This podcast is supported by Cartier.
In celebration of the Trinity Collections 100th anniversary, Cartier shares testaments of love in all its forms from around the world.
Please keep listening for today's love story later in this episode.
Love now and your forms. That's the line of love.
Stronger than anything.
You should love for love.
And I love you more than anything.
You should love it, bro.
From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin.
This is Modern Love. I'm just going to say it because, you know, there's no use hiding it.
I am about to turn 30. Yes, you heard it.
30. The big 30. Oh, not freaking out at all.
Of course I am. I've been taking a lot of time to reflect on my 20s now that I'm almost out of them.
And I keep thinking about how deeply confusing my early 20s were.
I feel like I went through a kind of second puberty at that time, just one where I could legally drink and I had to pay rent.
Even though I dated a lot, I hadn't ever really been in love because I wasn't ready for it.
When Zoe Fishman's essay starts, that's where she was too.
In that weird, exhilarating early 20s part of her life, where finding love was still a long ways off.
Zoe was living in Brooklyn trying to make it as a writer.
She was smoking cigarettes at apartment parties.
She basically had nothing figured out.
So I had to ask, was it as Frances Ha as it sounds?
Maybe like Frances Ha, Steen, like the Jewish Frances Ha.
I love that. But any connection to Greta Gerwig is welcomed and applauded.
It was a wonderful, self-involved life filled with incredible girlfriends.
A lot of dating, but never a relationship.
That's why when Zoe met a guy at a party, a guy she couldn't take her eyes off of, she thought, okay, he's cute, that's that.
But for some reason, she just couldn't get him out of her mind.
Unlike any other infatuation she'd ever had, her crush just kept intensifying and it wouldn't go away for years.
So you write in your essay that you're at a party one night and you meet someone special.
Tell me his name and tell me about him.
His name was Renin. He was tall, dark, Israeli.
He had big brown eyes and just a beautiful head of black hair and broad shoulders.
He just was, to me, the epitome of male beauty.
He was hot. He was hot. He was very hot.
But he was dating a friend of mine.
I left that night just thinking about him and wondering, would he and my coworker last what I ever see him again?
It's just one of those moments where you remember that your sexual being and there is such a thing as electricity and chemistry and all your senses are tingling.
After that party, did you see Renin again?
Only occasionally on the subway in the mornings on the way to work.
Were you guys at the same stop?
Yes, we both left in the morning for work from the Carol Gardens F-stop.
Oh my god. Do you remember the first time that you saw him on your commute?
I do remember watching him.
It's a crowded train. Everybody is relatively miserable.
Yeah, no, I'm their way to work.
And I remember he would sit with headphones on and a book out.
Oh, a double. Yeah, double.
It was an impenetrable.
It was a double. But every time I saw him, it was the same kind of electrical jolt.
And I was too nervous to say hello to him.
I just thought, what if he is a jerk?
What if he says, I have no idea who you are?
Then I would have to switch my car on the train.
Oh my god. I'm gonna have to do that.
So I would rather, or at that time, I'd rather him be this kind of god on a pedestal than an actual person.
And I told my friends about him who they thought I was ridiculous for not saying hello.
And so he became my subway crush.
Oh, but I mean, you did think about approaching him several times, right?
Oh, for sure. I thought about it all the time.
I would almost get up the nerve.
And then I got off before him.
I got off at 23rd. And we just lose my nerve.
At one point, I had even written a note.
So I had written, you're my subway crush, put my number on it, folded it into tiny piece of paper, my hand sweating.
And I was already, and he was standing right by the door.
And then I chickened out.
Oh, so I know. Gosh, the note, the note already fall.
Oh, so how long did this crushing on Ronin from afar go on for?
Around six years. Six years.
Six years. Six years? Yeah.
I mean, what do you think made him so hard to forget?
You know, I'm not a particularly walk-and-do person.
I really felt there was something inside of me that was telling me that we had some kind of destined meeting ahead of us.
And you know, for the most part, my intuition is pretty reliable.
So even though I couldn't approach him, I just knew we would cross paths in a tangible way at some point.
Because I couldn't shake his face.
Mm-hmm. And your intuition proved correct, right?
You did. You did. You did.
With Ronin. Tell me about the moment that you guys talked again.
Well, I remember it so well.
It was a Saturday, and I was going into the city to meet friends.
And at this time, you could wait outside to see the of train coming.
There was a platform outside as well and inside.
So I saw him standing outside as I went down the steps.
And my heart was racing.
I thought today is the day.
It's a Saturday. The train's not crowded.
What's the worst that can happen?
And so I was ready. I was sweating.
I remember my palms were sweating profusely.
I got on the train. I looked around and he wasn't on it.
No, I thought. But he'd been on the platform.
I know. When did he go? Where did he go?
And then the door went to close and a hand stopped the doors from closing.
And the hand belonged to him?
No. I know. I know. No. I know.
He wrenched the door open.
He wrenched the door open.
Top, what did your heart do?
What did your body do? My heart flipped off.
My stomach sank. I think it was probably shaking a little because I would not let myself.
Not say hello to him. So then he gets onto the train.
And right behind him are my former coworker.
Who used to date him? Oh.
And her then husband. Oh my gosh.
So the original connection, the person introduced you with that.
The original connection.
But it's clear they're not together anymore because she's with her.
You was right. Okay, gotcha.
Right. So everything was aligned.
It was time finally. They were sitting on the seats that look out the windows.
I was sitting on a seat that faced them.
But I would say half a car away.
And I remember I was reading airs, saddles, nicomagiannetics.
I'm like, my whole body is like on the edge of my head.
I cannot. I don't know that book, but it sounds incredibly smart.
And I had it on me and I had it open on my lap.
And it was pretending to read, but absolutely wasn't telling myself.
Get up. So get up. So just say hi to her.
And then I went to get up.
And sure enough, she was approaching me.
And she said, so, and you know, we hugged.
And right behind her, Ronan walked up.
And I looked up at him and I just blurted out.
I see you on the subway all the time.
And he said, I see you on the subway all the time.
And it was, yes. It really was that it was like a fairy tale.
I feel like describe it as all of a sudden hours started growing out of the cracks of concrete outside.
You know, vines and beautiful exotic birds begin swooping through the decrepit subway car.
Oh, it felt so. I felt so alive.
Oh, yeah. I mean, I have to, you have to forgive my like audible reactions.
I was on a roller coaster with you there just because like, when you finally get the gumption, he has seen you too.
That is the dream. It was astounding.
And I walked up the subway steps.
And I remember the sky that day was, it was May.
And so it was just starting to be spring in New York.
And I just fell in my heart.
This is it. This is the guy that you're going to marry.
It was crazy. I had never to be that confident about anything other than writing was unheard of for me.
But I really felt it. It felt very powerful.
So how did you two actually end up together?
So he had just gotten out of a relationship.
And so days went by and I'd hear from him.
I didn't hear from my friend.
I was a little bit, you know, that way you are when you're waiting for someone to call and they're not calling.
And then I was a bridesmaid in my friends wedding in Richmond.
I was waiting in the airport.
And I got an email from the mutual friend.
And she said, Runean is asking about you.
Yes, you mind. I give him your number.
And you're like, do I mind?
This is the culmination of six years of pining.
Here's my social security number, my weight, my height, my eye color.
I'm actually on a plane to you right now.
Yeah. I'm canceling this wedding.
Yeah. And it was that all weekend I was just on a high.
Thinking about actually speaking to him, doing something with him.
What was your first date?
Your first official date?
First official date. We, so he ended up living two blocks away from me.
Oh my gosh. I was on third place and he was on first. And so we met on the corner.
And we got engaged a year after that.
And we were married two years after we met.
Tell me a little bit about your wedding day.
Oh, it's lovely. I grew up in Mobile, Alabama.
And we got married in Orange Beach. Beautiful, beautiful beach. And the day started cloudy and then it gave way to sun. And I remember seeing him standing, waiting for me under the hoopa and just feeling like the luckiest, the happiest, which is terrifying a little bit.
But also just so beautiful.
It was a beautiful day. What's the terrifying component that you're heading on?
I think that the forever of it all.
What if I let him down? What if, you know, real life gets in the way of this magic?
We'll be right back. This podcast is supported by Cartier.
For my 20th wedding anniversary, my husband gave me an amazing letter.
We were having lunch in the park.
The same park we got married in.
And in the letter he talks about all of the journeys and things that we've done.
And he says, if I said to you, you were going to watch African sunrises from Ghana.
If I said to you, you'll eat breakfast in Paris and sleep in the desert, dance in the streets of New Orleans or ride a camel all while by my side.
At the time, it would have seemed like a wild dream.
But yet, those dreams are in fact our memories.
I cried like a baby when I read that letter.
And I cry every time I read it.
It made me feel in love. It made me feel in love.
With love from Cartier.
I'm Julie Tarkowitz. I'm a reporter at the New York Times to understand changes in migration.
I traveled to the Darian gap.
Thousands have been risking their lives to pass through the border of Columbia and Panama in the hopes of making it to the United States.
We interviewed hundreds of people to try and grasp what's making them go to these lengths.
New York Times journalists spend time in these places to help you understand what's really happening there.
You can support this kind of journalism by subscribing to the New York Times.
Okay, so soon after you and Ronin got married, you had your first boy named Ari and then you had your second boy named Love.
So your fairy tale love story kind of continued, right?
It did. Did being a father come naturally to Ronin?
He was so such a tactile person.
That was something that was incredible about him too.
He lived to touch and hug and snuggle and kiss and sweat and run and taste.
And being a father really brought that out in him.
So you and Ronin are figuring things out as young parents.
You're doing your best with your two boys.
Can you bring me into the day things changed that day in 2017?
Yeah. We had just moved in to our first home and it was a normal morning.
Love was two days away from turning two.
And so family was coming into town that afternoon.
And we said goodbye to Ronin in the morning.
I remember what he was wearing.
He was wearing a blue and white polka-dotted shirt, green pants.
His bag was slung over his shoulder.
He took a bite of Ari's peanut butter waffle, a little kiss-dum, kissed us, and then he just walked out the door.
Later that day we were supposed to see him at my mother-in-law's, his mother's house for dinner because my parents were in town.
And I hadn't heard from him all day, which was strange.
And he didn't show up for dinner.
And we kept calling him and he didn't answer.
And then finally we called and the ER picked up.
And said we needed to come right away.
I was numb. His mother was doing what she had to do, getting us in the car.
Thankfully my parents were there to watch the boys.
And I remember the car ride.
And I remember not really speaking, just holding hands.
We get to the ER. This woman takes our hands.
And it leads us through these fluorescent corridors to a tiny room.
The kind of room that you see on TV.
The kind of room that you always bears bad news.
And we went in and two doctors came in and said, he's had a brain aneurysm on a level from one to five.
This is a five. His brain is filled with blood.
And I just blurted it out.
Is he going to die? And they could have answered me.
Oh my God. Yeah, it was, it felt like I was watching a really sad movie about someone else's life.
It didn't feel like my life, even though it very clearly was.
And then we were in the hospital with him for a week.
He was on life support. He somehow had the knowledge.
And he was very sincere about this.
We had a will. And he had made me his executor.
And he did not want to be hooked up to machines.
And so a week later we took him off.
And my God, he died. How old was he when he passed?
He was 44. How did you explain what happened to our in-love?
So I, the week he was in the hospital, I came home every night, made sure to put them to bed and told them that he was sick.
And the doctors were doing everything they could.
But the night that he died, they were asleep.
And so I had to wake them up the next warning.
Love was still in a crib.
And so Ari and I, well Ari was sleeping with me.
We woke up, we walked down the love's room, we got him out, we put him on the floor and I just held their hands.
I remember their tiny faces and I just said, Abba died.
And they don't, at that age, they didn't even know what that meant.
But they saw how sad I was.
And they kind of bowed their heads.
And they said, will we ever get another Abba?
And I said, not like him.
And that was kind of it. And they know an hour later they were playing with their toys.
They didn't understand that, you know, they were never going to see him again.
Can you describe a bit for me those first couple days without him?
How were you processing what was happening for you?
So I just couldn't believe it.
I couldn't compute. You are now a single mom, you're raising your two boys alone.
As you sunk more and more into that reality, what it meant for you, how were you coping?
So when I died the summer before Ari started kindergarten.
And so I walked Ari in by myself.
That was one of the most painful, that was almost as painful as acknowledging and realizing that he was gone.
Because this was a huge monumental moment in Ari's life.
It was also the first of many, hopefully, starts to school years.
And all around me were husbands.
And it was, I really walked home sobbing.
And I just put one foot in front of the other and got home.
But it just felt so unfair.
And not just for me, but for Ari.
And for God's sake, he didn't get to live.
It just, it'll never make sense to me.
And it certainly didn't make sense to me in that moment.
In those moments, did you find yourself like talking to him in some way?
I rode him letters. So I had like maybe 50 pages just telling him what was happening with the boys, what was happening with me.
When I was missing him, I would close my eyes and try to speak to him.
But I didn't hear him back.
So on the page, it just felt, it felt more like me.
It felt like I was going to send that email.
And the only time I heard him was the morning after he went into the coma.
We spent the night at the hospital.
We came home. I was watching my face in the bathroom sink at his mom's house.
And I closed the door and the lights flickered.
And I heard, I'm sorry, I love you.
I don't know if I was absolutely delirious because I didn't sleep or in the absolute throes of grief, but I heard his voice.
And so I answered him and I said, please don't be sorry, it's not your fault.
You didn't hear many more after that?
No, I never heard his voice again.
And I longed for it, or just any sort of, you know, otherworldly occurrence, but they just weren't happening.
You do write in your essay that even though you know, you haven't been able to hear Ronan, even though you haven't been able to see him, you have found this way that you're able to connect.
Can you tell me about that?
So Lev is a very tactile person.
The same way Ronan was. Ronan used to do this thing where I would hug him and he would say harder, harder.
Until, you know, squeezed like his tongue out of his mouth, out of his mouth.
And Lev does the same thing.
How do you hurt his dad? Do that?
No. Yeah. It's wonderful.
And Ari, Ari stands like Ronan did.
Ronan used to put his hands on his hips when he was standing on the soccer field and kind of arched his back.
Ari has the exact same stature.
They also say the loveliest things to me that I would assume young boys don't normally say to their mothers.
And they sound like it sounds like Ronan's speaking through them.
What do they say if you are willing to share?
Lev would tell me I was with him swimming at a friend's pool, you know, and he kind of came up out of the shallow end.
I could feel him looking at me.
And I, you know, touched my head nervously like what was that bird crap like dripping down my forehead.
But he said, you know, Ema, you look so beautiful.
I think he was four. Wow.
And I thought, I mean, of course I started crying because it felt, it didn't feel like it was him saying it.
And Ari in the same way, talking him in the night and him telling me as I close the door, you know, you're much more beautiful than you think you are, which is just insane.
Oh, but you're seven. How do you know?
You're much more beautiful than you are.
I know. I mean, I completely agree with you.
That does not feel like something a seven-year-old would say would know how to say, what does that feel like?
It feels like, Runaan. I really do believe that DNA makes up a soul.
And they didn't have enough time with him to model their behavior on him.
I really feel that it flows in their veins.
It's so affirming to me in that, you know, when you lose someone in such a sudden way that you love so greatly, I mean, my reaction was to doubt any hope of any sort of God, or any sort of purpose on this earth, other than to just live in your body and then die.
And that's it. But this, the way he shows up in them is so spiritual to me.
And does make me think there's a higher purpose and there's a higher meaning to all of this.
But also, I imagine must be quite intense to be reminded of Runaan in your loss.
How do you hold those things at the same time?
You know, I'm always so grateful to be reminded of him.
It doesn't matter in what context, because grief for me has meant that as years have passed, it's become harder and harder to remember what it felt to like to be loved like that, to be married, to be part of this like bonded team.
I see the pictures. I know it was me.
I know I was blessed. But I don't remember how it felt.
And so anytime someone brings him up or anytime I see him or hear him, it's your reminder that we existed.
And I'll take that any day of the week.
It's also a reminder of my own strength.
There's ever a moment where I think I can do something.
I think back to that first year.
And I know I can. You and Runaan, those six years watching him in the subway station, you don't live in New York anymore, but have you been back to that station since?
I have and I've written the F with R in love.
And I certainly cried. But it's still one of the greatest memories of my life, a moment that we met.
And I would do it all over again.
So thank you so much. I really feel like I learned from you today.
Thank you. My absolute pleasure.
This is our last episode of the season.
We're going to take a little break and we'll be back in February with more modern love stories.
Modern love is produced by Julia Botero, Christina Joseph and Riva Goldberg.
It's edited by Mark Pagan.
Our executive producer is Jen Poient.
This episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez.
Our show is recorded by Maddie Mas yellow.
The modern love theme music is by Dan Powell, original music by Dan Powell, Pat McCusker, and Daniel Ramirez.
Digital production by Mahima Treblani and Nell Galogue Lee.
The modern love column is edited by Daniel Jones.
Mia Lee is the editor of Modern Love Projects.
I'm Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.
