Finding a Soul Mate (Meant to be Together Book 1) Read online

  Finding a Soul Mate

  by Ally Richards

  Meant to Be Together Series Book 1

  Copyright © 2019 by Ally Richards

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any names, places, characters, or incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or people is entirely coincidental.

  KNOWING Rose © 2011 by Violet Sophia Dorrough, used with permission from author.

  All trademarks are property of their respective owners. Ally Richards is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One ~ The Wonder Years

  Chapter Two ~ The Cabin

  Chapter Three ~ Joan’s Struggles

  Chapter Four ~ College, Larry and the Twins

  Chapter Five ~ Vietnam

  Chapter Six ~ Reunited

  Chapter Seven ~ Prelude to a Really, Really Long Kiss

  Chapter Eight ~ Sailing Takes Us Back

  Chapter Nine ~ Esther and Manny Weiss

  Chapter Ten ~ Lessons Learned from Children

  Chapter Eleven ~ Ari’s Bar Mitzvah Week

  Chapter Twelve ~ The End of an Era

  Chapter Thirteen ~ Leah’s Bat Mitzvah Week

  Chapter Fourteen ~ Michelle and Morris

  Chapter Fifteen ~ Crisis at Sea

  Chapter Sixteen ~ The Inside Passage

  Chapter Seventeen ~ Samantha Comes to Terms

  Chapter Eighteen ~ A Sad Farewell

  Chapter Nineteen ~ Ari and Leah’s Next Step

  Chapter Twenty ~ A Partner for Samantha

  Chapter Twenty-One ~ Full Circle

  ALSO BY ALLY RICHARDS

  First Chapters of Book 2, The Couples

  Prologue

  Tradition tells us that forty days before a male child is conceived, the name of his bride-to-be is announced from heaven.

  There is a soul mate for everyone—however, not everyone finds his or her soul mate. We can spend our lives searching for our true soul mate. If we are one of the lucky ones, we find the match that was made in heaven just for us, the one we are meant to be with, and we will live a long, happy, and productive life together.

  Bashert is a Yiddish word meaning meant to be. It goes beyond the coupling of two hearts destined for oneness, beyond two half-souls joined in completion.

  I'm Meyer Minkowski and this is my story of love, life, and finding a partner.

  Now, you have to understand, no one’s life is just a single strand of thread. On the contrary, each of our lives are a tapestry, woven intricately with the lives of those with whom we cross paths and with whom we share history, destiny. In these pages you will find the strands that make up my tapestry.

  Chapter One

  ~ The Wonder Years

  Following World War II, it was difficult to earn a living in our small, Midwest Mississippi river town. During the summer between third and fourth grade, my family moved to a small suburb located east of Seattle, in the foothills of the Cascade Mountain range in Washington State. My father found a job working for the Boeing Company where his military experience as a crew chief was in demand.

  Shortly after settling in to our new town, I was busy exploring my new neighborhood on my bicycle when someone yelled. “Hey, you!”

  This was followed by a melodic laugh. I rode over to find a girl who was about my height with curly blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes, and an infectious smile.

  “I’m Joan. I can show you everything in this town,” she assured me.

  While I was happy to find someone roughly my own age, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend time with a girl.

  Joan assured me it would be okay because her mother had declared, “Joan is the biggest tomboy in the county.”

  That was good enough for me.

  Joan retrieved her bike and we rode off to find adventure. We peddled a couple of blocks into town and stopped at the back door of a bakery. Being a warm mid-July day, the door was open and a yeasty smell permeated the air. We parked our bikes and walked over.

  Joan leaned into the doorway and shouted, “Hey Aldo.”

  “Hey, Joan. I be right out,” I heard a deeply-accented voice reply.

  The baker came out with his arms, hands, and apron dusted with flour.

  “I see you have a new friend.”

  “His name is Meyer and he’s from the same town where I used to live. I’m showing him around today.”

  Aldo shook my hand, transferring some flour to me. “Well if you kids are going to be riding around you going to need to keep your energy up.” He disappeared into the bakery and returned with a six-inch loaf of French bread for each of us. It was still warm from the oven.

  Mr. Aldo Theodorocopolis—it would be another year before I could pronounce his name and another two before I could spell it—warned us to look out for cars as we pedaled away.

  There was a hobby shop in town. It was full of art supplies, toys, and model trains. I loved to visit and plan which railroad train cars I needed next, while Joan explored the art supplies.

  My father built an eight-foot by eight-foot table for a train platform out of two four-by-eight sheets of plywood. He cut a hole in the middle where I would command my HO scale train empire.

  The platform was in the corner so two walls were immediately next to it. Dad put poster board along those walls for me to paint background scenes. He had helped me with the track layout but then told me to do the scenery and buildings by myself, a little at a time. I started building scale structures, but couldn’t paint anything that would pass for scenery and my attempts to paint the cars and structures were awful.

  I told Joan about my inability to paint scenery for my railroad. I had been trying to create a mountain logging operation. She took my watercolor paints and starting painting the poster boards precisely as. Joan, I thought, could see what was in my mind.

  My mother showed us how to make paper mâché mountains, tunnels, lakes, and rivers, which Joan painted. She added rocks from our gravel driveway depicting boulders in and around the paper Mache mountains. We found some paint called “grime” which Joan used to make some of the rail cars and buildings look weathered.

  Any rainy day, or any day when we were tired of the heat of the Northwest summer, we would head down to the basement and work on our railroad. We agreed we would call it the Meyer-Joan Railroad, the MJ for short. Joan artfully lettered some of the box cars and an engine with the name.

  I noticed on the left side of the cars she would print the Joan-Meyer Railroad and on the other side she would print the Meyer-Joan Railroad. As we were sharing everything on the train table, I thought the names were appropriate.

  Occasionally, Joan would build a diorama at her house to add to the railroad table. My parents were amazed at her artwork. They invited her parents over one Friday night to see Joan’s artistic talent. That’s how Joan’s parents met my parents and our families became good friends. We had Sabbath dinners at each other’s homes the same way we did with some of my relatives.

  * * *

  One warm, sunny day, Joan showed me a little stream which wound through our neighborhood.

  She told me we must look in the stream in the fall because big salmon would be returning from the ocean to the same stream and we might see them. I wasn’t too impressed with her stream. I was used to seeing the mighty Mississippi River. Being new to the Northwest, I found it silly to t
hink some big fish from the ocean could end up in this tiny little stream.

  Joan showed me the little minnows in the stream. She pointed out how they travel in groups and asked me if I knew why they suddenly darted and then stayed still for a while.

  “They’re fish and that’s what fish do,” I told her. We both dropped down on our knees and peered into the clear water to get a better look.

  “I know they’re fish and I know what fish do,” she said wistfully. Then she looked up at me. “But why?”

  For the first time in my life I was hit by a vacuous feeling of not being able to explain something as simple as a minnow. “I was planting flower seeds at our new house. I covered them with dirt and I was wondering how they would know which way was up?”

  “Yes,” she exclaimed as she jumped up. “You get it!”

  Within a couple of weeks of my arrival, the town librarian knew both our names and knew that each time we came we would have a question. She was always eager to help. Every visit, she taught us a little bit more about using the library as a tool to research any topic. By the end of the summer, the librarian had taught us how to use everything from the Dewey Decimal system to the Index of Periodic Literature. She even taught us how to make proper index cards on which to keep our information.

  We spent the entire summer exploring the town plus our stream. We continued to ask each other questions. Being so young we didn’t realize as we shared the exploration of our new Northwest environment, joked, and laughed together, we were also beginning to explore who we were.

  * * *

  We occasionally collected bottles and returned them for their deposit. One day, when we had two dollars saved up, we decided to go to the local Chinese takeout. At our respective homes we only received half of an eggroll when Chinese meals were served so we decided to buy a dozen and eat them all ourselves. Sitting in the middle of a tall grass-covered field on a sunny day, we stuffed ourselves with six eggrolls apiece. For the next three years I could not even look at an eggroll.

  But something else happened as we consumed our eggrolls. For the first time in my life, I felt a connection to a person who wasn’t a relative. To this day I can’t describe our first connection, but I knew it existed.

  We also tried hugging that summer. Joan told me her parents were always hugging and they seemed to enjoy it, so we should try. While we hugged each other, I remember thinking about a lamppost I had hugged recently during a game of hide and seek. We decided hugging was another thing we didn’t know about but didn’t care to know about.

  I made lots of new friends once school started in the fall and occasionally saw Joan, but she was a year older and had older friends. Even so, at various times over the next few years, we used rainy days to continue building our railroad.

  * * *

  The next summer during August, my dad was in Chicago on business and the rest of us flew out to spend a few days with relatives. My parents decided our family would take the train back to the Northwest, as the train would pass through some of the most beautiful scenery in the country.

  Joan’s mom heard we were going to Chicago and she had asked my mom if we could bring Joan back to Washington State. Joan was spending the summer with cousins in Chicago and she didn’t want her coming back on the train alone.

  I was ecstatic to be on a train ride anywhere, especially a multiple day trip. We had seats in the Vista Dome car. It was the first passenger car on the train. The seats were arranged with two wide seats on each side of a center aisle. I sat next to a soldier in the row behind my parents.

  We left Chicago in the early evening. As the conductor entered our car to take tickets, I had made some dumb remark about his skin color. I was repeating something one of my inconsiderate friends had said, but I certainly should have known better. Both my parents turned to slap me, and unfortunately for me, my dad’s hand arrived at the side of my head first. Well, if I’d had eyes on my neck, I could have watched my head roll across the floor.

  Sometime during the night, we were stopped in a train yard. I went back to the area between cars where the conductor had the door open and steps in place for passengers. He was a tall black man who stood straight as a soldier. His mostly black and white uniform was immaculate and I was sure I could see my reflection in his brilliantly polished shoes.

  “They’re going to switch engines here,” he told me. “Do you want to watch?”

  “Yes, sir,” I practically screamed at him.

  He told me to stand about ten feet from the side of the train, next to a steel beam supporting a canopy over the train. “Now you stay right there and you don’t move until I tell you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The monster diesels that had pulled us from Chicago were replaced with a new set to pull us across the northern Rockies. I was entranced by the deep rumble of the powerful diesel engines and enjoyed the oily scent their exhaust wafted into the air. The engineer coupled the new engines into the train so gently, the passenger cars didn’t move. Every time I glanced at the conductor he was watching me with a big smile. He called me and I raced back up the steps onto the train.

  “Every trip, I get some young train enthusiast who gets to see the engine changeover. On this trip you were the lucky one.”

  “Yes, sir, I did get lucky and thank you very much.”

  I had just arrived back to my seat when the train started moving again. With the gentle rocking motion, I was soon fast asleep. When I woke up the next day, we had finished crossing the plains and I could see mountains in the distance. I was fascinated watching from the Vista Dome car as the train started to wind its way into the Rocky Mountains. From our elevated position I could see both ends of the train, especially on turns.

  Joan spent a lot of time the first morning playing with my sister, who is five years younger than me. After lunch she was put down for a nap and Joan came up to the Vista Dome. My dad was next to me and I had the window seat. Joan and I were kneeling side by side on the seat, with our faces plastered against the window, looking at the amazing scenery. Even the train-geek in me had to admit the scenery was gorgeous.

  Joan was concentrating so hard, I believed she was trying to memorize every detail of the beauty passing in front of her. The further the train traveled into the mountains, the more picturesque the scenery became. Every bend brought new sights.

  At one point, we travelled next to a broad mountain stream whose choppy surface reflected points of sunlight appearing as brilliant diamonds set into the surface of the water. As we passed one particularly flat section of the mountain stream, I noticed many silver rocks just under the surface. As I watched, I was shocked when the rocks started moving.

  “Probably trout,” my father said.

  “Wow,” said Joan. “This is great.”

  From snowcapped mountains in the distance to huge stands of evergreens, Joan and I discussed every detail.

  About three thirty in the afternoon my dad gave us each a ticket for a sundae and told us to go to the dining car where there was a counter for serving snacks and ice cream. We raced there and found a couple of stools.

  “Welcome to my dining car a neatly uniformed man said. What can I prepare for you?”

  Joan said, “I’d like a sundae, please.”

  “Thank you, miss,” replied the waiter as Joan passed him her ticket.

  “And what would you like, sir?” I replied I wanted a sundae as well.

  “Thank you, sir,” he told me, taking my ticket. He placed a long silver spoon on a neatly folded cloth napkin in front of each one of us. He paused for a moment and asked, “Would you prefer a he sundae or a she sundae?”

  We’d never heard of them before, but I asked for a he sundae and Joan asked for the she sundae. He talked to us in such a polite manner and exhibited such professional demeanor, it made me sit up straight and try to be on my best behavior.

  Each sundae arrived in a lovely stemmed, pewter dish, topped with whipped cream. Mine had pieces of fresh pineapple o
n top and Joan’s had fresh dark cherries. I immediately reached for my spoon, but before I could dig in, the waiter said quietly, “Sir.” He looked down at my still-folded napkin.

  I quickly put the napkin on my lap and then as neatly as possible attacked the sundae. The dark chocolate fudge running down the side of the vanilla ice cream was not as sweet as the chocolate bars I was accustomed to. However, the slightly bitter taste of the fudge contrasted with the sweetness of the ice cream. The fresh pineapple slices exhibited their usual ability to be sweet and tart at the same time.

  As we ate, we asked the waiter what was he enjoyed most about the train.

  “I love to see the herds of elk, deer, buffalo, and the occasional bear, but the nights in the mountains are the best.” He stopped drying a glass and closed his eyes for a bit, then turned to us and said, “The clear night sky has more stars and constellations than any man can count.”

  My dad came into the dining car with my little sister and they sat next to us. He asked the waiter how Joan and I were behaving. “Your children have impeccable manners, sir,” the waiter told him. Dad told Joan and me that he was proud of our “impeccable” manners.

  I was fairly certain impeccable was better than good and might even have been better than great.

  Most people abandoned the Vista Dome, as soon as the sky began to darken. That was sad, as the night sky, as the purveyor of our ice cream reported, consisted of a panorama of stars. My parents called Joan and me back to our seats and told us to go to sleep. I awoke about two in the morning and decided to check out the view from the Vista Dome. I took my blanket with me as the high mountain air had cooled off the interior of the train.

  When I arrived at the front seat I saw someone already there. It was Joan, who had also decided to see if the waiter was right about the night sky. We wrapped ourselves in our respective blankets. We must have appeared to be a couple of youngsters trapped in cocoons with only our faces showing. We lay on our backs and looked out through the Vista Dome’s glass paneled ceiling.