Lifestyle
L.A. Affairs: After my wife of 32 years died, I was lost. Could I ever love again?
It was my senior year at Van Nuys High. I had noticed her, especially because two of my buddies were drooling over her best friend who cruised the quad of the San Fernando Valley high school with the air of a temptress. Head over heels, my friends did everything they could to lurk in close proximity to her, and I tagged along.
One Friday afternoon, Mike, Larry and I were driving together to Ensenada to surf away the weekend. We took a right off Ventura Boulevard onto Sepulveda Boulevard. By a stroke of luck, we spotted yet passed by their source of attraction walking in the direction of the hills with two girlfriends. A crazy, screeching U-turn later, we were all chatting, and the girls invited us up to my future wife’s house and pool.
We acquiesced and drove up Woodcliff Road, forgetting all about picking up another Mike at his parents’ garage for our trip. Poolside, I ended up staring into the dark brown eyes of my future wife accompanied by her bleach-blond friend, while my friends tried their best to act cool next to the girl they had lusted after for much of the past school semester.
I had an epiphany, realizing she was the most gorgeously attractive girl my 17-year-old self had ever encountered. I wanted to skip the Mexico trip but couldn’t convince the others. So, hours later, we eventually took off to pick up the other Mike. All weekend I dreamed of Monday when I would see her again in school.
The girl with dark brown eyes and I eventually got married — a marriage that lasted 32 years and three kids but ended when she died from breast cancer in 2012.
Confused years ensued. I was devastated yet found first-class therapy from yoga and ocean time. Eventually I started dating — month-long liaisons as well as some for a year or so. My dating go-to spots mostly lined the Venice stretch along Abbot Kinney Boulevard, especially Wabi-Sabi or the Tasting Kitchen. But my heart was truly never looking for short-term hookups. It desired another chance at 30 years with deep, magical, encompassing love. Friends told me I was being unrealistic. I said it was complicated.
I had long refused to be set up, gently turning down any attempts by friends and family to arrange dates or promptings to meet this or that woman. Also, the idea of a dating app was not in the picture. No dis, but I was fortunate enough to meet women in other ways. Then again, nothing stuck. Not until the day when a woman from an infatuation a few years back introduced me to Michele.
For some unknown reason, I happily agreed to her get-together. Maybe it was my state of mind at the time. I can’t explain it. Also, it wasn’t even a date. Or so I told myself. A dinner for three, without even having seen what Michele looked like. All I knew was that my ex cryptically said she was “Filipino or something … Asian anyway,” without me inquiring.
I was early, so I parked outside the restaurant, which was close to the place Michele managed. On the spur of the moment, I walked down to the small shop, peeked in and saw a woman who matched the description. Still, I decided to wait outside until the customers had left, when she would be alone since she was about to close. I even had time to walk back to my car and change from my T-shirt into a clean white dress shirt I had brought with me.
I walked in smiling, introduced myself and asked if she was Michele. I realize it was a bit of an unusual move to just barge in, but, seemingly unfazed, she smiled back. There was this immediate organic connection. We spoke for at least 15 minutes, and the conversation flowed as if we had known each other for decades.
At the restaurant, we talked about everything. Past and present. My ex moved over to talk to some friends as Michele and I carved a path in each other’s eyes, getting down to personal emotions right away as if it was the most natural thing in the world. I’ve never been able to be any other way, and her heart, she later revealed, seemed to blossom in a way her almost 60-year-old well-traveled soul had never experienced.
Michele kissed me as we parted. (She still says I kissed her.) Four days later, we went on our first real date. All this was right before Christmas, and soon after, I was taking a trip to Sweden. I had known her only a week, but as she drove me to the airport, I asked her to join me for a Jason Isbell concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall two weeks later. She said yes.
Once reunited, I gave her a book of mine with the inscription: “You’ve tattooed your name on my heart” … and here we are five years later and married. Her Taiwanese heritage and my Swedish background have cemented a foundation that grows and flourishes beyond all barriers, cherishing what SoCal and the world have to offer.
All relationships encounter challenges. Michele emphatically maintains they make you stronger. Adjust, gain insight and integrity, yet embrace loving compromise. That’s progress. Love transcends it all if you work on it.
The author is a writer who has shuttled among Maui, Sherman Oaks and Stockholm while producing radio and television in collaboration with the BBC. Today his company publishes a current events quiz for schools.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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