SOUL MATES?
I married my soul mate.
I walked into a community action meeting, my mind far from finding love; it was on distributing baskets to the homebound. Suddenly there was a voice in my head: This is the man you are going to marry, it said. I saw only his back; he wore a canary yellow button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up, revealing muscular arms, and a pair of Dockers that slid just as the designer intended over his well-endowed rear section. He was crowned with russet curls, and I caught the side of wire-rimmed glasses. My heart was just about to do that 'hop-skip' thing when I remembered:
I was already married.
Two months before, in a fit of approaching-thirty desperation, I had found myself married to an individual I knew was the wrong choice, even before the walk down the corridor to the Justice of the Peace's office. There hadn't been a bathroom to duck into to escape the excited clutches of family members and friends who couldn't believe I was actually getting married. I didn't know what the trouble was: I was friendly, outgoing, good-natured, and I think pretty, but there were no takers. Well-meaning friends and family brought by snaggletooth cousins and itinerant preachers, defrocked preachers and persons widowed under suspicious circumstances. Finally my father announced that I was just about at my expiration date, my Prince Charming was not going to show up and I might as well take whatever appeared at the door next. The guy turned out to be intemperate, short-tempered and 'delicate' in that artistic kind of way, I told myself there were no soul mates, and finding my own quiet ways to live out my life with an obviously bad choice was probably my best bet. I pledged 'til death and prayed for the end to come quickly.
Yet, here stood my soul mate. What was I to do?
A Family 'Trait'
This was no new conundrum in my family. My father saw my mother across a crowded room and swept her off for a two-week whirlwind romance before he 'remembered' that he had a wife and a child. He left her immediately, tried to put her out of her mind, and would have succeeded, had she not turned up pregnant. His wife had stomped off, indignant, and a few months later the two were in each other's arms.
I, on the other hand, did not have my father's derring-do. Even when Mr. Soul approached me and attempted a conversation, I blathered like an idiot and backed away. I'd done nothing to be ashamed of, but the experience had unsettled me. If only I had held out for a couple of months more but I hadn't, and it was over.
Was it?
Soul Mate Fate
Wouldn't Mr. Soul encounter the husband out there somewhere and befriend him! One evening the husband came home with this man in tow. He raised an eyebrow in recognition and reached out for a handshake. I found a reason to leave the house. A few months later I heard he'd married and moved away.
Three years later, the husband came home and announced that he'd been to a fortuneteller who'd told him I would have only one child, and he wanted five. On his way home he'd decided the marriage was over. I wasn't altogether surprised. It's hard to shower someone with affection when one knows the Soul Mate is out there.
Years went by. I moved out of the city and returned. There was Mr. Soul himself, in my doctor's office. He waved a friendly hand and enquired after the husband. Gone, I said. He laughed. My wife, too, he said.
The rest is history. A quarter of a century later we are not only still together, but both loving every minute of wedded bliss. He still has curls, though they're more gray than russet now. We have our one child, now a strapping young man who encountered and married his own soul mate.
What is a Soul Mate?
Far beyond simply a person with whom a person shares deep beliefs and attitudes, a soul couple is a pair with the universe on its side, moving heaven and earth and sometimes hell to bring them together. Soul mates are not just people who get along well. Something earth-shaking occurs when soul mates meet, after a nanosecond or after years. There is a sizzle-pop that takes place, as the cosmos realigns itself to accommodate the miracle of Intended meeting Intended. When the two enter each other's presence, they both know it. Other people notice, too. It's common for people to say to us, I don't know what you have, but I know I want it in my relationship.
Soul mates don't have to be in the same place to be together. People refer to me in the plural even when my Soul Man is not around, and they do the same to him. Would-be-interlopers know there is a space they cannot enter, a trust they cannot violate.
Waiting for a Soul Mate
I posit the hypothesis that everyone has a soul mate and will encounter him/her, given the time and patience. Actively looking for a soul mate is a futile exercise: the universe does it for the couple. If there is truly someone special out there, and if one does not get stuck on the physical window-dressing of substitutes, one can eventually count on meeting the cosmic Other. One's soul mate may be from a different culture, ethnicity, or belief system, hail from a different social background or nation, and be totally what one does not expect, so one must allow the universe time to settle border disputes and get through boring meetings at times.
The universe will work, though, sometimes cataclysmically.
Recently a friend ran a stoplight and hit a car from which emerged the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She cursed at him, and called 911. An on-duty policewoman came to investigate the accident.
He and the policewoman have been together ever since.