Chapter 1: The Garden

It wasn’t always rosy in our Garden. But the beginning certainly was idyllic and storybook perfect. 

Looking back with hard earned wisdom and perspective I see the uniqueness of our immediate connection, how effortlessly and authentically perfect it was on all levels, like a key and lock made just for each other. Our connection was living proof there is a God Who loves His children and gives them souls and soulmates.  

I’ll never forget the first time I laid eyes on my magnificent Charlene, in June 1998, as she walked into my office and changed my universe. How her brightness dazzled me. I had been living in the pre-Charlene dark ages and she just flooded the room and my existence with the warmest light for me to bask in.  

I was 26 and in the midst of a vicious and life draining divorce. I had been kicked out of my house with a restraining order, a beautiful house in Brooklyn that I had built myself, and hadn’t been able to see or speak with my two daughters in almost a year. I was being ferociously devoured. Unlike the Paschal lamb, of which we eat the meat but have to be careful not to break the bones, my ritual sacrifice included pulverizing the bones until nothing was left. 

This process caused me to question my entire life up to that point, and I became completely disillusioned with the ultra orthodox jewish black hat lifestyle that I had grown up in. I had disconnected from it, and was barely observant. I was depressed and living in a grimy and seedy one room studio in West Orange, New Jersey, down the road from my office.  

Although my personal life was in shambles, my business life was very active and bustling. I owned a mortgage brokerage and real estate company and had around 7 people working for me, and a bunch of other commissioned hangers on. And unlike my living arrangements, we had a very nice office. You might have compared me to a functioning alcoholic with a thriving career but every other part of their life being a complete mess. 

Charlene was 32 and had recently moved to Morristown, New Jersey from Orlando, Florida for a fresh start after a couple of failed relationships. The last ex was constantly asking her to get back together with him, and she already had a few times. Although unhappy and unfulfilled with him, he wasn’t abusive, and their life together had been very comfortable for her. 

He was a successful doctor, and they had money, status, and her family nearby. They lived on a lake with boats, where she was a pro level water skier, (as she was with all sports and activities she practiced).  And best of all, she had her own horse barn and riding school for kids, where she bred, trained and competed at high level on sport (hunter/jumpers), and show horses, and also trained young students and ran camps. Busy all day with what she loved most, horses, family, kids.

The lifestyle was her brand of heaven but not the guy. She knew she wanted something else and she desperately didn’t want to be sucked back into that life because of how comfortable it was. So like our matriarch Sarah, Charlene left her home and family and everything she knew in Orlando, and moved far away, to New Jersey.

I don’t know if she was planning on eventually going back after airing out for a while, or making a brand new life for herself up north. Unlike our mother Sarah who had Abraham, Charlene was doing it completely on her own without a husband or family to help so it was even more difficult. (We did do it together later on, moving to Israel, our promised and holy land).  

What Charlene valued most was not a fabulous lifestyle or materialistic items, or even horses. She valued love, connection, happiness, positivity, and forward motion. And people, all people. Their status or looks didn’t matter at all. Where I saw this quality of hers especially clearly because of its stark juxtaposition with the status-conscious environment in which it was displayed, was at horse barns. Show barns are some of the most pretentious environments you will ever come across, because horse sports are a very, if not the most, expensive sport. 

Charlene was the opposite of pretentious and would talk with everybody, even the stable hands cleaning the stalls that barely spoke English. With the same patience and interest that she would talk with the owner of the barn, the trainer, and the wealthy horse owners.

Men, women, children, young, old, rich, poor, all given the same, interested, empathetic, positive interaction with her. Deliberately calculated to make them feel good about themselves and to give them a happy feeling that they can take with them forward through their day. For everybody that saw Charlene daily or regularly, seeing her was one of the highlights of their day. 

She wanted everyone around her to be happy and successful. Nobody walked away from a conversation with Charlene without a smile on their face. (Unless they pissed her off in which case she might say “fuck you very much” or some other thing that would sound innocuous to someone not paying too much attention).

Charlene lived her values thoroughly - where it’s hardest and where many people fail. With her money. Although she loved her lifestyle and beautiful things, she refused to spend any time fighting with her two ex-husbands, both wealthy, and settled both marriages with one conversation each and no lawyers, accepting their initial offers. 

The second one, she left with only a car, a horse, (what internet car people would call their “daily rider”), and a bare amount of cash to survive for six months while looking for a job to support herself. Walking away from a lavish lifestyle and a major show barn with many horses. And the first time around she left with even less, only her car and some cash that she herself earned from her job. 

Because she understood they would have used any settlement negotiations or divorce discussions to keep her tethered to them and their painful past for a while longer. And all she wanted was to immediately move forward - without fighting, with peace of mind, and a positive mindset and outlook, - even if it meant having very little or no money. 

Both of her exes begged her to stay and promised anything she wanted. But what she wanted they couldn’t provide. She dreamed of happiness and a loving family of her own. 

Of a husband who understood her, who loved her for her, who she could be her authentic self with, who she could feel safe and secure with, who she could laugh and enjoy life with, who she could give her entirety to, body and soul, heart and mind. Who would not trample on her beautifully gentle soul and heart, or abuse her selfless generosity and kindness. Who would reciprocate wholeheartedly in all ways.` 

And children, finally children of her own. That she could shower with her boundless and eternal love, and envelop in her aura of maternal warmth. That she could raise to be proud, independent, and strong. That will live and epitomize her values. That will love her, appreciate her, look up to her, and live their lives together with her.

She had always taken care of others, especially her siblings that she mothered and felt responsible for from her earliest years. But they weren’t hers. She desperately wanted her own. And she had waited so long already. She was now 32, having spent a decade between two relationships that she felt were not right for children (fortunately for me). 

And horses. She always dreamed of horses. To her they represented all that was good and happy with the world. Freedom, strength, beauty, grace, flow, energy, fun, peace. And when she rode and was one with her horse she felt she was a part of that. In many ways she saw herself in the “ponies” as she called them. 

We joked (in horse world language that I learned from her) that she was like an Arabian hot-blood, very fine-boned, and active to the point of jumpy, while I was like a Clydesdale cold-blood, (the Budweiser horses), very heavy-boned and slow, but a locomotive-like work horse. She would say I was “a little behind the leg”, while I would say she was “a little forward”, but that was just the difference in perspective because we each thought that we were the one in the saddle and the other was the pony.

Charlene had two jobs that kept her super busy. She became the New Jersey rep for a mortgage bank out of California, and she also trained horses and riders near Morristown, and at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan. Making her rounds, she came to our mortgage office one day to present her bank’s mortgage products to our brokers. After she was done, my sister, who worked for me at the time, said you have to meet my brother and brought her into my office. 

Charlene walked in, a vision from heaven, wearing a white business suit. She looked like a movie star playing a businesswoman televangelist in a movie. I was awestruck. Fortunately, I wasn’t dumbstruck.

After business small talk in the office for a few minutes I walked her out. We then stood in the parking lot by her car for three hours and talked and talked. It was the most natural and real conversation and we just meshed, energy flowing back and forth freely. 

We bonded over shared loneliness, and genuineness. The first thing she loved about me from the beginning was that genuineness. I didn’t try to “puff myself up” as she called it.

She was so tired of guys bullshitting her all the time. She was always being hit on (both her jobs included a lot of interacting with people), because, besides for being a knockout, she was very approachable and humble, with a girl next door vibe.

She was sort of like Daisy Duke, (the amazing one from the TV series, not the movie). But guys were always intimidated and either outright lied, (especially the mortgage brokers-a wily bunch), or exaggerated their situations.

I did no such thing. I just put it out there. She understood me fully from the beginning, that my honesty came from a strong inner core and that she didn’t have to constantly question my motives or agenda. And she immediately felt comfortable putting herself and her circumstances out there as well. We were both unhappy in our personal lives and now we had found each other and were able to relate.

I fell madly in love with her on the spot. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, she lit me up and interested and excited me on all levels. I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, but I did know she was different from anyone I had ever met and I couldn’t get enough of her. After being with her for hours, the minute we were apart I yearned to be with her again. 

It took her a little longer to fall in love. Mainly because she was emotionally intelligent, genius level, and took things slow, and understood the complications inherent to our relationship. She was very disciplined with her emotions and concerned about us getting too serious with so many potential pitfalls.

She understood my orthodox background which made our potential marriage difficult to say the least, plus at the time I wasn’t even legally divorced yet, although I was separated and in court for a couple of years already. My emotional intelligence at the time was at primate level and the only thing I was concerned about was when I would get to see her again.

We started to spend a lot of time together. She was a super cheap date, valuing time together and fun experiences over spending money or shopping. So we did simple things like going to the gym at night and the diner afterward. Where we would sit, drink tea and just talk and laugh, enjoying each other’s company.

She loved my sense of humor, often saying I should write for a comedy show. She also loved my intellect, and especially that I wasn’t pretentious about it, or anything else for that matter. She was very happy that I was smarter than her ex, who had been very proud of his scholastic achievements and who had used them, and his medical degree, to prop up his ego and act superior to her. 

She was so easy to talk to, and we were both endlessly fascinated by each other’s stories and lives and interests. While she had worked many different jobs and played and competed in many sports, and had a lot of interesting and varied experiences to talk about and share, I was a wide ranging reader, open minded thinker, and had an unconventional, interesting life myself, so we always had more than enough to talk about.

While on the surface it seemed we had nothing in common, and certainly our pasts and backgrounds were as unlike as can be, under the surface we had everything in common. We both loved nature and animals, were kind and giving in a wholehearted way, were creative and open minded, and were fearless in many varied ways.

Plus our chemistry was sizzling, with my masculinity and her femininity in perfect balance. And on a deeper, more spiritual level, we were both iconoclasts wanting to live on our own terms, pursuing genuine and authentic lives. Because we connected on all these levels, our attraction to each other was magnetic.  

One weekend Charlene joined me and some of my friends for Shabbat at my father’s summer house in the Catskills. All Saturday she and I hiked through the Neversink River and surrounding woods across the road from my father’s house. And like Tom Sawyer telling Becky Thatcher about his adventures, I told her all my stories about those same woods that I had spent my early childhood with a friend, S.A., trekking through. How we caught snakes, salamanders, frogs, birds, a whole menagerie of animals, all the while hiding from the bungalow colony day camp staff, who wanted us to be docile day camp prisoners like the other nice jewish boys and girls. 

That Saturday I fell even deeper in love because I had just connected those childhood summers in the Catskill woods, the happiest time and purest part of my pre-Charlene life, to the Charlene era which I had then begun to live in. In effect, I had created a bridge of happiness from my early carefree childhood, over the wreckage of what my life had become, to what was becoming my then current reality, the Charlene era. 

During those early months, when she had the time she would drive over in the morning to my grimy studio before work to encourage me out of bed, and out of my depressed mood. Fortunately, being in that disgusting room didn’t scare her off. She said when she saw it her heart went out to me that I lived that way, and it hurt her physically that I would do that to myself. 

Feeling sorry for someone does not usually make for a romantic relationship. But our connection was so deep and multi-layered and she understood and appreciated my inner self so clearly, that she saw those external circumstances as just logistical issues for me to resolve, with no relevance to my suitability as her boyfriend. She convinced me to rent a nice apartment in a respectable complex in West Orange. Basically by saying she wouldn’t sleep with me until I left the disgusting studio I was in. 

But furnishing the apartment was going to cost around $15,000 and with my finances and credit in shambles because of the divorce I couldn’t swing it. Especially after paying a month’s rent and a few month’s security in advance. She said “put the furniture on my credit card” (causing me to joke for years afterward that I married her for her credit).

I’m a traditional man and I don’t take money from women so I immediately said absolutely not. But she insisted, saying she had a ton of unused credit on her cards, (she hardly spent money, and was always working or enjoying simple, inexpensive pleasures). She said she wouldn’t even notice it and she was sure I would pay it off quickly.

We finally agreed that I would rent the apartment, take her money/credit for the furniture, and she would start sleeping with me. We went to Ikea together and not only did she help me select the furniture but she paid for it and helped me put it together too. I paid off that furniture very quickly and have been attempting to pay her back ever since. 

After a couple of months, by December of 1998, Charlene had moved in and we were very serious. We got a dog together, a chihuahua named Ketanah, and we spent every spare moment together. Watching Charlene ride and going to horse shows and other fun activities on weekends, going to the gym and diner every night. And endless pleasure in the bed that she paid for. Paradise.

The two head rabbis that I had been closest with, of the Talmudical college I had attended for many years, travelled all the way from Brooklyn to my apartment in West Orange. We sat at the table that Charlene had paid for, where they told me that I was gambling with my eternal salvation and needed to give Charlene up.

I answered them that the way I saw it, in the Torah value system, life comes before everything besides the three cardinal sins. I had no doubt Charlene had saved and was continuing to save my life at this point, based on the self-destructive trajectory I was on before she came along. I therefore gave myself a Torah ruling that she was kosher. 

I felt bad they wasted their time traveling to me. They had about as much of a chance convincing me to jump off a bridge. There was no way I was giving up the sun in my universe.    

And then she left. 

A few months in she said that if she didn’t leave then she would never leave and she was worried we had no real future with a family together. After living with me for four months, she had much better insight into what exactly she was up against with my extreme ultra orthodox background and belief system. And messy divorce. She was 33 by then and her biological clock was ticking loud and fast. She couldn’t afford to ignore it while I spent years figuring things out.

Charlene moved back to Orlando in March. I was devastated. I had been given a taste of heaven and then had it taken away. It’s a time share sales tactic to offer something and then take it away to build desire. I don’t think this was Charlene’s strategy with me but it definitely worked.

We pined for each other. I couldn’t live without her and we would talk on the phone constantly. While on the phone with her on July 4th weekend, 1999, as I sat in the grass under an apple tree at my father’s summer house in the Catskills, the house where I fell further in love with her the summer before, missing her terribly and feeling sick about it, I asked her to marry me. 

She said “I love you but I’m not jewish”. And I said “don’t worry baby, it doesn’t matter”. And she said “you’re sure? You’re not going to regret it and you’ll be able to be happy having non-jewish children?” And I said “absolutely”. Because both our hearts ached, and she missed me just as terribly, she accepted what she knew deep down to be nonsense. 

I grabbed a diamond from a friend in the business and immediately flew down to Florida to seal the deal. Being in the mortgage business taught me to close as soon as possible after approval, time just allows problems to crop up that kill deals. We rushed the wedding in a month, getting married August 9, 1999, so that we wouldn’t come to our senses.

And Charlene planned and pulled off a beautiful and romantic wedding at The Grand Floridian in Disney World (where her father worked and I could get a significant discount). In that short, one month timeframe, and on a tight budget, (she never negotiated the budget amount and immediately agreed to the amount I proposed, as was always her way). Completely stress free. She was relaxed and happy and everyone around her including me was relaxed and happy for the entire wedding weekend. 

As she exhibited throughout our life together with parties, and later on with the Shabbat Kiddush that we did weekly, she was the most amazing party planner and maker back then too. And her easygoing poise and grace in that wedding pressure-cooker situation, was superhuman to me.

I didn’t know anyone else that could do what she just did, with no help, short amount of time, and tight budget, seemingly so effortlessly. And she looked and acted like the most beautiful and regal queen while doing it. Like I said before, she epitomized King Solomon’s Woman of Valor. Every word of that description applied to her.

And then we spent two magical weeks in Hawaii. We were so in love and so happy. Enraptured with and totally wrapped up in each other. In our own cocoon world that we had built together, ignoring the dark world that I had inhabited before the Charlene era had begun.

Completely connected to each other on all levels and in complete sync and connection with the universe. 

I believe Charlene was an angelic being created just for me and delivered to me by God. How she was driven to abandon everything in her life and travel from far away, walking into my arms at just the right time in our lives.

How beautiful a human being and woman she was, the archetype for the Woman of Valor. How perfectly and uniquely suitable for me, flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone.

It’s clear to me that God loved me as His son. Was giving me the same gift He gave to His first son, Adam, when God Himself prepared and delivered to Adam his perfect helpmate and companion, Eve.

We were living together in the Garden and it was perfect.