The next month I ran into Loren while exiting the subway at Times Square. We started talking and an hour later I was at work getting scolded for showing up late…but I didn’t care, I had her business card and phone number! On our first date, I saw how down to earth Loren was. Even though she ran a magazine and traveled to Paris twice a year for the fashion shows, she wore vintage dresses and librarian-style glasses. She was ultra feminine but also confident and capable. Over tea and Italian pastries I fell in love.
As I got to know her, I saw that she excelled at anything she did. She studied painting and had solo shows at a Soho gallery. She then decided she had had enough of the fashion world and started writing fiction and essays. She won grants and awards and the first agent she contacted wanted to represent her. Her writing is so unique, strange and creative -- she has had readings all over the country, including National Public Radio.
Whatever Loren sets out to do, she accomplishes. Though to the casual observer she may seem the opposite of an able woman. People that meet her sometimes think she is a pushover. It’s true she is polite to a fault, generous, sincere, understanding, sensitive, empathetic and even a little, dare I say, psychic. These are her strengths, this is why Loren is so accomplished. I am always amazed, inspired and proud of her abilities. She has taught me so much without even meaning to.
Today, she practices yoga, up to three times a week, loves animals so much she has become a vegetarian (but has been known to eat an occasional lobster on vacation). Walking home from work two years ago in a horrible thunderstorm, she saw a tiny mouse bewildered in a torrent of water. She scooped it up in her umbrella and brought it home to nurse and later release. Her heart is so kind and loving children naturally gravitate to her.
Sometimes she seems a child disguised as an adult. When we stayed over my sister’s last Labor Day weekend she anointed our nephews with “faerie oil” before they went to sleep. They now make my sister do it. It seems to help with good dreams.