The Path to I Do

I read this every single Sunday.

I get my cup of coffee before church, and sit down and read it while it's quiet around here (if such a thing even exists . . . quiet in this house is relative). If I go on vacation and miss a week of it, because it's archived at the NY Times, I go back and read the week I missed.

So why? Why do I read it? If you met me, I doubt you would say I am a hopeless romantic, though I am hopelessly, impossibly sentimental. I cry at Kodak commericals. I cry reading this every Sunday. I cry when my kids write me goofy notes like "I luv U, U R the best mom, don't be crabby" (I get said notes once a month if you get my drift, and if any of my kids are reading this, that explains my homicidal mood this a.m.--but I digress). In general, I cry at anything sentimental--and I don't even have to KNOW the people involved. My kids once made me watch that show Extreme Home Makeover, and I had to go get a BOX of tissues I was crying so hard. I can go to a total stranger's wedding and weep all the way through it. People are so full of hope at weddings, it's contagious.

But as a writer, what I love is that the stories in the Times each Sunday capture two things. One is that there is someone for everyone. That all our foibles and neuroses and the delicious things and not-so-wonderful things that make us human somehow find a match in someone else. And two, as a fiction writer, I love the stories, the way the Fates conspire to bring two souls together. The "how we met" stories. Two people each on their own path who somehow manage to meet and survive to become a couple. When I look at The Roofer, which isn't a romance by any stretch, it's a miracle that Ava can even try to form a relationship. Yet people seem to have it in themselves to try for love. Or the Fates seem to insist on it.

Fate? Maybe. When I met my significant other, I hurled a steak at his head through the window of a kitchen pass-thru because his sous chef had burned my best customer's steak. In my defense, I wasn't a Buddhist then. I was a single mother who had been so broken by one man's possessive streak that I thought I would suffocate. But somehow, this guy I hit with a steak made me laugh. From there, we went on a date, at which he said he wanted to marry me. Which was enough to make me run the other way. It took a couple of years, multiple proposals, three rings, and a dress for me to finally agree. I found a VERY nice wedding dress in a formal dress shop, off the rack, sample sale, and thought, "If I ever was going to be so utterly INSANE as to CONTEMPLATE getting married again, I would wear THIS dress." I came home with the dress. I called him at work and said, "If we're going to do this, let's do it in a month before I change my mind." We found a preacher, an inn to have it at, and a place to do pronto invitations. All within one week, which is insane. The inn had a cancellation. The cakemaker said he could do it. The preacher was a relative who offered to drive up and hitch us. And right until I actually walked in the inn, it was never a sure thing. Had my best friend from high school not physically gotten me into a cab, I would probably not have four children right now. In fact, I was so unsure I could go through with it, I didn't even have flowers for my hair and bought some on the way, pinning them into my hair in the rearview mirror of the cab (with a very nice cabbie, whom we tipped well for putting up with me doing my hair in his cab).

You don't have to write romance or romantic comedies to appreciate the stories of people's lives. That's what makes most of us writers. So, do you collect stories of people and the fates like I do? Do people and their stories fascinate you? Do you think the Fates intervene?