Do you know what would make you happy?  If you are looking for a guru in that regard, consult anyone in the online dating sites.  They all know exactly what would make them happy for the remainder of their years.  One gentleman remarked that he would rather get poked in the rump with that needle in the haystack than never find it at all.  Everyone is looking for it, and they all have a vision of exactly what that needle looks like.

Ever since I moved to the Bible Belt, my search for a kindred spirit has been foremost on my mind.  Slowly it occurred to me that my true kindred spirits, having been nestled in this Christian incubator for some time, would probably not look the way I expected.  Not on the outside.

Around the time this realization was dawning, I received a message from someone whose checklist of happiness was the inverse of me.  His ideal partner was “out of school.”  Almost, but not yet.   And “financially secure.”  I could not be more financially insecure.  I’m preparing to file for bankruptcy.  I hit rock bottom.  My ex-husband is extremely late on child support, and my mother can offer no more help without drawing the attention of her business partner in residence.  We are out of milk.  I am down to a quarter of a tank of gas, and after that, I suppose we will walk.

Listed as a Republican Catholic, I had complete faith that my liberal Buddhism would be the vinegar to his baking soda and cause him to spontaneously combust.  And yet, he expressed an interest in getting to know me.

“I’m not your girl,” I replied. “Good luck in your search.”

He persisted.  “I need to update what I wrote.  All of that is old.  Would you like to meet me downtown for a wine tasting?”

“I don’t drink much wine.  One sip for me is like getting hit with a tranquilizer dart.  I’m the wrong person for you.” I insisted.  To make matters worse, he was very attractive.  Not cute.  Movie star attractive.  “You’re bad news,” I said to myself.

“Would you like to go jogging?” he asked.  He trains for marathons.

“I can’t jog.  I have asthma.  Sorry, we seem to be totally mismatched.  I hope you find what you are looking for!”

He thought our blatant wrongness for one another, and perhaps the honesty with which I pointed it out, was “endearing.”

“Would you like to go bike riding?” he asked, making yet another attempt.

“I can’t ride a bike.  Believe it or not, I forgot how!  I haven’t been on a bicycle in more than twenty years.  The last time I hopped on a ten speed, I wobbled all over the place for a few minutes and finally gave up.”

I was reminded of my recurrent dream, the one I’ve had since the fall of last year, of someone placing a white bicycle in front of me, and soon I am riding it through town, starting a new life.  In early dreams, I was riding the bike through the streets of Paris or New York.  In other dreams, I was riding the bike through suburbs.  In every dream, the bike ride marked the beginning of a new life.  Weeks ago, my mother had a dream that I was riding a bicycle through town.  In recent months, I began to wonder, “What is the deal with the bicycle dream?”  I thought perhaps it was a metaphor.  “Is this stupid bicycle ever going to turn up?”  Where, oh where, is the white bicycle?  It was like a running joke.

The White Bicycle

After two weeks of correspondence, we met at the riverside park.  I would ride a bike while he jogged.  I almost emailed to ask him, “Is it white?”  But I didn’t.

As I pulled up to his vehicle, there it was.  A white bicycle.  He detached it from his truck and I hopped on, apprehensive.  Within moments, I was gliding effortlessly across the parking lot.  It all came back to me.

I coasted along the river, watching the sun set, feeling the warm breeze wash over me, while he jogged and asked me about my life.  He was easy to talk to.  Entirely non-judgmental, warm and kind.  And he had a strong accent.  His voice was a deadringer for Bo Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard.  I was mesmerized.  Even in this region, people notice his accent.  Later, he did Bo Duke for me and I about fell over laughing.

I asked him about his religious affiliation, and he said, quoting George Carlin, that he was raised Catholic until he “reached the age of reason.”  He prays and believes in something more, but the Christian/Catholic mythology falls short for him.  I smiled.  In this part of the country, people who long for something less defined, that formless essence, have enormous difficulty cultivating any formal spiritual life.

After the spectacular, soothing bike ride along the river, he took me to P. F. Chang’s for dinner.  At one point he said it was only fair that he pay some of my babysitting expenses on future dates (assuming my mother or grandmother were unavailable).

Future dates?

“For someone who is all wrong for me,” I said, “you sure are fun to be around.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” he replied.

Universe

For our second date, we went on a long walk through a nature preserve.  We saw an armadillo and a giant spider and grasshoppers the size of my hand.  He pointed out where he spread the ashes of his dog, Buddy.

After the walk, we went to an ethnic steakhouse.  Over Mediterranean tabouli and American meat and potatoes, I mentioned that I once came home to find my son watching the show, Universe.

“Mommy,” he said, “did you know that Stephen Hawking lost the black hole race?”  I wrote about this weeks ago and lamented, “If only I could date someone who could talk with me the same way I can talk with my seven year old!”

My date said, “Yeah, because Stephen Hawking thought information is lost when it enters a black hole.”

I almost dropped my fork.  Universe is his favorite show.  He has all the episodes of Cosmos on DVD.  Like me, he grew up watching Carl Sagan and Nova with passion.  As a civil engineer, he enjoys math and science in precisely the same way as my son and I.

Red Hibiscus

Later that night, over a tropical martini, I showed him photos of the ecstatic dance I host on the other side of town.  One photo caught his eye.  The painting of a red hibiscus on my torso.  I explained that the red hibisicus had appeared in my life repeatedly when my marriage was ending.  I saw it so frequently, the red hibiscus was the theme of my first housewarming party after I found a new home.

“I have a big, blooming red hibiscus outside my bedroom window,” he said.  The next morning, he sent me a photo of it.  Stunning.  No other flowers bloom on the acres of land surrounding his house.  The hibiscus is big and healthy and sports several giant, bright red open blossoms, far stronger than the bush that once graced my front porch.

La Traviata

For our third date, he invited me to an opera.  My mother and grandmother were so delighted to see a man lavish me on a real date, they reminded me of those women in romance movies who stand behind the bride as she tries on her wedding dress and jump and giggle moronically.

“It’s just a date, for God’s sake!”  I said, virtually slapping them upside the head.  One great benefit of divorce is that it transforms your perceptions.  Everything is just what it is and no more, and instead of feeling empty, that feels oddly full.

We saw La Traviata at the downtown performing arts center.  I knew operas were stunning, but this was startlingly mesmerizing, extravagantly lush, intricate, touching, and sweetly beautiful.  La Traviata is a story of a courtesan in Paris during the Victorian era who falls in love.  The man leaves his family to be with her.  At one point, the two sing together in harmony, moving closer to one another, singing brightly enough to reach every corner of the amphitheater, until they are kissing passionately.  An opera kiss!

The man’s father asks the courtesan to disappear, else she shame his entire family.  She believes that separation from her lover will kill her, but out of love, she agrees.  If she explains her reasons, she knows he’ll follow her, so she must leave him in a way that stems any pursuit.  She writes him a letter suggesting that she’s left him for another man.

My past seemed to unfold on the stage, my heart exposed.  In one scene, the courtesan arrives at a party and sees her former love in the distance.  “I think I will die!” she sings.  Her voice is melodramatic but heavenly.  He doesn’t know why she ran from him.  He can’t know.  He thinks she betrayed him.  In other words, he completely misunderstands her heart.  He expresses anger and disdain towards her, and she cries.  She loves him so much, she prays for God to save him from remorse.

This scene, loving someone from deep down while being misunderstood and unable to transmit it, I know it well.  I think I have been on both sides of that scene.  I cried so hard that my nose was running.  I was grateful that I’d spilled ice tea all over my silk skirt before entering the theater, because my purse was stuffed with the tissues I’d grabbed hoping to dab away the stains (that never appeared).

At the end of the opera, the courtesan is dying of tuberculosis.  Her former lover arrives and expresses a deep understanding of everything she did and everything she felt.  She rises out of bed, floats across the room elated, and sings, “Joy!”  I cannot adequately express the beauty of her song.  Just as she reaches the height of joy, she collapses to the floor, dead.  I cried again.  I hope I don’t have to wait that long before that channel of tender understanding opens between my former loves and I, and they see and know just how intensely and sincerely I cared for their well being, and perhaps I see and know how much they loved me too.  But just to think that it could ever happen at all, I had to run into the bathroom after the standing ovation and sob for a moment in the stall.  The possibility seems so remote now that I hardly ache for it anymore.  But, there is something else.  Something bubbling up in my intuition.  I think, in some higher realm where our energies mingle unimpeded, that channel already opened.  Why do I feel as though my sorrows are only memories of sorrow, and the healing has already happened, and I’m free now?

Chocolate Cake

After the opera, we went out for chocolate cake, his favorite dessert, and I prodded him about our alleged wrongness.  As it turns out, our politics are far more similar than I expected.  My financial ruin is far less alarming to him than a lack of potential, and potential, I have in abundance.  He longs to settle down and finds the idea of jumping from woman to woman unappealing.  With his thick Dukes of Hazzard drawl, I realized I was sitting across from a bona fide “good ole’ boy.”

But he doesn’t peddle moonshine.  He loaned me a book on writing by Stephen King, gave me a gift to pass along to my grandmother for watching my boys, and turned off his online dating profile.  The next morning, I sat on a warm, sunny porch sipping a cup of coffee and savoring a bowl of yogurt with granola, raisins, cashews, and fresh strawberries.  I stared at the beautiful red hibiscus.

Sometimes I write lists of what I want and give this list to the universe to fulfill, but what do I know!