When I found out my first child was a girl, I decided her name would be Kelsey.
For nine months it was Kelsey this and Kelsey that.
I painted her nursery pink, put up a teddy bear border and waited for her grand debut.
The day finally came.
My water broke, the contractions came in hot, and within minutes I was in a birthing suite thinking…
“Well, this seems manageable.”
Lol. No.
I was in labor for 36 hours.
When you are in labor for that long, you find things to do.
I watched TV, walked the halls, and after the epidural kicked in, I started reading magazines.
One of them was a slightly outdated issue of Cosmopolitan with Christie Brinkley on the cover.
She was the supermodel of the moment, living her high-glam life with Billy Joel and their new baby girl, Alexa.
In that instant, mid-contraction and hopped up on optimism, I changed my daughter’s name.
Goodbye Kelsey.
Hello Alexa.
Fast forward 25 years.
My Alexa is grown, working in NYC as a book editor.
She steps off the elevator at her office and sees a gorgeous woman in six-inch Louboutins.
She casually says, “Great shoes.”
The woman turns around and says, “Thank you, honey.”
My daughter realizes she just complimented CHRISTIE BRINKLEY.
The actual person whose child inspired her name.
Now, here’s the kicker.
Alexa is dressed in gym sneakers and a T-shirt from her company volleyball league.
Alexa is not athletic.
At all.
She was aggressively peer-pressured into joining the team and regretted it every day.
Yet there she was, face-to-face with the most beautiful woman in the world…
dressed like she was on her way to dodgeball practice.
Once she recovered, she told Christie the whole story.
Christie was lovely.
Alexa was star struck.
And she walked away floating.
So what’s the lesson here?
Life is ridiculous.
Life is magic.
Life is one giant improv show where you do not get a script, but somehow the scenes line up anyway.
You can spend months planning for a baby named Kelsey and end up with an Alexa because of a magazine you read during hour 18 of labor.
You can grow up in a tiny Pennsylvania town and still bump into the supermodel who unknowingly named you…
while wearing gym shoes you did not even want to put on.
The universe throws us these chance encounters and full-circle moments when we least expect them.
So keep showing up.
Keep saying “great shoes.”
Keep believing that the wildest connections can happen on an ordinary Tuesday.
Because sometimes life hands you a story you could never make up even if you tried.
#Supermodels
#MyAlexa
#ResumeWriting