Picture a spacious one bedroom house with a full kitchen and bar-style counter top, stone fireplace, living room, dining room and wooden deck overlooking a wooded ravine all up on cement columns (hence the name). Below the house is a large open area with an outdoor grill, picnic tables and all kinds of seating. There is also an outdoor shower with hot and cold water. Off to the side, below the wooden deck is a fire pit stocked with plenty of firewood. We had a wonderful four days of hiking at Bastrop State Park, camp fires, wine, longhorn cattle, horses, historic sites and just plain peace and quiet to sit and read and talk. It was hard to come back to our busy world, but we vowed to do this cabin get-away thing more often.
I still can’t believe how quickly the years have gone by. Lisa and I met when she had moved to Chicago to take a corporate training job. I was working as a senior buyer for Motorola. I was also a long time volunteer at the Spring Valley Nature Sanctuary in Schaumburg, a suburb of Chicago, when Lisa began volunteering there. We occasionally ran into each other, but one of us was either coming or going. It wasn’t until a hurricane cancelled Lisa’s travel plans and I showed up late for something at Spring Valley that fate finally threw us together. I caught up with her group of volunteers on their way back to the office. As things wrapped up, Lisa asked me if I “had a minute” and we sat down to talk. Bingo!
Before we met, I had vowed never to remarry. After two failed marriages, it was just going to be me and my cat, Spike, against the world. Lisa had never been married and had no thoughts of marriage. She was content to be on her own with her cat, Sylvie. Her life was just fine the way it was. But both of us were growing weary of the corporate world and there were holes in our plans to be single. There were forces at work. Forces that were about to change everything. Lisa talks about something telling her to take that job in Chicago. Her intuition is strong and has served her well over the years. I’ve come to trust it more than she does at times.
We began dating and talking about life and what we would like to do if we ever got the courage to leave the corporate world. Finally, we moved in together and merged our cats. Lisa finally quit her corporate job and pursued her creative muse in art which led her to design silk scarves and other items for shops. Then, I made the leap and left Motorola and tried my hand at freelance writing. We both had to get “real” jobs to pay the bills, but the die had been cast. I worked for a temp agency which led to a job writing a technical manual for an engineering firm. Finally, at Lisa’s urging, I began working as a tour guide at a historic mansion. Lisa began working at a scrapbooking store, a quilt shop and later for a home appraiser. Somehow, we managed to survive those early years.
Lisa and I finally “tied the knot” on September 12, 2000, just as the housing market began to go crazy. Things in Chicago were getting expensive so we tightened our belts and learned that we could live on a lot less than we were used to. We also learned that we could live in a way that was more environmentally friendly. Rising rents forced us into a small 600 sq.ft. one-bedroom apartment and our dream of owning a house was getting away from us. Owning and maintain two cars with long commutes was also getting expensive with gas prices rising.
The day before our first anniversary, 9/11/2001 happened. Suddenly the world had changed. It had become even more uncertain. Lisa and I had been married the year before in an outdoor ceremony in one of the county forest preserves. That evening of our first anniversary, we drove out to the spot and marveled at the night sky overlooking Chicago to our east. There were no planes in the sky. O’Hare International Airport was shut down as were all the airports across the nation. In 2003, we were visiting my brother and his family and my ailing mother who lived with them. While there, we watched in awe the invasion of Iraq on TV. My mother died that same year just before Christmas. My oldest daughter was out of college and getting married and my other daughter was getting ready to graduate. Things that had been holding me to Chicago were slowly letting go.
By 2004, we could barely afford to rent in the Chicago area. Even though Lisa was growing as a fiber artist, Chicago was a big, diverse market for struggling artists. Lisa had taken a class in San Antonio, a few years earlier. I flew down to meet her during the class and got a chance to see the historic city for myself. San Antonio has a thriving art community and it was also her old hometown. She had grown up there. The opportunities to take classes and grow as an artist were hard to pass up. My intuition began to tell me it was time to make a move and San Antonio was the place. Perhaps I could write and work at one of the museums or historical sites there. We took the leap. A big leap of faith so far from friends and family! We made inquiries, rented an apartment, packed up the cats and headed to Texas.
Today, Lisa is a well known fiber artist in San Antonio. She teaches and has exhibited her work as far away as London. She belongs to several professional artist organizations and has curated several local fiber art exhibitions. Lisa also has instructional DVD’s, magazine articles and possibly a book or two in the works. We found the perfect house and discovered that with the bus, we can get by with just one car. I have now worked at the Alamo for six years as a docent, historical interpreter and now supervisor for the education department. In 2007, I was given the opportunity to write a book about the Alamo. As if life couldn’t get any better for us, my daughters, Heather and Erin, have given us three wonderful grandchildren that we plan to visit as often as we can. All I can say is that Lisa and I are blessed.
We look forward to our NEXT ten years together …with more cats. (R.I.P. Spike and Sylvie. Perhaps you were the forces that brought us together?) Happy Anniversary Lisa!
Food for THOUGHT…
