how to become siblings, two adults learning that combining households was considerably more complicated than combining last names, a Thanksgiving proposal in 2014, a marriage in 2015, Disney World, arguments, laughter, mistakes, forgiveness, growth, and years of continuing to figure out what being a family actually means.

There was no perfect path from that first Facebook message to everything that followed. There were turns, storms, interruptions, disagreements, surprises, adjustments, long drives, long phone calls, long-distance visits, difficult seasons, wonderful memories, and moments of extraordinary joy. That is precisely what makes the story worth preserving.

The Cooper-Ackwood story is not the story of two perfect people who somehow created a perfect family. It is the story of two lives that once passed within a few miles of each other without meeting, only to finally intersect years later through something as ordinary as a Facebook post. It is the story of two people who kept learning one another, two families learning how to become one, and a life that slowly grew from conversations neither person could have known would matter so much.

Perhaps that is the most beautiful part of family history. We rarely recognize the beginning while we are living through it. Sometimes the beginning looks like a wedding. Sometimes it looks like the birth of a child. And sometimes the beginning of generations of family history looks like a Facebook notification in 2013 and three words that nobody would have thought worthy of remembering: “I'm a man.” And yet, here we are. Every generation that follows becomes another chapter.