My family will be quick to tell you just how much I love broccoli. When I was a kid it was one of the only things I’d eat out at restAurants (my parents would each get a side of it for me). Not your typical child’s fare. This was something so unique that when I worked for ASP in college it was an easy “two truths and a lie” fact about me.

Fast forward several years and a boy I matched with from Tinder told me he ate broccoli almost every day for dinner. ::swoon:: But it didn’t stop there. On our first date I’d find that he recently got back from a trip to Kenya with his family (I’d been the summer after my junior year of high school). We both were Greek at our small colleges in opposite states that we grew up in (IN/OH and vice versa). Both of us were pretty dang open about having waited longer than most to put ourselves in the dating sphere. And maybe one of the most heartwarming of all, finding that my mom and his grandpa both served at missionaries in the DRC through different religious organizations (and my own unique connection to serving both of those denominations at points in time).

It was all a bit eerie at first. But honestly part of why we work so well and get along. And is very reassuring that there is common ground as individuals and through our past histories. Makes me know this is the real deal, and that some things are just meant to be (in whatever cosmic way you choose to identify that). For me, it feels like people somewhere are looking out and nudging me along. This means something and thank goodness it feels this sure.

So how do we encapsulate all of these oddities? We get tatted. And what do we get? We get broccoli. In our own forms. And in the locations that support our own perspectives. Matching but not matchy match. Randallford, I love you. Ain’t no brocco-lie.