- 10:01 PM, Sunday,
April 20th, 2014:
-
- There will be few
months more life changing than April 2014 for my
family. And I believe Talya and I have been eclipsed
for the most romantic "fated" story of falling in
love...
-
- So in the midst of
ALLL of this Time Machine insanity, Talya's mother
Karen was friended on Facebook by an old college
boyfriend, literally from her teens. 20 years after
they split he had gotten in a bad car accident and had
some pretty intense memory loss. He spent the next
couple of decades randomly trying to piece together
parts of his life he couldn't remember. He'd meet
people and get a few back - and finally was able to
happen upon Karen on Facebook and he asked if they
could meet up. He had no idea she was divorced and
remembered very little about her other than her face
and all bias aside, she looks nearly identical to how
she did 40 years ago. It's pretty spooky.
-
- Karen of course
has had her own self-discovery journey after leaving
her husband 3 years ago. Talya and I have been her
sole support during this time and I've taken on quite
a bit of that load since I truly do love Karen to
pieces and because I'm not actually her blood? She has
felt more comfortable talking to me than burdening her
daughter. In the years we've talked the goal has been
clear: find who you were before you were married. Her
life had an incredible trajectory (went to college at
15, spent a year in Africa, taught in the roughest
neighborhood in LA) and it was clearly stifled for a
chunk of 40 years. No need to get into specifics but
know this: that person she was before the marriage?
Was still in there. I saw it from time to time when
she wasn't so busy being a mother or grandmother or
wife... it just took a very specific set of
circumstances for it to come out - but therein lied
her strength. The real her. The question was would
anybody be the right combination of traits to allow
that person to come out, even though 40 years had
passed since she saw her?
-
- I'm sure you can
see where this is going...
-
- Enter Asa, the
only long-term boyfriend she had before her marriage
and one she actually spoke of to both me and Talya
several times. She agreed to meet for dinner and as
Asa describes it? The flood of memories that he got
when he saw her walk in the restaurant made him nearly
pass out. Again, he still assumed she was married, but
his excitement about piecing together what he knew was
a big part of his past made him 22 again. And of
course who did he remember? That girl Karen was before
she got married. And that's all he could see. Sure he
could spot the residue of a difficult marriage but
burned is his brain? Is the image of the girl he knew
and seriously, she does look nearly identical. I can
only imagine how overwhelming that must have been for
him.
-
- That was a little
over a month ago and they then spent her spring break
in Napa Valley where he lives and he has since come
and visited with us... and I'll be honest. Not sure
anyone on the planet is more protective of Karen than
I am. Even Talya... I have this strange bortherly
feeling I guess? Not sure what it's called when
someone is 25 years OLDER than you but it's, well
actually I guess it's a "son" type of protectiveness.
My concern is that Karen comes out. The fiercely
intelligent, charming and strong woman I saw maybe 5
seconds of in the past 4 years because of the years of
abuse from someone extremely manipulative. You just
want to make sure those patterns don't continue. So
within 15 minutes of meeting Asa, we were already
alone in a car driving to pick up some food which
thankfully took about 90 minutes to get and bring home
and we talked quite a bit. To say I was stunned at his
patience and thoughtful demeanor is to say the very,
very least. He just loved her. No other way to put it.
To him, he's getting a 2nd chance at a lost love, but
it was clear in the weeks they had spent together they
connected far more than they did when they were
younger. They had a good foundation from 40 years ago,
but now it's so much more. He's all in. While Karen is
concerned about the distance, or him having to move
down to LA after living in the beauty of Napa - he's a
puddle. He just loves her. He would move to the moon.
He feels like the luckiest man on the planet and I can
barely disagree. I thought IIIIIIIIIII was the
luckiest man on the planet. Ya know? To be in your
mid-60s and get this chance? It's stunning. I know we
all say anything is possible but considering how badly
Karen needed to find the woman she was before her
marriage? To find literally the only man who knew that
woman? Woah. Just, woah. That is beyond
fortunate.
-
- And of course
Talya and I have been fighting back the tears for her
for weeks. We took SO MUCH of her split 3 years ago on
our shoulders. We supported it, we helped as much as
we could - we gave our nervous system to keep Karen
going and often we looked at each other and thought:
"Was it a mistake?". I mean, Karen indeed left on her
own, but we both know without us supporting her it
wouldn't have happened. It has been a sense of guilt
on us because it has been such an unhappy divorce.
Constant fighting over money for years... just a
disaster. But we all believed in the end she would be
soooooo much happier and fulfilled. In a million years
(that's overused, let's be honest here), in 20 years I
would never have believed she could have connected on
that level with her past. It's overwhelming and I have
to say, absolutely beautiful.
-
- It feels like a
family. I did a "Sunday Dinner" entry 3 years ago
hoping I had stumbled upon the family I didn't have in
LA and within a matter of weeks after it? Their entire
marriage unravelled. 3 years later, it feels like it's
finally here. I don't want to put pressure on
something that even with a 40 year old history is
moving quite fast... but it's rather undeniable. They
both seem like they're floating downstream... the
stream is just moving quite rapidly. Why shouldn't it?
They're picking up where they left off and it's an
absolute joy to be around.
-
- So since it was
Easter Sunday, I figured I'd throw together a video of
our Sunday Dinner with moments earlier in the day of
Vienna looking for Easter Eggs.
-
-
- You will be hard
pressed to convince me that this isn't the beginning
of the rest of our lives. When the biggest argument is
whom is luckier to have whom? It is very hard to go
wrong. It honestly feels like we're buying a WORKING
Time Machine. This is incredible.
-
- Congratulations to
you both. Talya and I are rooting for you... and Asa?
Just promise me you'll let me write the screenplay.
'Cause that is one of the most beautiful love stories
I've ever heard.
-
- Mazel
Tov,
-
- Adam
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