No, this isn’t the cover of next month’s issue of Guideposts magazine. It’s a card from my Guideposts family, to congratulate me on my upcoming wedding. On July 3, I’ll marry the love of my life, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been before.
It’s a long way from how I felt in September 2008. My best friend since childhood was engaged to be married; my roommate, Seth, was in a serious relationship and headed toward marriage. And me? I had yet to find true love. In my lonelier, self-pitying moments, I wondered if maybe such a thing didn’t exist for me.
I was wallowing in this attitude when Seth’s girlfriend came to the apartment one 
afternoon. “Hey, Adam,” she said, “I’ve got a girl for you. Her name is Nicole.”
The last time someone had tried to set me up, I called the girl only to be told that she had a long-term, serious boyfriend. Yikes. So when Seth’s girlfriend showed me a picture of a cute, tanned, dark-haired girl with maple brown eyes and a sweet smile, I said, “No thanks.” I’d had enough disappointment. She didn’t press the issue, but I could tell she thought I was making a big mistake.
A few days later, on a Saturday afternoon, Seth and I were in the midst of a videogame marathon. We must have played for four hours straight—not an unusual occurrence for us. “Should we get outside?” Seth wondered aloud.
“What for?” I asked.
Seth pondered that a moment. “I’ve been meaning to buy a teapot,” he said.
So out we went into the sunshine, in search of a teapot. On the street outside our building, two girls were out for a walk. Seth’s girlfriend, with a friend. The friend she’d wanted to set me up with. Nicole.
She was even more beautiful in person than in her picture. The teapot was forgotten. Instead, we all went out to a Mexican restaurant and had mango margaritas.
Nicole and I talked for only an hour, but it felt like more. We talked about our love of the New York Yankees, our close-knit families. She kept kosher, to a degree, avoiding mixing milk and meat, pork products, shellfish. “Me too!” I said. Such a thing was rare among my Jewish friends. Seth himself used to tease that he’d put bacon into my mouth while I was sleeping, so I’d know what I was missing.
As Nicole and I began dating, we kept noting similarities—and discovered strange ways our paths had crossed before we even knew each other. Nicole’s Uncle Sam was good friends with my parents’ good friends—they’d all attended the same wedding together. I’d been to the Jewish Community Center just steps from her house on many occasions for youth group events, and she went to the beach nearly every year at the same place I did—Bradley Beach. Nicole had gone to summer camp with my sister—they were even in the same “Camp Memories” videotape.
The connections weren’t always direct, and maybe not all that unique. But as our relationship grew, it felt more and more like the two of us shared a common past. Nicole felt like the person I had been with from the start. We knew each other better than anyone. Bumping into her that day in New York wasn’t a first meeting. It was coming home again.
Home. That’s what true love is to me. I’m at home with Nicole, and that feeling has only gotten stronger with time.
OK, I’m a sentimental guy. But I do believe that when we find these strange connections, these weird coincidences, these crossing paths—they are a sign. A sign that none of us ever has a reason to be lonely. We just have to step outside for a walk, open our eyes … and start looking for a teapot.
I’ll see you in three weeks, readers, after my honeymoon. In the meantime, share your “How We Met” stories with us (like these people did). Write in the comments section below or email your story.
Happy Fourth of July, and enjoy your own summer of love!
