How We Met and Fell In Love

When I was a child, I was fascinated with the story of my father and mother meeting and falling in love. My parents were mostly unavailable during the school year, my dad directing the family business and my mom involved with charity events and social commitments.

When summer vacation arrived, though, we all went to the family home on Cape Cod and a magical transformation happened with my parents – they became available. I would spend hours with my father fishing off our dock and with my mother collecting berries for delicious desserts.  And I would ask my parents to tell me the story of how they fell in love.

They met at my mother’s coming out party at the Boston Cotillion. My mother was accompanied at the Cotillion by a family friend, Ned, who was crazy about my mother and wanted to marry her. My father, the eldest son of an established Long Island  family, was on his way back to the Naval Academy at Annapolis the next day but was escorting another of the debutants that night.

Even though the Walshs had known his family for ages, my mother was not interested in Ned as a potential husband. She was not trying to lead Ned on by being nice, but they got thrown together a lot. The moment they walked in to the ballroom, and she saw my father standing near the bandstand, she fell in love. My dad felt the same about her, but they did not want to break Ned's heart. My mother and father danced every dance they could that night and couldn't keep their eyes off each other. Everyone knew, except poor Ned, that lightning had struck.

I love that bittersweet romantic story!

I want to write down how my true love and I found each other and fell in love. This story will be for my children to show how finding your soul mate can be magic, and for Drew and me to read when we are old.

Almost three years ago, Drew and I were both working in San Francisco, me at the mayor's office and Drew at an investment firm.

At the time, I was dating someone who was not right for me, but I wasn't sure I was ready to leave him – he was the reason I had moved to San Francisco almost two years earlier. The day before my birthday, we went to the beach boardwalk in Santa Cruz and the next night a friend from the office, Libby, was going to throw me a party at the Mark Hopkins. My boyfriend and I talked about our relationship – not a good conversation – and he told me he had found someone else. After a jolting, in more ways than one, ride on the wooden roller coaster, we broke up. I was distressed by my boyfriend's deception and wasn't really in the mood for my birthday party the next night, but something in my heart told me to go anyway.

Everyone from work was already at the bar. Being around so many friends lightened my mood, as did the strong lemon drop martinis Libby kept ordering for us.

An hour after the party started, Drew walked in. Drew's hard to miss; he's so good looking. He was smiling and laughing at the bar with my friends and seemed nice. I was disinterestedly talking with a man with whom I was sort of flirting with at work, a few of us sitting near the bar, so I didn't pay a lot of attention to Drew. When the music started up my friend asked me to dance. We bumped into Drew and his dance partner on the floor. The next tune Drew asked me to dance. I hesitated and grabbed my martini for a sip, and he made a droll little comment  – the irreverent Drew humor that we all love – that made me almost spit out my drink with laughter. I looked at him, and I was in love!

Drew’s story is similar to mine because he almost missed my birthday party. He was in Napa with a group of friends. A mutual friend from work invited Drew to the party, but on his way back to San Francisco was thinking that he was a little tired from his long day. But for some reason, he felt that he needed to go to this birthday party. Much later he told me that he felt compelled to go and find me.

When Drew walked in, and he saw me, he knew that I was the one he was going to marry. He remembers an overwhelming feeling of love for me the second he saw me.

He and I danced until the bar closed that night. We had an instant connection and understanding with each other. A little more than a year later Drew proposed, but that is another story.