fate

Dear Soulmate,

“That’s the man I’m going to marry,” she said convincingly when her blue eyes first fell upon a young man who stood behind the register at a small country store in a quiet Vermont town.

He was tall and slender with brown hair and blue eyes. They were both in their early twenties and in that moment, and in the ones to follow, they were in love.

That man was my dad, and that woman was my mom.

I drove with them this past weekend to revisit that same general store in Vermont where they first met. It was just as it had looked in the black and white photograph that I had always seen for years but for whatever reason I had never been interested enough to ever be inclined to visit.

I closed the car door behind me and stood there for a moment shuttering in the cold November air. I observed the chipping paint and wired newspaper rack that had bent over time under the weight of the rocks that were put in place to keep the newspapers from being freely stolen by the wind.

“It was a beautiful store at the time,” my mom said as I watched her and my dad walk up the front steps and open the front door.

My dad looked around as though he were revisiting an old friend- that bittersweet expression that captivated both nostalgia and fondness. After wandering across the creaking hardwood floors and in between the few shopping aisles, he returned to the register where he proudly announced, “I used to own this store.”

The woman who stood behind the counter smiled and before she could speak, my mom said, “I met him here- at this store. We’re married now.”

The woman smiled wider this time and went on to explain how there was another owner of the store who came after my dad and had also met his wife here and are now happily married with children.

I stood there and looked around at the place that was essentially responsible for my existence. It was nothing special with its faded sign and narrow aisles, but it was real. Perhaps it was fate that led my parents to finally meet, a destiny where they were meant to arrive.

But more simply, it was love. The kind of love that makes you want to revist places in your past where your story began. The kind of love that awakens your mind with memories and casts an expression of happily met nostalgia across your face.

The kind of love that you and I will share, some beautiful day.

R