How I Met My Husband

In 1979, I was working on the “Mississippi Queen” steamboat and had a vacation coming up. I was 24, had never been out of the country, but wanted to go somewhere exotic. I chose Jamaica.

Another employee who had vacationed there heard I was going by myself and gave me very specific instructions for my safety: Go to a little town called Negril, stay at the Tigress Cafe and Cottages, and proprietor Papa Lawrence would ensure my safety at his compound.

After missing my first flight and waiting standby for two days, I sat at the Miami airport, writing in my journal that if I didn’t get called on the next flight, I would not go because I only had four days left. But fate intervened. I got there at midnight.

As I was out and about the next day, I saw a stunning man walking down the beach road as I was riding the opposite way. We locked eyes for a split second. Later, when I got back to my cottage, he was sitting outside his cottage next door.

We had coffee together the next morning and the thunderbolt struck. We spent two memorable days together, after which I told my mother I’d met the man I was going to marry.

Our 43rd anniversary is next month. Space limits me from telling the other details that make this a meta-synchronicity, but there are many more that certainly qualify it as one, including the fact that we would both be in Cincinnati six weeks later.