Kathy and I have been married nearly 30 years till her breast most cancers ended issues on my birthday in 2018. It’s bizarre how life occurs.
We have been blessed with a treasured daughter, now 25. Our household was fashioned largely by the 1926 “Hollywood Eclectic” home, with its steep pitched roof and turret, that we occupied on a scenic mountainside avenue in Mt. Washington. It was the kind of home neighborhood youngsters 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 full of recollections, which comforted me as a lot as they stung by essential absences.
Sooner or later, I dated by way of Match.com. I met good girls, all clever, sort, loving and clever. There was one particularly from Santa Monica whom I believed after two years of courting was my ceaselessly. However she ultimately determined she wanted freedom and house, so I scooped up my splintered coronary heart and moved on.
It struck me throughout another infinite silent evening alone on the sofa that there was no good motive for me to stay on this huge previous 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 ground of the elevator-less Glendale YMCA. I used to be attempting to stay cheaply. I wished to get a place with a company 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 dwelling from dinner one evening once I tripped on a crack in a sidewalk and fractured my kneecap. I known as Laura the following morning. She impressed on me that I couldn’t stay on the Y anymore.
So she discovered a spot for me in Glendale, which marketed itself as “gracious senior living.” It was a very good place, run by first rate, well-meaning individuals, however the common age of the parents residing there was 85. I’m 69. The frames of reference have been, looking back, incompatible. I tremendously appreciated some people there, however clearly it couldn’t be my long-term dwelling.
Sooner or later, I got here to the eating room of my gracious place, and seated throughout from me was a girl who instantly struck me. Her short-cut hair was grey to white. She had blue eyes and a smooth voice, and as I’d 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 harm my leg. I discovered she was an architect — similar to me.
Gail requested me to come back to her mother’s burial at Forest Garden Hollywood Hills. We sat subsequent to one another with a small group. Gail acquired up sooner or later and launched a dove, which weaved round and ultimately disappeared.
Gail describes herself as an agnostic. I’m a working towards Catholic. I at all times thought it was necessary for {couples} to have a typical 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 via her prescription lenses. She typically sees difficulties as larger than I see them. A standing joke between us is Gail saying, “And there’s another problem.” To which I would reply, “Is that a problem or a possibility?”
She would scowl at me then (I feel, however can’t make certain), so, in response, I’d make a pumping up-and-down motion with my arms, imitating frequent Florida lizards. Or I’d growl like a feral canine. She’d snort, and I’d kiss her behind her ears whereas growling extra as she closed her eyes and smiled. I’m very glad at instances like that.
Gail and I’ve grown so shut.
However then she needed to go dwelling — again to Gainesville, Fla. So I went to go to her for a month. Then I went to go to her for 2 months.
A couple of 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 at all times find it irresistible. I didn’t go away for lack of affection for town. I left as a result of I met a girl I cherished who was unwilling to relocate and I wished to be together with her. Life is change, and both you alter with circumstances otherwise you break.
Gail and I now stay collectively in Gainesville. However I have to take into account: What was the mysterious confluence that triggered my knee to interrupt on the time Gail’s mom died, bringing Gail and me to at least one desk, in a single place, at one time? I don’t declare to know 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 thrice.
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 lately left Los Angeles and now lives in Gainesville, Fla.
