Love & Hope, found then lost. At Macy's Dickens Village. Love at first sight.

Posting on blogs or anything else of this kind of format is not my cup of tea but here goes nothing. I suppose the point of this is to prove (maybe just to myself) that the “right person” (or the right look from that person) can awaken another person’s bleak outlook on love and the hope of love (whether real or imagined).

Maybe, just maybe, there is something to that old wives tail about “love at first sight.” I have never believed in “love at first sight” or in fairy tails for that matter. I would always pretend I was happy for the sake of my two beautiful kids. Personally, my dreams, hopes and aspirations were shattered a few years ago and that wore me down emotionally and turned me into an inward-pessimistic walking dead man.

Anyway, I thought love at first sight was hocus- pocus. That is, until today Saturday November 25, 2005 at 2:45 PM. It goes like this, my son my daughter and I were at Macy’s department store in center city. We were standing in a very long but worthwhile line (for their sake) to see the Dickens Village.

While in line, the most beautiful women I have ever seen began to talk to me. When I turned to look at her and into her beautiful eyes my mind immediately went blank. I thought I was frozen in time and I suppose I was. I couldn’t think of anything to say, not even anything stupid or meaningless. I just stood there, smiled and stared at her. I’m in my mid forty’s now and I felt like a teenager again. For the first time in quite a while I smiled at someone from the bottom of my broken heart. The same heart I thought I had lost. Today, I knew it was still there because it was beating fast, really fast.

“The most beautiful woman in the world” was also there with her son and daughter. As the line grew shorter and we began to approach our destination I began to panic. I thought I would never see her again so I mustard up enough courage to talk to her. We began to talk about Sushi restaurants in Philadelphia. She apparently knows them all and it seems she knows Philly quite well too. Unfortunately, I do not. She told me of a sushi place in the Reading Terminal Market and another in University City called “POD.” As we walked through Dickens Village I felt a connection to her and I know she felt it too. We even liked the same movie as a favorite (George C. Scott in a Christmas Carol).

Unfortunately, with both of us watching both sets of our kids we lost each other in the extreme crowd and we didn’t see each other again. I walked through the store back and forth up and down so many times I thought my son and daughter were going to abandon me. They kept asking me what I was looking for and I said, “hope.” I never did get her name or saw her again and I finally gave up searching.

If on the slightest chance (about 300 million to one) you (the one I met today (November 25) in line at Macy’s Dickens Village) read this, I’ll be at the same place with my daughter in two weeks from now (Saturday) because she really wants to go again. My son said he would sit this one out (he’s 16). Now here comes the pessimist in me. I will probably never see you again. But maybe you read these BLOGS and I guess it’s worth a chance of hope.

But who ever you are, thank you. Thank you, for being so naturally beautiful and waking me up after my long sleep. Thank you, for showing me if only for 15 minutes that “love at first sight” is and can be real. Thank you, for the hope of love and that it can live in me once again. And thank you, for the hope of being loved. Thank you, for the feeling inside of me (Love just for the sake of love) and nothing else, even if only hoped for or imagined.

Who ever you are (Beautiful Lady) may you find love and Thank you, for making me feel alive again.

LOVE,