I was seated next to this little lady who was actually also from the UK, and we started chatting and she asked about work and kids, whatever, and I said, in a random way, which I don’t usually do because, ew, strangers, no, “I’ve actually just started talking to this man from Glasgow, but I’m not sure about the distance and all that, but he’s just very cool.” And she said she’d just come from burying her sister, and while she understood the time difference would be hard, (and this is where she pointed a finger at me) she said “Life has no dress rehearsal, and you don’t get second chances.”
I just blinked at her. She said “LA to Glasgow is what, eight hours?” And I said I was actually east coast based and she pointed her finger at me again and said “That is really just next door. You would be a fool not to see what could happen. And yer no spring chicken, dear, cackle cackle.”
Well OK OLD LADY. STOP IT. Creeper.
AT THE SAME TIME…
Mark is on a flight with two ladies from Minneapolis, both of whom just lost their husbands, and they were visiting Scotland together as a way of mourning for them. He, too, strikes up a conversation and mentions he’s been chatting up an American, and one of them, Marg (he got her name) tells him she’d actually met her late husband online (Star Trek chat room, natch, geekier, in the late 90s) and that they had done the long distance thing for years (she had been from LA) because of time and distance and kids, but she’d moved to be with him 18 years ago. Marg took Mark’s hand and said “Meet this woman. These things don’t just happen. I was the happiest I’ve ever been for 20 years because of the man I just buried. You have to meet her.”
Gulp.
SO WE GET OFF PLANES and message like “YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT JUST HAPPENED” and FaceTime each other and relate these stories and go THIS IS CRAZY about fourteen times but neither of us get completely weirded out because this is amazing, this thing, and it’s still his BIRTHDAY.
Just so you know…
During that airport FaceTime, I ordered wings at an airport bar and ate them while on FaceTime because nothing says New Romance like “Let me eat these wings in front of you.” I also had to leave half of them there because my flight got moved to a different gate, and I still regret that because, man, they were some good wings.
So he says, “OK. We need to plan a time, let’s say three months from now, and I will come back to the states, and we will meet. We have three months to talk more and see what happens.”
And I say, ok. Yes. Lets. And he books a flight to DC for Labor Day. But we have a timeframe in place now. It’s like old school courting!
So we talk all through June. FaceTiming for hours at night. Chatting on FB. Sending actual letters. He texts when he wakes up, and I text before I go to bed. We both go on vacations with our kids, and he travels some more for work, and we’re still constantly talking, sending videos. We talk books and movies and death and the birth stories of our kids and he reads to me out loud and I read to him. We cover his desire to see the U.S. and how he thinks my “Southern” accent is adorable (HA) and my love of all things Scottish (“I’ve never been exotic!” he laughs).
“Of course I have a kilt” he says.
WELL OF COURSE HE DOES.
He tells me never to mention “Brigadoon” to his dad because BRIGADOON IS REDUCTIVE AND STUPID and that they better have used all real Scots for “Outlander.” I assure him they have, and that it’s an amazing story, very respectful of Scottish culture and history, to which he growls a particularly Scottish growl that makes me think even more of Jamie but I digress.
We laugh ALL the TIME.
I showed pictures of him to my BFF and when we got to the one of him in his kilt, BFF said “F^%#. Marry that man.”
NO WOMAN IS GOING TO SAY NO TO THIS
I mean. I’m waking up to little videos? Am I being punked?
