Years ago, I put my hand in a hat and drew a tiny folded piece of paper with a name written on it.

It was a gift exchange for the choir's Christmas party. The name belonged to one of the twenty basses whom I had no idea about. I bought him a music CD.

At the party, when I was announced I gave the gift to the guy and talked to him for the first time. We started chatting. He was new to İstanbul, so I gave him a boat schedule (I had two of them in my bag). Then he needed a “pin” for some reason. He actually meant a 'pen', because he was from New Zealand. Then he told me other cute stuff about New Zealand.

Few months later one afternoon we were walking in a crowded area of İstanbul and talking about why neither of us wanted to have kids, ever. I said “I don't want to be a mother, because I don't want to become a person who says 'no' all the time”. He looked at me surprised and said “But you shouldn't say 'no', you should say 'yes'.”

I think a tiny seed was dropped in my brain that afternoon and this is the result.

My original answer ends here. Upon requests for clarification, I am adding the following:

After the above conversation, something changed in my mind. Suddenly I was curious, willing to explore the possibilities of this new attitude, and soon I found myself wishing that I had a kid with THIS guy who had given me this powerful tip about parenting. I don't exactly know why HE changed his mind, I never asked. Few years later we got pregnant and had the young man in the photo. His paternal grandparents wanted to meet him too, so they invited us to New Zealand. -We stayed for a few months and came back to İstanbul, but we might go again.-

So, repeating what I had written in one of the comments, “that little piece of paper took me to the other side of the world with a great man and a boy who is allowed to climb on food”. That was the plot twist. Thank you.

Edit: We moved back to New Zealand when the Watermelon boy was 5 (in the above picture he’s 1 year old).
I wrote a joke answer then (2018):

The sad twist? When the boy was 8 (2020, Covid times), we unfortunately broke up (after 12 years). My partner suddenly decided to move to South America by himself, and our son and I stayed in NZ. That was 4 years ago. Boy’s now almost 12, looks even older (2024).

But we are still friends with his dad. I started a new relationship about a year ago (2023). How about that plot twist?