A TRUE LOVE STORY By Sandra Gore Published in Life Choices: Navigating Difficult Paths All you need is love

Lennon and McCartney Any psychic will tell you whats on womens minds. When will I find true love? Will I ever meet my soul mate? When will I not be alone? Love, money and health are the three pillars of a perfect life. But true nirvana is a magical and elusive state of mind called Happiness. And of the three pillars, there is only one that can bring you close to being happy. Ive always known that I needed love. Call me a shameless romantic, but I set my priorities early. Swaying lazily in my Aunt Jerrys hammock, I devoured book after book from her rich library of outrageous romance novels. Tales of pirates torn between kidnapped beauties of high rank and voluptuous temptresses of ill repute filled my balmy summer days. Delicious daydreams of sheiks, camels and faraway lands eased my dip into sleep every love-barren night of my youth. I was hot on the trail of my knight in shining armor, and no commoner would do. Dont get the idea that my quest for love caused me to settle for the first pair of well-filled Levis that came my way. I was certainly no nun and lived fully the carefree days of the 60s and 70s, glorious years that came after the pill and before STDs. But the romantic adventure tales that filled the long summer afternoons at my aunts lake house had captured my psyche; my soul whispered that I would find Prince Charming in a place far more exotic than Kansas. I didnt wait for him to come to me. I set out to find him. Over the continents I roamed, meeting up with fellow travelers, living wild adventures, always parting like gypsies at a fork in the road. Was I lonely sometimes? Absolutely yes. Did I heed my mother, give up my life on the road and return to the suburbs to find a man and settle down? Absolutely not. I was convinced that the only way I would find the love of my life was to live the life I loved. Then one day when I least expected it, in a tiny pension in Guatemala

A True Love Story by Sandra Gore City called El Chalet Suizo, there he was, seated at the next table, laughing and talking just a bit too loud in a vaguely familiar northern European accent. Who is that arrogant German? I asked myself while still admiring his lions mane of chestnut waves, Adonis golden tan, and impossibly blue eyes. My girlfriend Judith, always attracting the handsome native men with her blonde tresses and china doll face, had already hooked up with her Don Juan with plans for a wine and cheese party. As diners paired off, the tall Nordic and I were left standing like the last picks in a Saturday afternoon dance class. I must confess that I was relieved to learn his accent was Danish and not German. No one has anything bad to say about Danes. They never have to apologize about their history. This was long before militant Islam loomed scary on the horizon, and no one but Scandinavians ever read a Danish newspaper, much less looked at their cartoons. Sugar plum dreams of Vikings began dancing in my head. I manifested a helmet with giant horns and a broad leather vest emblazoned with golden sunbursts across rock hard pectorals. I wouldnt resist being carried off by this cleaned-up version of Eric the Red. He had all his teeth, smelled fresh from a shower, and spoke excellent English. Five steamy days later, we exchanged our parents addresses on separate continents, his Mexico City phone number, and parted. He boarded a bus going north, and I set off towards the south with Judith. No email, no cell phone, no Facebook. Certainly no Skype. In those days, you came, you saw, you left. But I couldnt get him out of my head. Lounging under the lush canopy of a Costa Rican rainforest, swilling ice cold cerveza, I posed the question to Judith. Is he the one? Without hesitation, she answered, Oh yes, he is the one. Then I have to go to Mexico. And so a choice was made that changed my life. And sometimes the gods truly smile on us. The very next morning, a 75- foot ketch with magnificent white sails plied its regal way into Golfito Bay. Word quickly spread that the ship had come through the Panama Canal and

A True Love Story by Sandra Gore was homebound for Sausalito. Id asked truck drivers for rides across the Sahara, why not a sea captain to get to Mexico? I cajoled a local fisherman to paddle me in his canoe out to the yacht. On my feet, balancing wildly in the rocking sea, I cupped my hands around my mouth and brazenly shouted out Ahoy! Id read that in books. Isnt that what sailors call out to each other? Three wind-tussled heads with astonished faces appeared over the railing. After a quick exchange, I was invited on board and scrambled up the shaky rope ladder over the gunwalemy first time ever to stand on the deck of a sea-going ship that wasnt in a museum. Do you have any sailing experience? asked the British captain. With bravado I declared, Sure! The luck of the Irish in my genes, the captain agreed to take me on until Punta Arenas, a port forty-eight hours by sea. I was first up and last to sleep. I cooked; I scrubbed; I kept quiet and smiled a lot. I needed this ride. I was on a mission to get my man. In Punta Arenas I officially joined the crew and was on my way to Acapulco, the nearest port to Mexico City. Moored at the Acapulco Yacht Club, I asked the way to a pay phone. Repeating my memorized Spanish phrases over and over in my head, holding in my left hand the paper with his phone number, I nervously dialed with my right. The phone rang its strange foreign ring, and a female answered, thankfully, in English. Never heard of Jesper Nielsen; dont know anything about him. Was I sure I had the right number? How could I have been so fooled? How could I have been such a fool? Two months later my mother called me in the Bay Area. You got a postcard from South America. Theres no name. It says, Where in the world are you? Wherever you are, Ill come by. I knew in a heartbeat. Rifling through my papers, I unfolded the crumpled Danish address. My postcard had an equally brief message: In Redwood City, building sailboats. Heres my work number. I did sign the card, though. Poets say that the path of true love never runs smooth. Just days later, without warning, the boatyard closed. Bankrupt. Down the peninsula I moved to friends in Los Gatos. Not realizing the speed at which Fate

A True Love Story by Sandra Gore was working, I was slow to tell anyone where I was. Late one night the phone rang for me. It was the mother of a fellow crewman from the 75 foot yacht. She got my number from someone who had it from someone else. Sandra, where are you? Theres this Danish man looking for you. Hes leaving the country tomorrow. He has a wonderful caring voice. You should grab this guy. Grabbing him was my very intention. After welcoming him most warmly, I put it on the table. Why are you here? What are your intentions? Nonplussed, obviously having thought it through, he replied, Come to Mexico City. Not a millisecond passed before I accepted. But we had no money; I had to work to buy the ticket. Just before New Year 1974, nine months after we first met at the Chalet Suizo, I arrived at Mexico City International airport with two suitcases. We had been together ten days total, five in Guatemala and five in California, sharing no photographs and certainly never on Facebook. It occurred to me that I might not recognize him. It turns out, he had similar doubts. The first day gave way to the second, the first year to the next, and the first decade to the third and now, forty years later, were still together. We certainly recognized each other that daynot only in the airport, but across thousands of miles. Is it a blessing to find true love? You bet, but like every opportunity, luck only brings it within your reach. Your choice is to seize it in both hands and hang on for the ride. Staying in love and staying with your love doesnt just happen. Every day you make the choice to compromise a little, to say yes when you want to say no. Not all the time, but often enough that both of you feel like youre getting what you need in lifeand from each other. I made my choice that I wanted to live my life with this man. In the first half of our marriage, I followed his career around the world, finding opportunities for my personal growth where I could. They were always there. But when I wanted to return home, to my country, to fulfill my ambitions, he said yes. Thank you, progressive Scandinavia,

A True Love Story by Sandra Gore for a culture that expects women to realize themselves and expects men to expect it of them. I am often asked the secret to our marriage. Its no secret that good friends like to laugh, companions like to talk, and lovers like to love. It is helpful if you choose to smile, if you choose to listen, and if you choose to remember the good times, and not the hard times, when he reaches for you. Indeed, if you choose to remind yourself how lucky you are that he still reaches. About the Author Born with wanderlust, forever living in a fantasy world, Sandra Gore escaped the prairies of Kansas to follow the yellow brick road on a 25-year odyssey that took her to Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Starting with a one way ticket to Iceland, she returned with a Viking husband, an art degree and speaking five languages. A love of travel, classical history, languages, mysticism, food, shopping and romance led Gore to create the novels of the Red Mirror Series: The Red Mirror and The Emerald Tablet. She is near completion of the The Black Scroll. As a self-challenge to test her range, Gore re-cast the story of Isis of The Red Mirror in two other versions: steamy Isis Erotica and a zippy, sanitized version, Isis BeachRead. Her non-fiction publications include the self-help manual Sex and the Zen of Shopping: How to Live Rich by Shopping Smart and memoir contributions to three Life Choices anthologies. Expect a cookbook of Gores own recipes plus those of talented, foodloving friends from around the globe. You can find samples from time to time on her blog. The happily married Nielsens have a grown daughter and a son and divide their time between a California beach house and a Las Vegas condo. You can contact Sandra at: GoreAuthor@gmail.com Her author blog is SLGore.com
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