Walking into the Red Lion Inn in Norman Rockwell’s Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on a snowy Sunday morning, I asked the receptionist for a copy of The New York Times.

“I’m sorry, but the last one’s just been taken,” she said, pointing over her shoulder at a handsome man standing nearby.

He grinned at me sheepishly.

“I’m sorry I took the last paper,” he said, handing me his copy.

“No, no,” I said. “I only get it so I can do the Sunday crossword, because it is so much easier than Saturday's.”

He agreed, giving me the magazine, which has the crossword in it, and we both started laughing.

It was January 2019. I was 54, happily divorced with two kids in college.

Up until that moment, I’d avoided love, heading swiftly in the opposite direction if I met someone I was attracted to. As I t

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