L.A. Affairs: I found love at a neighbor’s wake
After a 20-year marriage and a separation, I decided to try online dating.
I quickly learned to keep the first meeting short, not dinner, in case things didn’t go well. On one date I arranged to meet a UCLA law school graduate at a Santa Monica coffee house. As a lawyer myself, I anticipated at least some interesting conversation with a well-educated woman. At first sight, I thought she had sent her mother, not the woman pictured in her dating profile.
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But I kept an optimistic attitude, said hello and asked an open-ended question: How was your week?
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To my surprise, she proceeded to tell me all about how she injured her toe. I wanted to ask where in my profile it said I liked whiners, but instead asked what she would like to drink. After I delivered the drinks, she asked if she could suggest our conversation topic.
I said sure. I had high hopes that this intelligent woman was going to take me far away from the toe. She was ready with the topic: Her electricity bill! Oh, the overcharges! I took the quick exit from this date.
Meanwhile, an elderly doctor who used to live across the street from me in Rolling Hills Estates died. Although I’d moved out after the divorce, my children still lived there with their mother, and I had my office in that house. I knew several of his sons and happened to run into one of them as I was walking out, and offered my condolences. He asked if I would come to the wake that was scheduled a couple of days later. When I showed up, all his children were there, and I ended up introducing myself to one of the deceased’s daughters. I will call her M.
She was very attractive, vibrant, slender with short hair and shocking deep blue eyes. She was also recently divorced. She had come to the funeral from Colorado, where she lived. She was in town for a couple of days. We talked for about 20 minutes and then she moved on to do something with the family.
As I was leaving the wake, she was sitting on the porch with some relatives and a friend. I said goodbye to all, but looked M. in the eyes and said that I was particularly glad to have met her. I later found out that the group had just been ribbing her because of our extended conversation earlier. I later learned that as soon as I was out of earshot, one of her young nieces said to her: You have a boyfriend! She was quite embarrassed.
The next day, I was walking by the late doctor’s house and she was in the driveway. We struck up a conversation. I noticed that her eyes were a different color. I had a feeling she did not wear colored contacts. I asked if her eyes changed color. She said that they did. We somehow got to talking about dating, and I told her the toe story and we both laughed. She said dating was even more of a challenge in the rural area in which she lived.
Over the course of the next couple of days, I asked her out to lunch, then dinner, but she couldn’t make either. Another day, I found her in the kitchen of her dad’s house, on the phone. She couldn’t put the phone down, but all the while those beautiful eyes, which had turned green, were sparkling at me. She left town shortly after that. But I didn’t have her phone or email.
I had a hunch, though, that the town was small enough that I could get her phone number with just her name, looking in the White Pages online. After waiting a couple of days, I tried and succeeded. I sat on the number for another day or two and thought I’d better call while she remembered me. She later told me that when she saw the area code, she thought it was one of her brothers, so she picked up. I immediately explained that I could not be a stalker because I lived across the street from her dad for 10 years. I don’t know if she bought that, but she did not hang up.
That began about three months of increasingly frequent phone calls. Instead of a first date or any date, our calls got longer and more frequent. We shared a similar sense of humor and made each other laugh. M. was also very insightful and caring. I could tell the latter by how she talked about her family and her students. (She is a teacher.) I began to fall for her. Finally, I called to say that I wanted to visit her.
We were both very nervous, but had a great long weekend together in the Colorado mountains. We went hiking, but mostly focused on getting to know each other. By this time, I knew that I was in love with her.
I invited her to visit me in Los Angeles. She made a series of trips, and I tried to take her places she hadn’t been before. She loves colors, so I took her to the flower mart in downtown Los Angeles. She was stunned with the variety, colors and beauty of the flowers. From there, we went to eat in Chinatown, where we had delicious scallops.
During Christmas, we went to Naples in Long Beach to see the Christmas lights, which were gorgeous. The gondola ride, with just the two of us, was very romantic. We went to both Getty museums, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. After enjoying the museum, we went to the outdoor café and listened to jazz play on the plaza. We also went to Terranea in Rancho Palos Verdes, which was built long after she moved away from Southern California. We strolled the grounds, had a snack and enjoyed the wonderful ocean views. Since M.’s sister was married at the nearby Wayfarers Chapel, we stopped there as well.
We have now been seeing each other for a couple of years and plan to live together soon in south Redondo Beach -- not far from where she was raised.
When people ask how we met, I tell them that I gave up on Match.com and found her on Wake.com.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the current dating scene in and around Los Angeles. If you have comments or a true story to tell, email us at LAAffairs@latimes.com.
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L.A. Affairs chronicles the current dating scene in and around Los Angeles. If you have comments, or a true story to tell, email us at LAAffairs@latimes.com.
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