Lifestyle
L.A. Affairs: I asked my late husband for a sign. Then a man flagged me down on the 101
On July 1, 2020, my life changed forever.
What should have been a regular Wednesday, hunkering down with my family just four months into the COVID-19 pandemic, was the day my husband died. He had two sudden massive heart attacks, and after trying to save him for 45 minutes, the paramedics had to let him go.
Life quickly became a blur of depression, sadness, disbelief and anger. I lost my 56-year-old husband. We had been married for 15 years, and he was my life partner.
I was overwhelmed. How was I going to take care of my two teenage daughters by myself? How would I ever recover from this?
The answers were just as surprising — and unpredictable — as my husband’s death.
It was another regular day some 14 months later, and I had to drive the kids to school. We were late. The kids were mouthing off at each other in the back seat, and I began yelling at my older daughter. She started crying, which made me cry, and I didn’t dare look at my younger daughter to see if she was crying. I dropped them off at school, feeling defeated.
On my way home, I stopped by the cemetery to visit my husband’s grave. I wanted to yell at him for leaving me with all this to do on my own. I wanted to cry with him and let him take in my tears of loneliness and grief. Over and over I said, “I just want to be with you.” I was not suicidal, but I felt that somehow, through some magical turn of events, it would be possible to be with him.
I asked for a sign. It was something I‘d never done before — I’m not prone to superstition — but I’d heard other widows talk about it. “Tony, please send me a sign that I should be with you. Or send me a sign that I should not be with you,” I said, before driving home and spending the day working.
About 5 p.m., I left the house to pick up my kids from school — right back on the 101 Freeway south through Hollywood, driving a mind-numbing 8 mph. I had been crying and upset, thinking that by the time I arrived at school, I would try to pull it together for the sake of the kids.
At the Sunset Boulevard exit, I absently looked at the car to my left. The driver was smiling at me. I smiled back and kept driving. A few moments later, when I looked in my rear-view mirror, I realized that the man in the car was trying to catch up, weaving through traffic to get next to me. He was in a black muscle car — a Dodge Charger.
My heart started racing. Was he crazy? Would he pull a gun on me? As I watched him in my mirrors, I had a feeling that this guy wasn’t going to hurt me. Just before my exit at Silver Lake, he pulled up alongside me and rolled down his passenger-side window.
“You are so cute. Are you married?” he asked. I hadn’t heard that question in years. I was caught off guard but somehow managed to squeak out “No.” He asked if he could give me his number. I took it, messaged him a quick “hi” and then exited the freeway.
David instantly started texting me, and just like that, we were having a conversation.
At 47 and a native Angeleno, I had never been picked up on the freeway before. Over the coming days and weeks, I told this story to my friends, and they too said they had never been picked up on the freeway. How bizarre. After all, Angelenos spend years of our lives slogging through traffic on the 101, the 405, the 110 and the 5, and this never happens, right?
I was pulling into the parking lot of the girls’ school when it hit me. That was the sign from Tony. It jump-started my pulse. It made me optimistic about the future. A realization exploded in me like a bomb: Tony didn’t want me to be with him. He wanted me to stay here and live my life to the fullest.
David and I texted each other incessantly for days. He was 17 years younger than I was, and we lived very different lives. At one point, he told me that he was a physical therapist and that he gave the best massages. Wait. We were flirting over text? I had never done this before, not even with Tony.
David and I met for coffee a few days later. There were no uncomfortable pauses. The only discomfort I felt was that I was at Starbucks on a date with someone other than Tony. The whole date was an out-of-body experience, like I was watching us chat from above. When David told me that he had the same last name as Tony, my married name, that was it. I was positive Tony had sent this guy to me. At the end of the date, David and I kissed. My body became electrified, as if I were waking up from a long slumber.
Over the next few months, David and I had fun. He just might have saved my life. I helped him through difficult times as well. Though it didn’t work out romantically, we are still friends.
My other friends suggested I get on the apps and start dating — strike while the iron was hot. I had to learn how to swipe right. For a while, it was the typical story of flakes, ghosting, horrible dates and bad sex. But I kept at it, bolstered by the idea that Tony was guiding me.
Now I am in a long-term relationship with a man whom I love. We’ve been together for almost two years. I still miss my husband every day and continue to love him and cherish him. Now I understand that Tony would never want me to suffer. I am also capable of holding all kinds of love at the same time.
Tony sent me a sign: Life is inexplicable. You never know who is waiting for you at the next stoplight.
The author took up writing as a hobby after her husband died. She lives in Hollywood with one daughter (her other daughter is away at college) and her fox terrier. She’s on Instagram: @stacykass
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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