Fingerprints of Fate...

The other day, when I was going through some old writing, looking for anything that I might be able to do something useful with, I came across a writing exercise that I would often do years ago. I’d put on a random playlist and write whatever the song that came on prompted in me, just for the duration of the song. At the end of an entry from January of 2017, I found one I’d forgotten about, that I wrote to Fields of Gold. Before I read it, I smile, because that’s been our song nearly from the beginning. When I read it, though, I got chills. In the story, it was as though I was writing to you, about us, and the stories that I tell you all the time about how we met in other realities. 

Eva Cassidy - Fields of Gold

In a thousand worlds, they had been married. They’d had children, grown older, argued, made up, forged endless varied lives. He had told her, one lonely 4am, as they watched the snow drift outside his window, about the idea of infinite universes, each one created by a single choice made, where everything that could happen had. He’d held her hand. She’d rested her head against his chest and listened while he told her stories.

He told her, because he was always good with words, about the ones where they had grown up next door, rather than across a world from one another. He told her about the time they had met in college, in a literature class, and he’d walked her back to her dorm, too intimidated by her beauty to ask her out for weeks. He told her about the ones where they met in the highlands of Scotland, old and weathered by loss and a lifetime of never quite feeling complete. The tales of their adventures were wild and sweet and always, always, filled with love. Each ended the same way, though; every path led to them.

She’d tucked herself into his chest, his arms tightening around her, reflexively gathering her in closer as he spoke, never losing the rhythm, telling her about the time they’d met in middle school and he’d made her the mixtapes that would eventually be played for their first dance as man and wife. She’d wrapped her hands up in the hem of his shirt, laughing when he laughed, crying, even when he didn’t, the soft, silent tears of love found.

This isn’t the first time I’ve found something that, against all reason, seems to have been written for you, and I can’t help but think back to the evening when you told me that you felt that Fate had a hand in our meeting, that we’d been nudged gently throughout our lives into situations that made us the people we needed to be when we finally met. Every time I come across something like that piece, it feels a little more like you were right. I’m a realist, and a scientist, but I’m also a romantic, and there’s some part of me that can’t help but wonder at how we found one another, and how well we just…fit. I’m comfortable never knowing one way or another, but my heart wants to agree with you, so I will, because I love you, my sweet girl, in this world, and any other.