Today marks the 5th anniversary that I met my Sean in ‘real life’. We’d fallen in love online (on Twitter!) and he took a leap of faith to fly to Australia from California (in 2011) to meet me for an 11 day blind date.
On the day we met, we went down to the beach in Hastings Street, Noosa. We sat holding hands by the ocean and felt as though we’d always known one another. Now today, fives years on, we got to sit in thesame spot with our baby daughter Lulu Dawn Prout-Simpson who is two months old today.
On our walk home from the beach, Sean went to go and buy a drink. I glanced at a woman’s digital watch and it read 11:11 — I knew I was meant to pay attention to what was to follow…
I sat under a tree and thought about the last 5 years, the last 20 actually, and how much I wouldn’t want to be younger or not have ridden out the tough times over the years. All of the pain has served a beautiful purpose and all of the joy has been that much sweeter. Sean and I have worked really hard at working through a lot of bullshit to be as real as possible with one another. We know we put our hands up to do ‘the work’.
As I was deep in thought, a very stylish older lady walked up to me and we started to chat. She admired the baby and began to tell me how the ages of zero to eight are the most important. I nodded and agreed and then told her that I had a 9 and 13 year old.
Sean then returned with his drink and the lady told us that she turns 80 next week and already has two great grandchildren. Her husband then joined our conversation. and was also very sweet. The couple had the same height difference as Sean and I which was really cute… they were almost mirroring us. We told them we were celebrating our 5th anniversary today and they said they had both lost their spouses and found one another 12 years ago and had successfully blended their family. We connected about the beauty of marriage, relationships and how fast life flies by. The lady said that if she could give us any advice it would be to ‘keep talking no matter what happens in life’.
We laughed and thanked her for the advice. She blessed us and wished us a long and happy life together like they had experienced. It was so beautiful. It was kind of like meeting ourselves in 50 or so years from now.
Have you ever been inspired by the love stories of people that are in their 80s or 90s?