Have you ever experienced a moment that seems so odd and so much like a dream that you wonder if you’re awake or asleep? When I experience these moments I say, “The universe is winking at me.” It can feel like there’s a universal mind out there that is playing tricks on you to see just how awake you really are.

The universe winked at both myself and my fiancée Dana on the anniversary of our first date. Dana and I met at a restaurant for our first date. I was living in Santa Cruz and Dana was living in San Jose. We were both new to the area. Dana told me she loved French food so I picked a romantic French restaurant named La Foret that sounded great. I had no idea the restaurant was out in the middle of the woods in the mountains between Santa Cruz and San Jose.

As I was driving to rendezvous with Dana, I was surprised as the four lane road became a two lane road and then the two lane road shrunk to little more than a paved trail through the woods. I began to wonder what I had gotten Dana into as I imagined her trying to drive through the woods to this place.

When I arrived at La Foret, I ran into Dana in the parking lot. Her first words to me were that a baby deer ran into her car! It took a while to get the full story from a rattled Dana. She had been driving down this scary road when a fawn bounded out of the front yard of a house, hit the side of her car, and then proceeded to scramble across her windshield. The fawn ran off into the woods, so we both hoped and assumed it was going to be alright.

The restaurant turned out to be wonderful, and the first date better than wonderful. Later that night on the way home, Dana’s GPS went haywire. She ended up lost on a one lane road through the woods and had an encounter with a full grown buck. She called me from the woods a little panic that she might run out of gas and never be heard from again. I parked my car and stayed on the phone with her until she was literally out of the woods.

One year later to the exact hour and possible minute, we were on that same road heading to dinner at the same restaurant to celebrate our anniversary. I slowed the car as we neared the spot where the fawn had run across her windshield. We both started yelling when we saw a yearling deer standing in the same spot where the fawn had been. My car has a dash video camera and this entire encounter is recorded.

When I think about this synchronicity, this wink from the universe, I can’t help but feel that destiny is real… then the scientist in me goes to work and I start to wonder if I was dreaming. Wake up… It’s only a dream… or is it?…