On a random spring morning nine years ago in the West Valley, I was interviewing an outspoken, much-decorated rabbi I had known for 20 years on his latest award. As I was standing to leave, he asked what I took to be a throwaway question. Knowing that I had been single for more than 10 years, he asked if I were interested in meeting someone. Not taking his question seriously, I said “yes” and left, bemused, but no more than that.
A month later, the rabbi called back about a promise I had forgotten. He said his wife, a nurse, had a nurse friend who also had long been divorced, her name was Diane, and here were three telephone numbers for her, work, cell and home. I heaved relief when I received no answer at any of the numbers. Now the onus was on her. If she called back, she was interested, at least intrigued. The greater heat would be on her to generate conversation. She returned my calls the next day, said she knew my name from the newspaper, and that hurdled us over the first speed bump. We made a blind date for the following Sunday evening at a nearby synagogue where a candidate for a lofty political office would be making a campaign speech I was covering. The date would be May 20, 2001.
We nodded hello briefly before the synagogue speech, she sitting in the bench just behind me. Our first sightings of each other. Thankfully my tape recorder transcribed the speech because while the candidate was droning on, I was trying to remember what she had looked like without twisting around and staring to freshen my memory. Afterward, we made a date to meet at the nearest Starbucks.
Having once been married to a woman who did not realize there even were distinctions among “their,” “they’re” and “there,” I was immediately arrested by Diane’s casually erudite lexicon. When she began discussing mendacity, the drawbridge between us opened and beckoned. Later, we walked hand-in-hand through a leafy, shadowy lighted residential neighborhood, and that pretty much clinched the near term for me. We lived far apart. At 10:30 that evening, before reaching home, I stopped at a pay telephone. Exercising my customary restraint, I said I wanted to talk to her tomorrow and to see her the day after that and to talk to her the day after that. She agreed, and we have spoken every day since.
During the summer, I lost count of the number of times she said her marital experience had been so sour that she had no interest in more than a casual relationship. Disappointed, I said okay. Seven months later when we were visiting my family, we took a miles-long walk into the countryside for some private time.
Observing that I had not had the foresight to propose, and that her patience was running low, she asked if I would marry her. I checked to my left and to my right. She must have meant me. Except for a few cows in a nearby pasture, no one was within miles of us. I must have heard correctly. We agreed to marry in Santa Monica on the anniversary of our first date. The witnesses would include my venerable friend Joseph Cahn of Venice, one of my older friends, Mitch Chortkoff, editor of the Culver City News, and the late Santa Monica City Councilman Herb Katz. It also was one of the last times I ever saw my youngest son, Zach, but that is for another day.
Happy eighth anniversary, Baby.
