Once the airline got their situation figured out, I started working on improving mine.

I asked Sandy about sitting together. … The travel delay didn’t matter anymore. The three hour flight flew by.

From that day on we spoke to each other every day, recently moved in together, got engaged last Thanksgiving, and in 2014 will be married (my first time).

There’s an old song called Love is in the Air. On that Sunday in 2008, love really was in the air! Our love has been sky high ever since!

Paul Neumann, South Miami

A vision

In 1956, I was in the Army at Fort Jackson in Columbia, S.C. I was living off-base and found myself on Main Street one weekday at noon.

When I first saw her, she seemed to know everyone — smiling and saying hello — a gorgeous smile, trim and curvy figure and an athletic bounce to her step.

Then she was out of sight.

A vision?

I came back the next day at the same time at the same location — no luck. I came back the next week on the same day — no luck.

A few months later a neighbor friend asked me to help him move his girlfriend and her roommate into an apartment close-by.

I went to help and, yes, the roommate was the mystery girl.

Now, 57 years later, she and I have three adult children and twelve grandchildren. With our fourscore birthdays behind us, I find her as enchanting as that first time I saw her.

While dementia may be stealing her memory, she is still the same. She leaves everyone with a warm feeling.

I’ll always remember that first day I saw her.

H. Ronald Cordes, Palmetto Bay

My parents’ love story

This is my parents’ love story.

My father was a streetcar conductor in Havana in the early 1940s. One day he passed by a photo studio when his eyes spotted the beautiful photo of a 16-year-old girl.

He told himself he had to meet her some day — and he did.

A few months later he was driving his streetcar when he passed by a street on his route and there she was, sitting on the steps of her house with some friends. My father stopped, got off and introduced himself. The following day he asked to visit her house. It took weeks for my grandmother to allow him.

During all this time, my mother made sure she was sitting on the steps when he passed by the street. Often he would throw notes attached to candies wrapped in cellophane.

Finally he was allowed to visit her twice a week.

My parents were married Feb. 14, 1944. I was born a year later and my sister the following year.

My father passed away Jan. 17, 28 days short of their 69th wedding anniversary.

Nidia Rodriguez Gralewski, Miami

Love at the Bushwhacker

Forty years ago, I picked up Dave in a bar near Coral Gables.

On a rainy Saturday, my friend Sue and I were ostensibly doing laundry next door, but decided a drink at the Bushwhacker would break the monotony of the wait. On the way into the bar, I grumbled about detouring around a car, boat, and trailer obstructing the puddle-filled parking lot. Donna, the bartender, had only three customers that gray afternoon, guys checking out an electronic game called paddleball.

Sue looked around. “Nobody interesting here,” she said.

“Speak for yourself.” I had looked around and spotted Dave – proud of bearing, well dressed, nice smile, gorgeous blue eyes and, my weakness – a cleft in his chin.