Love Stories

15 Marbles
Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.
Casablanca

     Love stories, when they’re good, are always a heady mix of randomness and destiny… There’s a man who I work with that teaches salsa lessons. He told me that the first time he danced with his wife, he knew that she would become his wife. It was love at first dance - their bodies were perfectly synced and she would become the love of his life and the mother of his children. 
     There’s a woman who I work with that met her husband because of a coin toss. She was traveling around Europe with her brother and they were disagreeing about where to go to next. They decided to end the argument with a coin toss: Heads was Austria, tails was Germany. Heads won out and she found her husband at the train station in Vienna. The moment their eyes met, they each burst into a wide smile.
     I’ve had several love stories in my life: throwing a water balloon at Ex-man when I was fourteen and falling in love when he played the piano for me; looking over Vancouver from one of the local mountains and falling in love with my ex-husband by the tenderness of his kiss to the top of my head; knowing I loved a woman when she looked into my eyes and painted my lips with my lipstick; and not less importantly, the love-before-first sight I had for each of my children. 
    Most of these stories are in my past (except for the unfolding connections with my children and the one with myself). The question, as the final marbles drop one by one, “What else can I create?

Can you honor your love story with your X and leave it in the past? Can you open-heartedly ask, “What else can I create?”