I’m Not In Love Yet, Caught Behind A Video

I used to think luck was finding a four-leaf clover or having a lucky number. Mine was a middle seat on Flight 1047 to South Carolina and a stranger named Alex who made the first joke: “We spend more time on the ground than we do in the air.”

But I’d forgotten how lucky I’ve been—life gets in the way of remembering. Until you go out to dinner with a new couple and find yourself telling your story to someone who hasn’t heard it.

And now, coming up on the anniversary of the day we met—July 25, 1997—I just happened to have that dinner conversation and rediscover the video I took of Grandpa’s 80th birthday surprise party. We’d met for his official birthday that September, but I met Alex when I was flying back for part two of the celebration.

That video has a special meaning I’d forgotten: it’s me documenting my family’s love story while secretly recording the prologue to my own.

Digitize an old tape, and you might just rediscover the moment that changed your life. The tape I’d almost forgotten was like a kind of grace — a modern Amazing Grace, lost and found in the back of a closet.

It was Grandpa’s 80th birthday party—the surprise one we threw in July, not his official celebration that September. I hadn’t watched it since I’d edited it years earlier, back when I was working at a video company called Moxie.

But watching it now, I could see something I’d missed before: a young woman behind the lens, asking Grandpa about love and marriage, completely unaware that in just ten months she’d be sitting next to her future husband on a plane.

The camera didn’t steal my soul like I’d always feared. It revealed what I couldn’t see at the time: I thought I was just the documentarian, collecting everyone else’s stories because theirs seemed more important than mine. I had no idea I was about to become the story worth telling.

The Legends I Stood On The Shoulders Of

When Dad’s side of the family gets together, you learn where the excitement really lives—and it wasn’t with me. I hadn’t lived enough life yet to be the one with the funny stories or to make the highlight reel. The action was all around me. Chaos isn’t just expected—it’s tradition.

Dad has two sisters and a baby brother. Growing up with just my sister and me, I was used to parents who knew everything. But this crew? They could sneak side conversations, puff cigarettes out back, and make jokes about who they voted for without anyone noticing. Well, almost anyone.

I was always amazed my aunt called Grandpa “John” like it was nothing. I still wondered if I’d ever be old enough to call my dad “Bill.” (Spoiler: I didn’t want to be that old.)

My family is My Big Fat Greek Wedding—minus the Greek, minus the wedding. But the absurdity? We’ve got that in spades.

And, the characters! My aunt’s husband looked just like David Letterman standing on a street corner in New York. And my Dad’s brother was George Costanza reincarnate, blowing a kiss to the camera and saying,”That’s all you’re getting.”

What I didn’t understand then was how much beauty lives inside that chaos. Nearly 29 years later, I finally get it. The noisy kitchen-table scenes, the film loaded too early, the voices all talking at once—those were the moments worth remembering.

The Girl Who Just Dumped ‘Em — Not Yet Swept Away

Back then, I believed I belonged behind the camera. Not in front of it.

There were those humiliating Comedy Central sketches when I had no business acting just because the writers wrote me into the skit, and the audition where I couldn’t bear to watch my over-animated performance. But the producer said, “At least you’re not a talking head—we can tone you down.”

Watching this tape now, I see my cameo appearances—me dodging the camera that had captured the laughter, teasing exchanges with Grandpa, and my mortified cousins who were even more camera-shy than I was, unsteady hugs with relatives while I kept filming. I wasn’t just preserving the memory. I was part of it.

That September day, Grandpa walked in looking so frail he could’ve been a boy again. Twice, he covered his face, overwhelmed by emotion. Grandma said “Son of a gun” like she always did. I trailed everyone with the camera, catching the small things: the cigar pose, the inside jokes, the noise.

Then came the moment that revealed the greatest truth.

Grandpa asked, “Do you have a special boyfriend?”

My voice rang out from behind the camera: “I don’t have a special boyfriend. I just dump ’em.” Laughter filled the room.

I had no idea how close I was to the plot twist. I hadn’t met him yet—not Alex, not the boy in the window seat, not the one who’d make ordinary days feel like scenes worth keeping.

That day, I was still just the camera girl, documenting everyone else’s moments. But love has a funny way of sweeping you into the action. You think you’re the observer—and suddenly, you’re the story.

A Window Seat Named Alex

Ten months later. July 25, 1997. A middle seat on a flight back to reunite with my family from New York to South Carolina.

To my left, a stranger. To my right—an empty seat.

Sitting in the unlucky middle seat on a crowded flight with only that empty seat available, I dreamed him up. I said to myself, “The only thing I need right now is a really hot guy to come in and sit next to me.” And poof—he walked in and sat down.

It wasn’t me who dreamed him up, it was God. We met in the air. And sometimes I joke that it’s the only way God could have hit me over the head with love. I was hiding from it.

Alex smiled when I pulled out a notebook to prep questions for Dad to ask Grandpa. He thought I was a psychologist.

He had no idea, and neither did I, that I was becoming an archivist, not just for Grandpa, but for my own story.

What do we hold onto? What do we pass down? What do we dare believe in?

I wasn’t holding a camera. But I saw more clearly than ever.

This wasn’t someone to dump; it wasn’t a moment I fantasized.

It was the beginning of a concentric circle, where observation gave way to participation, where I stepped into my own story.

He was the left hand to my right. And the girl who once feared the camera might steal her soul—began to find it instead.

Lucky in Love, Messy and Real

USAir is now gone. But I married the guy from that flight—the one who walked onto that plane and into my family videos and made every ordinary day feel cinematic.

Now, with our own kids growing up and dress rehearsals for empty-nesting underway, I feel that familiar pull to look back. The same one Dad felt when he asked me to tape Grandpa.

Dad doesn’t want to be documented. He prefers behind-the-scenes—just like I used to. He’s not chasing legacy. He’s just living it.

But I see it anyway. In the tape. In the shaky footage. In the laughter.

I see gratitude for the moment I thought wasn’t mine. For the story I didn’t know I was writing.
For love—messy and real.

Because love doesn’t always arrive like a surprise party. It shows up in cluttered kitchens. In shared glances. In shaky camera kisses and birthday songs sung in the dark with eight candles to represent each decade of life.

It’s a middle seat on a summer plane. A cigar-pointing dad. Multi-generations talking over each other. A Rottweiler licking the lens, unknowingly starting a kiss-the-camera-movement for everyone after they said Happy Birthday to Grandpa. Even the dog found love that day—and if he could, so could I.

That’s when the seed was planted to carry on this tradition of capturing love, of documenting moments that matter.

That’s the lucky in love story: being part of something flawed, loud, and full of overlapping voices—and somehow, that’s where you find your truth.

May we all find that movement when we go from holding back to stepping forward into our own stories and make them happen.

And that flight? The one with the middle seat and the stranger who became my story? The airline may be long gone, but that moment? Still flying. Lost in a cloud of middle seats. Found exactly where it was meant to be.

July 25th is fast approaching. May it be all of our anniversaries—the reminder that we are all flying high, lucky in love.