02.16.2007

I had been divorced 27 days when I met him.

Decked out in my favorite jeans and a striped black top that afforded a peek-a-boo look at my fuchsia bra beneath, I felt like hot stuff.

What can I say? I was 24-years-old, single for the first time in my adult life, and determined to spend the next year — at minimum — kissing random boys just because I could.

And, then I walked into my friend’s apartment, and every plan I had went to hell.

First, though, let me back up.

She’d called me an hour earlier to tell me that her friend Ryan wanted to join us for our night of planned debauchery. (She’d just broken up with some jerk, so clearly.)

“Look cute!” she said. She’d been hoping to set me up with this guy, and out of the blue, he’d called her. Fate, her voice seemed to suggest.

“I always look cute” was my quippy reply.

So armed with my usual cuteness and a complete lack of expectation, I walked into her living room, and my first thought went something like this:

OH, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, REALLY?????

I have no idea what other people would have seen when they looked at him that night, but I saw the very last thing I was looking for.

The poet in me wants to call this moment love at first sight, but that wouldn’t really be accurate. Having loved, I know that it is something altogether different.

Romantic love is by design. It is conceived… planned… forged by hand. It isn’t a natural wonder at all.

Love is the Egyptian pyramids. We work for love, and our ability to create it stands as a reminder that divinity flows through our veins.

This was like stumbling across the Grand Canyon. I had absolutely nothing to do with it. It was there waiting to be found, and once discovered, it redefined beauty for all of my life.

All those doors I’d kept open just in case slammed shut at the same time. Nothing would ever feel the same again.

Of course, at that moment, I didn’t know I’d crossed some invisible threshold. I didn’t think that my life had changed forever.

I was just really glad I’d worn that pink bra.