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It’s funny. When you get older, you think the world can’t surprise you anymore. You think you’ve pretty much cornered the market on what there is to experience. And then, one day, you happily discover you’re wrong. Life is an ever-evolving, beautiful mystery.
After I lost my husband, I never expected to find love again. I was resigned to occupying my time running errands, volunteering, helping my daughter, and playing Scrabble online. I was pretty good and could beat any opponent except one man. He had more words at his fingertips than I had excuses for not dieting. It was unnerving, but it was fun.
Then one evening, my daughter, the editor of this book, threw a casual dinner party and invited her boss, a widower my age. As we spoke, I realized that he was, in fact, my unbeatable Scrabble opponent. The coincidence was unfathomable, and we realized very quickly that a power greater than ours had drawn us together. We began dating, and soon after, while we were online playing, he laid out a perplexing seven-letter word: m-a-r-e-e-m-i.
I challenged him and said, “What’s mareemi? The hair of a sterile goat?” When he didn’t answer I stared at the letters m-a-r-e-e-m-i until I figured out he had just proposed. Being a bride at my age has made me realize that the most important thing in life is to keep on playing because sooner or later, all the letters will fall into place.