It was July and there were widespread, terrible thunderstorms across the entire midwest. he got diverted from Houston to Dallas to fly on to London. I got diverted to fly from Chicago through Dallas – of all places – to London.
Only one flight was available for three flights of frustrated passengers. I never saw him in the sea of people at the gate trying to get on AA50. I was standing by and was the very last passenger to be allowed to board the 747. They had seated me in business 7H. As I turned the corner, I spotted my seat -easy – it was the only empty one. AND I spotted the handsome man in the aisle seat next to my window. Our eyes locked and he stood up smiling, blushing, to help me get my carry on into the overhead. Before we even sat down, he spluttered: “Since we are going to spend the night together, I’d better introduce myself”. Realizing how that came out, his face grew even more red.
Our eys never left the other and as we sat down, we just found each other’s hand and sat there without saying anyhting at all for a long time. He had tears in his eyes. Yes, it was all very, very weird! (by the way, he was 48 at the time and I was 37 so this was not puppy love).
When we finally spoke, we were talking in unisome, literally! He had just attendend his parent’s 50th anniversary and I had just attended mine’s – on the same date. He had just got divorced. So had I. On – you guessed it – the same day. Etc. Etc. It was uncanny!
He was on his way to his work in Africa. I was on my way home to England.
The entire business class cabin and the flight attendant were following our romance, apparantly – not that we were behaving in any way unsuitable – because as we got up to disembark, several people incl. our flight attendant smiled and asked us to invite them to our wedding!
Because we were both somewhat shocked over this meeting, I made him promise me not to make any attempt of contacting me. I had to go home and process this. After 30 days, I couldn’t stand it any longer and I wrote him a letter. The first thing he asked his dad when he picked him up at the airport upon his return to the USA from Africa was: “Is there aletter from a lady in England?” His dad answered: “Yes, it just came today! Who is she?”
Well, they soon found out. A year later he proposed to me and my two little boys. And we all married in 1998 in my home country, Denmark, with both our families there together with friends from seven countries. We all spent three weeks together cruising through Europe before my husband had to go back to work in Africa.
So far, we have been married for fourteen years and we look forward to the next many years together.
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