Kathy and I had been married virtually 30 years till her breast most cancers ended issues on my birthday in 2018. It’s bizarre how life occurs.
We had been blessed with a treasured daughter, now 25. Our household was shaped largely by the 1926 “Hollywood Eclectic” home, with its steep pitched roof and turret, that we occupied on a scenic mountainside road in Mt. Washington. It was the kind of home neighborhood children known as the “witch’s’ house” round Halloween.
I lived in that home uneasily after Kathy died and Laura left for faculty at Tulane in New Orleans. The home was crammed with recollections, which comforted me as a lot as they stung by essential absences.
In some unspecified time in the future, I dated by way of Match.com. I met good ladies, all clever, variety, loving and smart. There was one specifically from Santa Monica whom I believed after two years of relationship was my endlessly. However she finally determined she wanted freedom and area, so I scooped up my splintered coronary heart and moved on.
It struck me throughout yet one more countless silent evening alone on the sofa that there was no good motive for me to dwell on this large outdated home on my own. So I offered it a couple of 12 months in the past and moved into an 8-foot-by-12 foot room on the fourth flooring of the elevator-less Glendale YMCA. I used to be making an attempt to dwell cheaply. I wished to get a place with a corporation just like the Peace Corps, one thing abroad, like I did with Kathy within the ’80s.
After three months on the Y, I used to be strolling house from dinner one evening after I tripped on a crack in a sidewalk and fractured my kneecap. I known as Laura the subsequent morning. She impressed on me that I couldn’t dwell on the Y anymore.
So she discovered a spot for me in Glendale, which marketed itself as “gracious senior living.” It was an excellent place, run by first rate, well-meaning folks, however the common age of the parents dwelling there was 85. I’m 69. The frames of reference had been, looking back, incompatible. I drastically appreciated some people there, however clearly it couldn’t be my long-term house.
In the future, I got here to the eating room of my gracious place, and seated throughout from me was a lady who instantly struck me. Her short-cut hair was grey to white. She had blue eyes and a smooth voice, and as I might be taught later, an impish wit. She was there to shut out the affairs of her 103-year-old mom, who had died across the time I damage my leg. I realized she was an architect — identical to me.
Gail requested me to return to her mother’s burial at Forest Garden Hollywood Hills. We sat subsequent to one another with a small group. Gail acquired up in some unspecified time in the future and launched a dove, which weaved round and finally disappeared.
Gail describes herself as an agnostic. I’m a training Catholic. I all the time thought it was essential for {couples} to have a standard religion — to bond higher. However in our time collectively, I modified. It’s good to have your individual convictions, and it’s good to share them. However I understand sharing can occur with out changing.
Usually Gail seems like she’s frowning, nevertheless it’s simply that she has poor imaginative and prescient and is straining to see by means of her prescription lenses. She typically sees difficulties as greater than I see them. A standing joke between us is Gail saying, “And there’s another problem.” To which I’d reply, “Is that a problem or a possibility?”
She would scowl at me then (I feel, however can’t ensure), so, in response, I’d make a pumping up-and-down motion with my arms, imitating widespread Florida lizards. Or I’d growl like a feral canine. She’d chuckle, and I’d kiss her behind her ears whereas growling extra as she closed her eyes and smiled. I’m very glad at occasions like that.
Gail and I’ve grown so shut.
However then she needed to go house — again to Gainesville, Fla. So I went to go to her for a month. Then I went to go to her for 2 months.
Just a few weeks in the past, Gail flew to L.A. We stuffed my belongings into my tiny Fiat 500 and drove cross-country. We noticed Frank Lloyd Wright’s compound Taliesin West exterior Scottsdale, Ariz.; astonishing White Sands Nationwide Park in New Mexico; and the Kimbell Artwork Museum in Fort Price.
With every factor seen and shared, we’ve grown nearer. Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Ark., was, I feel, our benediction. There was extra, however the chapel did it.
As for Los Angeles, I’ll all the time adore it. I didn’t go away for lack of affection for town. I left as a result of I met a lady I liked who was unwilling to relocate and I wished to be along with her. Life is change, and both you alter with circumstances otherwise you break.
Gail and I now dwell collectively in Gainesville. However I have to contemplate: What was the mysterious confluence that brought on my knee to interrupt on the time Gail’s mom died, bringing Gail and me to 1 desk, in a single place, at one time? I don’t declare to grasp it. However for us, our shared delight, laughter and gratitude are sufficient.
A well-known architect as soon as stated, “God is in the details.” Perhaps that applies to relationships. After I first got here to Gail’s home, I sat on a eating room chair of hers with a wicker cane seat. I did that two or 3 times.
Then at some point, as I sat down, the seat broke, and my fleshy cheek appeared to have plunged into the abyss. Gail requested, “Could you please sit more gently in my chairs?” I didn’t assume I sat any more durable on her chair than I ever sat on a chair earlier than in my life. However I stated “OK,” as a result of, in hindsight, possibly I used to be being too hard-assed.
Perhaps the thriller of affection lies in that wicker gap.
The writer is an architect. He just lately left Los Angeles and now lives in Gainesville, Fla.
