I think it was the writer Virginia Woolf (or maybe Gertrude Stein) who once said that, in order to write literature, one must first have “a room of one’s own.” I tend to interpret this figuratively, since I was trained in high school (and in prep school, to boot) to always look for the “DHM” (deep hidden meaning). What she meant was that a person must find one’s own personal space, at least mentally, in order to create what one wants to create.

This is certainly true. However, I truly could not find my own creative voice as a writer until I was able to share my space with my beautiful wife of 20 years now, Goldy.

And as I stood in the synagogue on the particular Shabbos when we were announcing the advent of the month of Elul, the month preceding the Jewish New Year—during which our Sages teach that even the fish tremble in the rivers and oceans—it was a time to stop and to take stock of my life. In particular, I searched back how my life changed permanently when I met, courted, married, and learned to live lovingly with my wonderful spouse.

It was ‘back in the day,’ as they say, in May of 1985, that we came to the residence: she to the Ladies’ Home and I to the Men’s Home, which were right next door to each other at the time. I didn’t know her, or of her, at that time. In fact, I was unwilling to get to know anyone and would lie forlornly in my bed, forsaking any social interaction. Meeting a nice Jewish girl was the last thing on my mind.

But eventually, with the support of a very special and determined social worker named Rabbi Jay Miller, I began making brief forays out of my turtle shell. Rabbi Miller got me involved in a newsletter he had started. He had noticed that I had a nice literary touch and humbly billed himself as my “Maxwell Perkins,” the editor par excellence of such greats as Thomas Wolfe. “Yossi, Bucky, Joel!” he would goad me (using my Jewish name, nickname and English names), “We’ll make a poet laureate out of you yet!”

Goldy, on the other hand, had distinguished herself as a rhymer without peer. It was these little poems she wrote in the newsletter that first opened my somnambulant eyes. I remember this one:

I drink diet soda

So I don’t explode

My name’s not Rhoda

I don’t live in Pagoda

And I don’t eat pie à la moda.

And it was the introspective pieces I wrote that first introduced me to her. We had never laid eyes on each other, but through our writing—through the sharing of that ‘room of our own’—we got to know each other, at least from a safe distance.

Goldy, as she has many times documented in much detail to me, lived with her parents till she was 30. An intrusive therapist once tried to convince her to have a boyfriend, but Goldy stood her ground. She has also revealed to me that for a long time she was afraid of boys. She remembers sitting with her parents on a Saturday night watching “The Lawrence Welk Show” on television.

As for me, let’s just say that I grew up on the opposite swing of the pendulum. I had my first girlfriend at 13 and became quite the Don Juan in high school and college. My poor father, who himself had rebelled against his religious father—who used to ask (in Yiddish), “What is there to do till three in the morning?”—had to watch as I rebelled in a similar way, talking immodestly at the dinner table and pairing off with a succession of ‘winners,’ some of whom weren’t Jewish.

It was in the month of May in the year 1990 that Goldy, living in the ladies’ home next door to me, got wind of my plan to go to the Lag B’Omer parade in Crown Heights (which they held if the holiday fell out on a Sunday, as it did that year). I had become quite frum at that time and had sworn off any socializing with women (although only after I had attempted, briefly, to date some of the female residents, without success).

So one lonely Saturday night I got dressed up ‘with no place to go’ and, on a whim, decided to go outside to the front of the building. As I stood there on the sidewalk, eyeing a full moon, Goldy came across the street and came right up to me. “Yossi,” she began haltingly, “I heard you were going to the parade tomorrow. I told my counselor I wanted to ask if I could go with you, but I said to her I couldn’t do that. So she said to me, ‘C’mon Goldy, it’s 1990!’” We met outside the home in the same spot the next morning, and off we went.

Many years later, when I would travel from work into Borough Park on a Thursday evening, on my way to the supportive apartment community meeting, and I would find myself in that location, outside the Men’s Home on Dahill Road, I would turn around and just stand there, on the sidewalk, where we first met. I could only marvel that such a big miracle could happen in such a small and unassuming locale.

We dated for three years. The Ladies’ Home moved out to the other side of the neighborhood, and I would make good use of a friend’s bicycle to ride over to take her out. We went to the movies; out to eat; on the Circle Line cruise (twice); to Coney Island. After all, this is NYC, not Iowa.

I remember that I made extensive use of the pay phone on the second floor of the Men’s Home, to keep in touch. I would always end the call by saying, “I love you, Goldy.” To which she would reply, “I feel the same.” Finally I called her bluff and demanded she say right out that she loved me too. She replied, “But Yossi, I’m talking on the phone near the dining room where the girls are sitting. How could I hurt them by letting them hear me say that when they don’t have a boyfriend like me?”

In 1993 I became stymied by this long-term dating game. I was praying in a synagogue across the street from the Ladies’ Home, berating myself for not taking this relationship to the next level. I was taking three steps back but couldn’t finish my prayer because I was so upset. I turned to the Chassid next to me to pour out my heart that we had been dating for three years with no prospect of marriage. He asked me simply, “Did you ask her yet?”

A half hour later we were walking to 13th Avenue, and I turned to her and asked her to marry me. She answered, “Does this mean we’re engaged?” She called her sister, and I went home to tell the weekend counselors who all clapped me on the back and yelled, “Mazel tov!”

We couldn’t believe that the administrative staff actually took us seriously enough to meet with us weekly and counsel us. They probed to make sure we were set on the right course. At one point they presented us with little baskets containing a raw egg with a face painted on it. “You will carry this basket around for three days,” they advised us. “You will be careful not to drop or break the egg.” I took mine to my job in Manhattan and the secretary was amazed when I told her it was an exercise in caring for something fragile. Goldy and I had assumed that our plans would not be taken seriously and that the staff would dismiss them out of hand, as had happened to me when I would express my desire to get a job and be self-sufficient.

But that was not the case. After another year of engagement, the big day finally came. All I know is that the residence (and Goldy’s father) took care of everything, and all I had to buy was the gold ring. Goldy’s mother, a Holocaust survivor, got to see the day when her daughter took this enormous step and married a nice Jewish man. My father came all the way from Ohio to see me, his son, who had always given him such a hard time, find fulfillment in a respectable way. I remember that, under the canopy, after the wedding service, they couldn’t get the veil off of Goldy’s face until they finally had to rip it off.

I made a speech at the wedding. I finished it by quoting the hymn that Jewish people sing on Friday nights, “A Woman of Valor.” Wise King Solomon extols the virtues of a good wife, saying that “the bread of idleness is never in her mouth.” Why, I wondered, is idleness called ‘bread’? Perhaps, I reasoned, just as bread is shared at a meal (as we say, ‘breaking bread’) idleness, or laziness, is contagious. I praised Goldy, my new wife, as someone who would inspire me with her responsibility, tirelessness, and love.

This December will make it 20 years that we’re married. Out of curiosity I looked it up on the Internet and found out that the 20th anniversary is the ‘china’ anniversary. That means I should present my wife with dishes, or something from the country of China.

Actually, one of the customs of a Jewish wedding is the breaking of a dish. Also, a glass is crushed under the canopy. Many interpretations have been made, but here’s mine: Life has a habit of wearing us down or crushing us. Who could put the shards back together again, restoring wholeness and completion, except for Hashem himself? We rely on Him for the restoration of tranquility to our lives after things, God forbid, fall apart, as they do sometimes.

There have been times during our 20 years when it looked like Goldy and I wouldn’t make it. but she stood by me, during our darkest hours, humbly waiting for me to get better and return to her. Here’s hoping for another 100 years (plus) of health, love and pure Goldy.

Yossi Simonds has been married to his wife, Goldy, for almost 30 years and has worked at the same job for over 20 years. He loves to share his thoughts in writing. He does a creativity group in a downtown Brooklyn group. He loves to help people with anything and has a great group of friends that he keeps in touch with regularly.