When I lived in Ferndale, seemingly in another life (before I was married, before I was Orthodox, before I had kids), I read the New York Times every Sunday. I turned first to the Weddings pages and read the stories of how people found each other, how people found love.

I imagined then that I would meet someone one day, the person I would marry and build a life with, and we would, together, read the Sunday NYT together – over coffee, with 94.7 Sunday Morning Over Easy on the radio. We wouldn’t talk, we’d just pass a section to the other when we had finished with it, and between us would hover that unspoken contentedness that I imagined, yearned for.

That did not happen with my marriage.

Perhaps I should have seen it as a sign of incompatibility. But the image faded from mind and I delved into what would become my life for eight solid years of less-than-happy.

So now…the old image is back and I realize that I am finally living it.

It’s Sunday morning and Dan is still asleep. Outside, the birds are chirping their morning song and inside, the scent of the dinner we made last night together lingers.

Yesterday, we strolled the Royal Oak Farmers Market, selecting swiss chard, fresh eggs, patty pan squash and heirloom tomatoes, for slicing and sauteing in my kitchen together.

It was Chris Isaak on the CD player and candles flickering on the counter and every few steps – he at his cuttinb board, me at mine, or both of us flitting between pans on the stove – we’d brush past one another and stop with a subtle smile and a nestle into the other.

On Sundays, at Dan’s apartment, we read the New York Times.

Just now, I flitted to the newspaper’s website to glance at the weddings featured there, and I watched a video of how one couple met. In San Francisco, in 2002, they found each other and realized all the things they liked and believed in matched. They started working together, living life together, inhabiting the same air.

It’s like that with us, though our children complicate the picture, certainly.

Until you find that person, that one whose presence makes everything more colorful, more breathable, more beautiful, it’s impossible to imagine it. It’s not mere love – it’s not mere companionship.

It’s a grounding in the idea that I-belong-here and we-were-meant-for-each-other. Everything else stands still.

Ok, I’ll stop waxing poetic about my midlife boyfriend. But truthfully, there are no words for that merging of two minds, two souls, two bodies – it’s a miracle that it ever happens, a precious gift that opens one’s eyes to all the possibilities in Life.

For some reason, it seemed easier to invite eight of Asher’s closest friends for a sleepover to celebrate his birthday than do an all-out shindig at some expensive playspace. And so I sent the invitations and culled the replies to a final tally of one girl, eight boys, 3-year-old Shaya, 6-year-old Eliana and Eliana’s best friend snuggled in my house last Saturday night.

And who would have expected the little boys to be so moody? I found C. in the basement, in a pop-up tent, sulking because B. was being mean to him. W. couldn’t sleep without his stuffed puppy (cute) and so he thrashed and kicked and rolled around the family room floor as the other boys drifted off to sleep. By midnight, it was Shaya asleep in my bed, me nodding off to Scrubs reruns and W. la-la-la beside me on the covers.

S. arrived after the hockey game elated to take part in the party. Everyone was happy to see him. Suddenly, he was grief-struck in sobs.

“I missed the pinata!” S. cried.

“But you went to the hockey game,” I tried to reason.

A. piped up: “I missed the pinata and I didn’t get a hockey game!”

“Take it up with your parents,” I told him.

No one wanted to play the board games that Asher had set out in “centers” around the main floor. My sensitive son was wounded, so A. offered to do “whatever the birthday boy wanted because it’s his party.” Still, no one played the games.

Two boys were concerned that my house wasn’t kosher enough for them. The girls seemed ok.

When did boys get so moody? Don’t get me wrong – they were adorable and full of heart and love and kindness. But honestly, the 6 girls who slept over last fall for Eliana’s birthday were a piece of cake in comparison.

There’s always someone who doesn’t show, of course, and the kids who come whose parents I’ve never met but for some reason they don’t mind letting their kid sleep at my house. In contrast, Asher has sworn to never attend sleep-away camp. That’s ok with me.

I like having the house to which all the kids flock. Last summer I was giving out popsicles and homemade muffins to a gaggle of neighborhood kids who came to play on our swingset. Their mothers thought I was running a day care. I only heard it through the rumor mill of course since none of them surfaced for a coffee klatch.

Last night, as Asher and I played tag on a nearby playground and raced each other around the “running track,” as my son calls it, the subject of metaphor came up. I don’t remember the actual context – and I wish I did, for my son is so profound – but it was something to the effect of fish should swim with the current instead of fighting to head upstream.

I explained what a metaphor is. He ran off to play.

It was a moment. For him, for me, then lost in time under the setting sun, the spring breezes and the questions left unspoken.

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Have I told you that I believe in signs? If I haven’t, then I’ve done a disservice to all the many readers of my blog because yes, I have always believed in signs, and I do not in any way believe in coincidences.

But this blog will not go there – another will, I promise. (Perhaps after I see Rebecca Rosen on Monday at Rock Financial.)

This blog is about finding love. And yes, I am coming out – I’ve found it.

Two years after deciding to get divorced, a year and a half of living alone and LOVING it, after launching the most productive, most inspiring, easiest and most soothing time of my life … I found love.

Now, I must say, I’ve found it twice. First, with myself and with the quiet. If you don’t love the silent moments with no one around, if you can’t get on a plane by yourself and not hide behind People magazine and your iPod, and without someone to meet you at the gate on the other end, then you may not find love with another. Just my opinion.

When I told my mother that I was thinking of filing for divorce, I added, “Because then I can find the love I’ve always wanted.”

Leave it to Mom to splash cold water on my face. “Well don’t get divorced thinking you’re just going to get remarried right away,” she said.

I sulked. I pouted. I figured my parents, even at this age, just don’t understand me!

But actually, she was 100% right. (Mom, I hope you hear this!)

It took a while after that conversation before it hit me smack in the face: I would rather be alone for the rest of my life than remain in a miserable marriage. So I pulled the plug. And I ventured out onto the waves, cascading in the sun, drinking in the air like I’d never breathed before.

It was a fun first summer and then the fall came and boy was I busy. My business grew, I dabbled in dating, and a whole host of married men made passes at me. (What is that about?)

One year turned into two. I spent my first birthday after the divorce alone and without my kids, but I ate foie gras at an old Victorian house-turned-restaurant in the Willamette Valley and I loved every minute. The second birthday since the divorce, my best friend was here, with her kids, and mine, and other friends streamed in and we barbecued steaks and made a salad that I’ll never forget. We drank Amarone until the evening cooled.

Every day is like a birthday when you’re living the life you choose. It’s the moments that carry meaning, like little birds with food in their beaks for their young. (By the way, yesterday a bird flew right into the side window on my car. What the ?)

And so I didn’t see it coming when Dan popped up online. And instead of doing what I always did – email a lot, maybe give my number and then we’ll see – I said, “Let’s meet.” Now.

It’s easy. It’s fun. It’s simmering with excitement. I haven’t changed my relationship status on Facebook, but I’m telling you here: I’ve found something fantastic with an amazing man.

That’s all you get for now. Stay tuned for more. When he reads this, I bet he’ll be kicking his heels. And later, we’ll laugh like we always do because life is better when you’re happy.

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When he was alive, they wondered sometimes who would turn out for his funeral. Did he have friends? He didn’t seem to be social but then, you never could know whom your father held dear.

And then he passed. It was a long week of agony and wonder, and when it happened in the early morning of a Monday in November, the leaves long since fallen to the ground and the forecast winking of snow, they knew it was time.

That didn’t make it easy, though. One can never prepare to lose a parent, no matter how old they get, no matter how his body takes a beating.

They moved in motions studied and quick and without a trace of thought to make the necessary plans and have the important conversations. And then, they gathered together in the dark hues of the funeral home, in the back room, ready to greet whomever swept through the doors.

It was a gray day and cool, with ample cloud cover. Streams of people poured in until there wasn’t an empty row in the funeral home. The line of people waiting to comfort the mourners ran the length of the building until a half-hour past the scheduled time for the service to begin. The place burst with well-wishers.

And after his body was lowered into the earth, and after the closest few shoveled speckles of dirt onto the plain pine box in which his body rested, the people kept coming. To the house, to the mourners, until there was standing room only for days.

When the youngest son went on the day he died to the bakery, he couldn’t keep the tears back. It was the place his father had gone every Friday for decades, for challah breads and seven-layer cake. And he would never go again.

The woman at the counter asked, “What’s wrong?”

“My father died,” he said.

“Who was your father?” she said.

He told her his father’s name and the woman behind the counter burst into tears of her own. “I wondered why he wasn’t here last Friday. We loved him here. We will miss him so much.”

The son bought his single slice of seven-layer cake, hoping to find comfort in its chocolate piping. And as he left, he was comforted – content in the knowledge that his father had touched many in ways he’d never known.

He knew he missed him greatly and always would. He thought he had been a wonderful, loving father, a great example of someone who cares for his family and lives a life of meaning. But until that moment on the sleek bakery floor, he hadn’t known how much other people valued the man he took for granted.

As he walked to his car, he looked up at the sky. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought he saw the clouds break somewhere in the middle and a beam of light shine through. He smiled.

I miss you already, Dad. And you did a wonderful job.

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A year ago today … a stamp, a nod, a slam of wood against grain. Final. Final. And a new life begins.

A year ago … I sat in a coffee shop with someone new to me after walking down the freedom trail, under arches of tree branches in full leaf, and sipped cafe au lait and listened to the beat of my heart, rapid rapid fire. This will be a hard week, he said. I am here for you in any way that you need me.

A year ago … the garage door ceased opening in the middle of a sun-filled day. My father, my muse, peering at the motor for answers, finding none. I took to the seas and sat in my own thoughts and sipped a cold drink as the sun set below the nipping waves.

The next day, a year ago, a man fixed the garage and I ordered a new door, one that folds in pieces instead of one large awkward piece. Brown, like my parents’ house. Something new to match my new beginning.

I’ve strolled country lanes and watched the water ebb and flow. I’ve sat atop rocky outposts and kissed someone new, leaning into the wind. I’ve sipped Amarone from a glass bearing the imprint of my lipstick. I’ve slipped raw oysters down my throat in perfect rock-salt succession.

In another life, I drew careful lines and minded the contours. I dipped into the purifying waters and recited sentences I was told to read. I tried to dress the part, look the part, preach the part, live the part but the part conformed to another person, another time, another daybreaking experience inspired by something wholly unrelated to me.

In that other life, I began waking with the sun and carrying my steaming cup onto the porch to listen to the morning. Birds rustled behind the bushes. Squirrels skittered up the trunks of my very tall front yard trees. Because I left the windows open all night, I could hear the baby cry awake above me.

It was bliss, then, because I covered myself in blankets of belief that I was where I was supposed to be. Lots of shoulds peppered my conversations then and I strode in the afternoon sunlight toward a seemingly meaningful destination, only to be met by barriers.

And so it wasn’t bliss. Late, I called the mountains of Wyoming and they echoed in response. If I listened carefully, I could hear the roar of the fast river on the other end of the line and the coyotes in the yard nipping at the dogs.

I couldn’t listen until my heart cried like the river and then, it was no longer time for listening, but time for doing in the ebb and flow of a life misconstructed.

There is always fallout from a grenade, even one carefully placed. Shrapnel that lives in the skin and becomes a story to tell. The skin scars and heals and covers itself over but war wounds dance in the mind, vivid memories like paintings under spotlights.

The trail of the music from that delicate dance becomes a soundtrack behind so many lives. Our problems have nothing to do with you, I told them as I tucked them in at night. You are so completely loved, more than anyone in the entire world.

Holding a stuffed animal in the crook of an arm, sleep came quickly, a slight smile, a quizzical look, alight on a soft, gentle face as the night settled in to stay.

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It’s that time again, the time to breathe in the fresh air through my nose and close my eyes as I inhale the scent of spring. Birds on branches sing their songs as my children fall into sleep. The sky changes colors like a painter’s palette and suddenly, flavors are sharper, tangier, more enticing.

Under a heavy branch, in the shadows of full leaves, we can believe anything is possible. We trudge over broken branches and fallen trees, inspect the maze-like workings of the bark’s heavy grain and taste the sweet citrus of sunshine.

It is time to appreciate the stillness and listen to the silence. It is time to understand the signs the universe is sending. It is time to notice the colors and the words and the images in our wanderings, all of them significant.

There have been mornings when my children go outside in their pajamas and rain boots and climb atop the roof of the playhouse. They pick dandelions, believing they are flowers, and because their soft little hands hold them, I, too, believe in the transformation. It’s all about how we see things and through the eyes of my children, everything is right, beautiful, amazing.

The morels are ripe at the base of dead trees now in the forests around us. Yesterday, I received an invitation to take the kids morel hunting. Doubtful they will eat any dish I make with these delicate rare mushrooms, but that ceases to matter, as it is all about the journey, the exploration, the search.

Right now there is warm air blowing from the vents and cool air promising through the window screen. I am prepared to celebrate all that my hometown has to offer. It’s not all bad news, you know. It’s all in how you look at things. And I prefer to see through my children’s eyes, the endless possibility, the hope for the future, the absolute belief that anything is possible.

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I never learned to really love. The love for my children was the closest I came and all these years, what I mistook for romantic love was infatuation, lust, desire, yearning. An attempt to fill the silence with someone other than myself. An attempt to avoid the silence altogether.

Only the love for my children did I give fully into, instinct and pleasure, fear mixed with dread and desperation and admiration at the sheer miracle of them. Of wanting to be near them, to smell their softness, to brush my lips along their pillowy skin and watch their eyes kindle in daylight.

The only fears inherent in loving my children are the fears of misleading them, of losing them, but never a right fear of rejection. I knew from the minute my soul touched theirs that I would snuggle into the moments, trail my fingertip along their little hands, drink up the looks they gave only to me.

If I am to do it right, I give myself entirely to my children, to infuse them with such a sense of fullness that wherever they go in the world and whatever they do, they will walk tall and speak loudly. It was never a question.

So why, then, have I never given myself over in abandon and without thought to the love of another, a peer, whose soft touch and gentle voice illuminates the night?

I don’t know and I won’t attempt to force an answer in this blog.

What I do know is the light is shining bright and I can smell the day. I am content in the not knowing. I am thirsty only for moments.

I have long insisted that the journey is the destination. I believe it even if I don’t live it entirely. And now, I face an uncertain future recognizing that all futures are uncertain and the only definites are the here-and-now which are very much worth living slowly, deliciously, in full sense and voice.

The sheets are soft and comforting. In the silence, the warmth of an arm and a hand trailing over mine are all I need. A simultaneous laugh, even the belly-shake of a shared joke, is enough.

A burst of flavor on the tongue like a watermelon jelly bean or a bite of Jaffa clementine.

In my hand are little perfect glass marbles, glinting the reflection of the light. They are smooth and small and if I turn my hand over, they will fall amid the carpet and I will be down on my knees in search of them. I hold them gently, feeling the cool roundness on my palm. I don’t know when I’ll put them down nor where, just that right now, these perfect little orbs are gifts for me to ponder and that’s exactly what I am doing.

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She ducked behind the set of a stage waiting for actors. I live behind a facade, she told him as she scurried out from behind a painted two-dimensional shrub and away toward a tall papier-mache tree. You don’t know who I am, she taunted, and I don’t want you to. What you see is not at all what you get and what you get may not be me.

Face, form, story, flow – an illusion twisted like rope intended to hold a young sapling tall but eventually becoming a tether to stunt its growth. Anchored to the dock, then set free to sail, the illusion becomes the wind that blows the boat forward, until the midnight hour, when all winds stop and all voices come to rest.

The privy few who live real and honest like an open wound, not hiding behind myth, not doubling back, their stories clear and parallel and full of metaphor for anyone who cares to read them.

She came back on stage. There were no lights shining from above. The crew had long left for home. The show was over. Somewhere, she heard the piano keys playing and she ran to discover them but kept finding dark alleys.

Why was he there? Perhaps hoping for the real her among the shadows, among the memories of actors who had long since shed their costumes for street clothes. Was he digging for a glimpse of actual instead of the perfect form she showed him?

Please? He realized he was begging and it was not a becoming state. If just once, he could touch her and feel her tremble, just once…

She darted behind another painted facade and another and then she was spinning to the edge of the stage. He ran with his arms extended to catch her as she fell but he misjudged the angle and she landed on the ground.

She laughed. I wanted to see what you would do, she said. And then she was running again, running away, running toward dreams that would never become her days.

Hands in his pockets, he turned away from her and walked up the lonely aisle, the seats echoing in their emptiness, pushed open the door and headed for home.

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When my daughter’s schoolwork came home last Friday, the teacher had written in careful scrawl, Slow Down! on every paper.

My little girl with her strong stance and definite personality, her dreams and goals alight in her sparkling eyes, is just like me. (Hopefully better!)

For 37 years, I’ve been fighting the urge to rush through things to get to the next place. Sometimes, I moved quickly with no destination in sight. It was simply an effort to be done with the task under my fingers because I carried the unfounded belief that anything else would be easier, clearer, more of a delight.

Of course it’s not true. It’s the chase of illusions and the running from unidentifiable fears.

A year ago I thought I could simply fall into love. A year later, I am aware that nothing is that easy nor that simple. And I am still on the path of a love unparalleled, a love unheralded. I walk the path because it is beautiful, textured, comforting and exciting and I walk the path because this kind of love is too delicious to leave behind.

Do I know where it will lead or what the absolute outcome will be? A clear and defiant NO! But I am willing to taste the oyster.

My window is open this morning and birds are singing in the still-dark. I have work to do and ruminations to push away and I dream of escaping to sandy beaches and sunny days but I won’t.

My life is here. My love is possible. What I see as so good actually is and will be if I let the ride coarse along its way, like the natural flow of the waters underneath a sailboat, when the world is far away and a deep calm has permeated the very air I breathe and the soft skin of my companion is the only touch in the dawn.

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It’s almost a year since I climbed Dog Mountain and still it is vivid in my mind. I imagine right now, it’s cold on the mountain, and maybe even dotted with snow near the top. After all, it’s only March and the wind carries ice on its breath through and into April.

But there, in Oregon, the coastal air warms and rocks in ways that a Midwestern girl cannot begin to understand. And so I have only to imagine and remember and anticipate the next time, the next step after step, the steep breathless ascent until I faced the expanse on an open hillside with wildflowers at my back and strawberries under my tongue.

I am planning my next trip now. Israel, this summer, and if I can swing it right, I will have 10 days of a journey. You know I mean that in every sense of the word.

When I was a kid, my family traveled at least once every year and often to exotic locales. I was lucky, I was fortunate, I was pampered. I grew up with expectations, for better and for worse, and now it is the itch that fuels me.

I smell spring on the branches. Over the weekend, the children and I rounded the track, too tepid to step into the muddy paths of the wooded trails. “But I came here to hike,” Asher wailed.

Majority ruled. He jumped from tree stump to tree stump, bending back the tall scratchy wild grasses that have stood through the eminent snowfall.

Yesterday was his birthday. Seven years ago, a lifetime it seems. Boy were we all different. Two of the most important people in my life were not even here yet. It was a brutal winter day when Asher slipped into this world without a wail and I learned what it was to not have control.

A year and a half later, on a religious night in fall, Eliana showed me the power of women. That was when I realized I could climb a mountain with babies on my back or no one even around, just me in the sunshine and the brisk day and the ever-constant awakening.

When Shaya was born, in the full-on spring three years ago, I accepted what was to be and embraced what I had learned was love. So my marriage would end. So my children would not have the idyllic upbringing I had hoped for. So my path would be lit by solitary light and pockets of sparkling stars.

How many times I have been given the opportunity to try something new, to step in a new direction, to learn from the minute just past. I’m lucky. I’m rich with experience and filled to overflowing with so many kinds of love.

This life hasn’t turned out at all like I would have expected but it surprises me every day how wonderful and even better it is than I could have imagined on any traditional path. Happy Birthday Asher – many, many more, happy, healthy, full of wisdom and surrounded by enduring love.

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