Love at first site?

Do you believe in love at first site? Is it possible for you to meet someone when you are a child, have a momentary infatuation and then end up together much later on?? Can there be that one person who you met for just a moment in time, two ships passing in the night who is your intended?

I will tell you why I am asking...

I have the cutest niece; everyone, even little boys who are supposed to think girls have cooties, thinks she is adorable. Well, yesterday, we were out to lunch at a place called Christopher's, a super kid-friendly restaurant in the burbs of Philadelphia, you know the type of place- all the placements are coloring book pages, there are crayons on the tables and every kid gets a balloon upon entry. Well, needless to say, there were a lot of kids there especially on the day after Thanksgiving when no schools are in session.

We sat down at a table next to another family and right away, my three year niece started flirting with the boy sitting at the table next to ours. Yup, she was flirting, batting her eyes and giggling a lot (yes, she takes after her aunt!) I might not have been so fascinated with their flirtation except for the fact that the boy wasn't 3 like my niece is, he was much older, he had to be at least 8 years old, a young man! And he was so taken with my 3 year old niece.

They chatted for the next little while, mostly with the little boy teasing my niece and asking her questions. We discovered that the family was from Vermont, they were visiting their relatives in Philadelphia for Thanksgiving and that the boy was 10. We teased him that 10 might be a little old for a 3 year old, but he immediately retorted that his parents were 7 years apart as well.

Then, I, being the perma-matchmaker, made a joke that, perhaps, in 7 years, he could return to our neighborhood, go to college here and date our precocious niece when he was 18 and she was 11. He seemed to like this idea and reassured us that right after lunch, they were going to go on a campus tour!

Then, I told my niece to ask him his name which she did and to her utter glee, his name was Jack, the same name as her new 3 months old baby brother! The big Jack got a kick out of this coincidence as well because he told us that his dad had the same name as his mom's brother, whereby insinuating that if he and my niece ended up together, they would be just like his parents- 7 years apart and with the same ironic name game combination!

The meal ended and to both big Jack and my niece's disappointment, Jack and his family took their leave. Jack said goodbye to my niece and to us and walked off with his family. On the way out the door, I saw him glance back one more time, for that one last glance.

It made me wonder...maybe my niece and Jack had that chance encounter, that one moment that we are all waiting for our whole lives and maybe they didn't even know it. Big Jack was joking around but maybe he knew something without even knowing it, that he met his girl! Maybe somehow he just felt that pull towards my niece and felt that some time, far off in the future they would meet again, somehow, someway and remember the baby talk at Christopher's on the day after Thanksgiving.

Perhaps we all met "him" or "her" when we were young and carefree and don't even realize it. Perhaps our boyfriends or husbands were in our lives in the past and are intended to come back around when the time is right. Perhaps...

I believe in fate. Do you?