Birthdays, Babies and Brides

The Next Great Adventure: A True Story

Birthdays, Babies and Brides

We moved to Plano, TX in 1992 and lived there until 2016, twenty-four years. We owned two different houses and 10 different vehicles, 3 of which are still in the fleet. Cindy worked for Oxy the entire time. I made a major career change and worked for eight different companies. We had one child, Griffin. We joined a church, Bentwood Trail Presbyterian Church. We lost three of our four parents. We had hail storms, a kitchen fire, termites, and remodeling projects. I built a fish pond at one house and had a pool built at the other. Both homes were always open to friends and family and one of our great pleasures was being able to provide them a place to stay, whether it was for a vacation, a relocation, or simply escaping their own remodeling project.

And we celebrated. We celebrated everything. Birthdays. Babies. Brides. Going away parties. Graduation parties. Welcome to Texas parties. We had a party to build a fence and a party for a visiting New York Metropolitan Opera lyric soprano. We hosted bible studies, church youth group parties and impromptu swim parties. And Christmas, well, it was truly a season and not just a holiday at our house.

This was, of course, all Cindy's doing. She loved being the hostess, providing that celebratory

atmosphere, giving people an easy place to have a good time. Once we got to Plano, with family near and Cindy's 'everyone is family' attitude, the celebrations became habit. It was what we did. It was not easy for me to make that change. It's hard enough for me to put on my extrovert costume and go to a party, much less host one, especially the way that Cindy did it, where everything was planned from the themed napkins to the separate kid & adult beverage coolers to the parking. But, it made her happy and I, eventually, learned how to be her trusty hosting sidekick.

There are many, many Plano stories, maybe a lifetime's worth, so in figuring out what to say about the Plano years I knew I could not, practically, cover it all. Looking back I realized that the theme of those years was celebration. There was always something to celebrate today, always the next thing to celebrate tomorrow. Even the times of mourning became times to gather, remember, and be grateful. Every celebration happened with the knowledge that my partner, my right hand, would be either leading or supporting the effort, not out of obligation, but from a sincere love and desire to make others happy.

We had grown from impetuous young lovers, learning about each other and how to live together, to comfortable, dependable partners, able to handle all that life throws at you, together. There were many times I missed the passion and excitement of the early years, too many perhaps. It's only on looking back that I realize what a blessing it was to have such a comfortable, constant, competent spouse. I loved her so much. I never told her that enough. It was like breathing, unnoticed and easy until you can't. Then you panic. Then you struggle. Then you force yourself to relax and remember how to breathe, what it felt like, thinking about the effort it takes, wondering if you will ever breathe so easily again.

I can't tell every Plano story. I can't describe everything that happened; it's more musical score than

narrative. I can't explain how we changed over the years; it would be better suited to a multi-season TV series than the stack of snapshots I could write here. I do plan on writing some of the impact stories, the course changing ones, but for this introduction to the Plano years, I want to focus on what I do remember about how to breathe, the common, simple things that kept us alive and moving forward.

She would fall asleep on my shoulder. I would smell her hair, kiss her forehead, wondering how in the world she could be comfortable in that position, and then gently push her off to her side of the bed before my shoulder went permanently asleep. Sometimes she would wake up and chastise me, "oh, you don't love me anymore?" before giving me a peck and rolling over to her side. Sometimes I would get that last bit of instruction, "don't forget you need to take care of that thing about the thing tomorrow" and somehow I would know exactly what she meant. Sometimes she wouldn't wake, exhausted, and I would kiss her behind the ear and say "love you more" because I knew that was the only time I would get the last word.

She would fall asleep on the sofa. After a long day at work and a glass of cabernet, she would lounge on the sofa in her pajamas, watching some frivolous TV show and then announce, "I'm going to bed after I watch the weather." She rarely made it to the weather report on the 10 o'clock news, much less through the forecast. I'd wake her up when I was ready to go to bed, usually giving her some bogus information on how the TV show ended or tomorrow's weather forecast. If she was really tired and the bed was cold I'd lay on her side of the bed to warm it up for her before she crawled in, and I would get "Aw, you still love me!" and my good night kiss.

Anytime I cooked, she cleaned, especially if it was a party. Part of it was to keep some control of the chaos, and part of it was to be in the middle of the action, keeping tabs on who needed what. One of my favorite things was to come up behind her at the sink, when she was elbow deep in soap suds, squeeze her butt cheek and nuzzle her neck. Sometimes I got pushed away with soapy hands. Sometimes I got my own butt cheek squeezed. Every once in a while she would grab both of my hands with her soapy ones, pull them tight around her waist, turn her head and whisper in my ear, "Later."

I never knew what might happen when she would unexpectedly come sit in my lap. Sometimes, she just draped her arm around my neck and said nothing, just staking her claim to me. Other times she would look me in the eye with raised eyebrows letting me know that I was too loud, or had had too much to drink, or was telling an inappropriate story. But most often it was sliding onto my lap, getting my attention, kissing me and then saying something sexy like "Why don't you take out the trash?"

A partner who loves you, who tries to understand you, may not always get everything right, but because they love you the mis-steps are easily forgiven. When my father died, Cindy assumed I would struggle and was overly solicitous. She was assuming I would react like her and would need to be supported, carried. What I really needed was time alone, to sort things out, to understand the impact this would have on me. Cindy struggled with how to support me. I struggled with how to explain to her that I just needed to be left alone, something she didn't understand because her comfort was in friends and family. Just days after my father's burial we went to the Trail Dust Steak House outside of Denton, Texas with a group of our new church friends. The event had been planned for a few weeks and Cindy thought it would be good for us to go. I'm not sure our new friends even knew my father had died. We weren't that close, yet. At one point Cindy handed the band a song request, Bob Wills' "Faded Love." Not long into the first verse I got up, went outside, sat on a "hitching post" in the parking lot, and began to cry. Shortly, Cindy came out, sat beside me, held my hand and said "Let me know when you're ready to go back in." Though she didn't know what I needed at first, she figured it out and did and said the perfect thing. That was my partner for you.

"Which ones, the pumps or the flats?" "Which ones, the dangly ones or the studs?" "Which one, the scarf or the hat?" The 'which one' question was fairly regular in our getting ready for work or to go out routine. Cindy would pull out two pairs of shoes or two sets of earrings and ask, "Which ones?" Early on the question petrified me, how should I know which one to choose? Later, it annoyed me because I did not know if she was asking me which one I preferred, or which one would look better for the occasion. Again, how would I know? Eventually, with enough experience on her preferences, my preferences, and how she would want to present herself, whether at work or for an evening out, I was able to answer with confidence "The pumps" or "I like the dangly ones." Since I nearly always liked the dangly ones, I knew she was just asking to let me think I had a say but it was one of our things, the things we did that reinforced working together.

"Scratch my back." "Massage my shoulders." "Rub my head." It seems like Cindy made one of those requests every night. A lot of husbands might interpret this invitation to touching as a precursor to certain activities, but I learned early on that she wasn't being coy. Her back itched or her shoulders ached or her head hurt and she needed to get past that and get to sleep. If I have a super power, it may be the ability to put a woman to sleep quickly, as evidenced by all the sleeping described here. For years I thought of it as more of a curse than a super power, until Cindy explained that it wasn't boredom that put her to sleep, it was comfort and security and peace.

The last few years I rarely got those requests. Between surgeries and chemo and general fatigue, her greatest relief came from being still, in a comfortable position, not from being touched or held. When the cancer first came back it was in her bones, specifically in her sternum and her right 8th rib near the spine. It was painful. There was nothing I could do to comfort her, except make sure she took her meds and figure out a comfortable way for her to sleep. Six months after metastasis her sternum and rib were basically dissolved. It was a constant struggle to manage pain meds to their best effectiveness. For my part, I worked very hard at being patient and understanding and her comfort became my primary focus. For her part, she was strong and brave and rarely gave in to despair. She made it easy for me to take care of her, as easy as she could. All of this was possible not because we had special skills or positive attitudes, but because that's just how we did things. We had practiced breathing together that way for decades. It was all very natural.

The daily ritual, the routine, that rhythm of life that moves you along from one day to another, from one adventure to the next, it has to be powered by something. It seems to me that the quality of your life depends a great deal on what you choose to power your daily, routine breathing with. For us, it was celebration, or even more basically, gratitude. We were grateful to have each other, to have love to share. Sharing love with another inspires you to seek and accept grace elsewhere. Grace allows you to let yourself be loved. Once you know you are loved, you can be a blessing to others in many ways, like celebrating with them, partnering with them, caring for them. 

Gratitude. Love. Grace. Blessings. Yes, this is God language, a fundamental place to find your breath.

Genesis 2:7 - then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. 

H-Town, Part One

The Next Great Adventure: A True Story

H-Town, Part One 

My math could be wrong, maybe off by a year, but I think this is right. We lived in Victoria for seven years so that means we moved to Houston, Missouri City specifically, around June, 1991. Cindy's job was relocated to Houston, but in practical terms she was already working regularly at the Greenway Plaza offices near The Summit, which became The Compaq Center and is now Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church. During the week she stayed at the adjacent Stouffer Hotel and drove home to Victoria on weekends.

One night Cindy called as she was going to bed, as she always did to say goodnight and chat a bit, and after I said hello she immediately asked "Who is Bill Laimbeer?" I explained that he was a professional basketball player for the Detroit Pistons and then followed up with a question of my own, "Why do you ask?" She replied, "I thought he might be a basketball player. I was on the elevator with him and some other really tall guys."

"How did you know it was Bill Laimbeer if you didn't recognize him?"

"He introduced himself."

"To you, or to everyone?"

"Just to me. I was the only person in the elevator who didn't know him."

"Why did he introduce himself?"

"He invited me to a party upstairs."

"Oh. Did you go?"

"Of course not."

Not long after that I thought it would be a good idea to maybe spend a few of my days off in Houston at the hotel with Cindy, so we did that a few times, too.

We knew we would be moving and so Grandy's got a two month notice, and we proceeded to learn about selling a house and corporate relocation programs. Oxy sent an appraiser who made us an offer for the house, which we could take at any time, however, if we sold it ourselves they would pay us a bonus. We ended up selling it for just about the same price that we paid for it and with the bonus we did okay. The relocation program was pretty generous and included money to hire movers for packing and loading. I was amazed. It was magical. Men in trucks just showed up and before you knew it the house was packed, loaded, moved and stored. I swore I'd never move myself again.

We bought a slightly larger house than the one we had in Victoria, maybe 1800 square feet. It was in Quail Valley, a planned community in Missouri City on the southwest side of Houston, which was the easiest commute to Greenway. We lived in the Residence Inn on the Southwest Freeway (US Hwy 59) through June and July, also funded by Oxy, while we looked for a house. We closed and moved into the house in late July/early August.

The transition from Victoria to Houston was hard for me work-wise. Initially I went to work for Grandy's Corporation. My job was to be an evaluator/trainer ... to work a week or two at all the corporate stores in and around Houston, make recommendations, train the staff, generally improve operations. I lasted one night. It the only job I ever walked out on. That first night the restaurant was just so poorly run I made the manager close early, around 8PM, and set the staff to cleaning. The manager got mad and went out in the parking lot to drink in his car. Finally, around midnight I cut the staff loose, woke the manager up in his car, drove home to the Residence Inn and called my boss to leave a voice mail and tell him I quit. I never heard back from them and began looking for a new job the next day.

Cindy, meanwhile, was steady working at Oxy. She fretted over me searching through the help-wanted ads in the daily paper. I was looking for anything that paid; she thought I should find something that I would "enjoy," which was another fundamental difference between us, "enjoy work" was an oxymoron to me. I got a job offer from Pappasito's to be a kitchen manager, but I knew it would be 60 hours a week, and I didn't want to commit to a restaurant career. After a week or two of job searching, I took Cindy's previous path and signed up with Adia, a temp agency. I got a gig doing telemarketing for IBM which lasted several weeks and paid terribly, but it was income. Finally, shortly after we moved to the house, I interviewed and was hired by Granada Foods to be the Office Manager of their meat plant. It leveraged both my restaurant and accounting office experience, and I was excited for the opportunity.

In December we went to the Occidental Petroleum Christmas party, which was held at a nice hotel in the Post Oak area of Houston, a pretty swanky part of town. It was a dress up affair and I was on my best behavior, meeting a lot of Cindy's co-workers and bosses for the first time, including the guy with the inappropriate question. At one point some muckety-muck got up to give a speech and said something along the lines of "I know there have been a lot of rumors about another relocation coming up, but they're just rumors. Those of you who have relocated to Houston, you might as well settle in."

In early spring we heard that Cindy's job, which was with OxyChem, not Occidental Petroleum, would be relocating to the Oxy Tower near the Galleria, LBJ & Dallas North Tollway, in Dallas. Cindy was tickled. We would be close to her family and she would theoretically be traveling less. We already knew the ropes of relocation and were looking forward to lower humidity, familiar territory, and no MUDs. There was talk of truly settling down, and maybe even trying to have kids. I would be closer to my sister's in the Ft. Worth area, and the drive to Pampa was easy enough from the Metroplex. We were happy to be getting back "home."

The biggest concern was my job, but it turned out that I was able to transfer to the Dallas plant with my employer. By the time we moved I was no longer working for Granada Foods. The company got into what some described as "financial shenanigans" and was eventually purchased by Freedman Foods, a local company in Houston, that bought the Dallas plant as well. I could tell a lot of stories about the last days of Granada; it was quite the experience. I remember my boss, Dennis Stiffler, calling me in to his office and explaining the plan to keep the plant running until they could finalize a deal to sell it. At the end of the explanation he laughed and said, "You ready to rodeo?" It was the perfect thing to say because the only proper response to that question is, "Hell yeah!" and that's just the approach we took.

I have struggled with writing this Houston segment because try as I might, I can't recall any stories about Cindy or about things we did together while we lived there. The day the pipe burst in the ceiling (pressurized plumbing in the attic ... "it doesn't freeze in Houston" ... yeah right) and flooded the kitchen I was out playing golf and came home to a disaster. Cindy was traveling. I told her about it that night when she called. I was still squeegeeing out water. I dealt with all the cleanup and contractors and insurance agents on my own, too.

At the time I was still getting check-ups for melanonma at the dermatologist. Rather than find a new local dermatologist I drove myself to Victoria to see Dr. Cox. At one check up he removed a mole from a rather sensitive area. The local anesthesia wore off somewhere around Wharton on the drive back. I didn't mention it to Cindy and when she came home a few days later she was hopping mad to learn I'd done that without telling her. I thought I was sparing her the worry. She thought I was keeping secrets.

A few nights she stayed at the Stouffer because she worked late, was too tired to drive home, and had an early start the next day. I would mow the lawn on Thursday night, when the sun was going down, because it was cooler and because I didn't want to do it on Saturday when we were both off. She continued to make plans for our weekends, but they were often interrupted or postponed because of work. At one point she came home with a company supplied mobile phone, one of those bag phones. We never left home without it. I didn't like having it as a constant tether to work. Still don't.

Cindy wasn't the only one away and working. Between Houston traffic and trying to figure out the meat business I was rarely home before 7PM. One Saturday a month was devoted to doing inventory at the plant. It was not unusual for me to drive down to the plant late at night and help with computer stuff or fill in doing order entry. We both spent a lot of time at work, hers just involved more travel. We used to joke that all the time we spent apart helped to extend our marriage. We had a lot of 'welcome home' reunions and we learned to see our time together as precious, something to safeguard.

I made friends at work, with only a little help from Cindy. Most were younger. They were mostly Aggies, too and they all knew more about the meat business than me. There was Tammy and Delann, who went skiing with us in Ruidoso when Dennis hooked us up with a condo, and Linlea and Grady and Jeannie. There was also Joanna and Helen and Minnie, who had to put up with me as their manager, though the truth was they were probably managing me. I only worked at that plant for a year, but it was an intense one and a great experience. It really prepared me for the ups and downs of the software business that I would experience later, but that's a few stories down the road.

Recently, I mentioned to friends on Facebook that I didn't know if I could continue writing this series. The problem with trying to write a "true" story is that you can't just put in the good things, you have to be honest and that's difficult, especially when only one side of the story is being told. I can't speak for Cindy, I can only speculate. As well I knew her, I never knew her true, deep motivations for many important things. Maybe I just feel guilty about being the one still alive, but it's more like wishing I had taken the necessary time to truly understand her. Knowing is more comforting than speculating.

And then there's the part where I honestly don't remember any Dexter and Cindy stories from that year. Does that mean I'm already losing my memories of her? Or worse, does that mean I didn't make any memories with her when I had the chance? I don't want to say that I have regrets, because that implies intention, that I made selfish choices, that I wasn't being honest. That's a hard thing to confront and, since being honest here is the goal, I need to admit a big regret from this time.

I don't regret the hours we both spent at work. I think we were doing what we thought was best, the responsible thing to do. I missed her a lot, and I'm sure she missed me, too. I think we got a little too comfortable being apart, and over time the 'welcome home' reunions lost their urgency. We had been married for 9 years at this point and things became routine. That's normal, right? It helped us develop independence within the partnership, which made our relationship stronger in the long run, less susceptible to dependency and trust issues. In regard to jobs and finances and family, some of the big stressors, I think we did our best and for the most part, we did well.

My big regret was telling Cindy that I wasn't ready to have children.

When we were first married the logic was quite simple. We couldn't afford children and growing up in a house where money was always an argument there was no way I wanted kids until I was sure we could afford it. By our last few years in Victoria, I couldn't use that as an excuse any longer. We were paying our bills and saving a little and it wouldn't have been too much of a financial stretch. But I told Cindy I wasn't ready to have children, that I was concerned about what kind of parent I would be, that I had a lot of things I needed to sort out before signing up to be a father. That was partially true, and that partial truth became very evident not long after Griffin was born, but it was not the complete truth.

A big part of me didn't want to have kids because I knew where Cindy's priorities would shift. I didn't want to share any more of her. I was being selfish. She never questioned my reasons. She went along with me, putting it off for my sake, but in the end, as often happens when someone is selfish, neither of us got what we wanted. Cindy had her reasons for postponing children, too. I'm sure she did. She could have insisted, and I would have agreed, if only to make her happy. My true regret, however, is not with the decision. It is with the excuses I made. I wish I had been honest instead of selfish.

I am also sure that Cindy would not have my same regrets. She was never one to dwell on the past, to over-analyze history. She was, however, always ready for the next adventure and so we kept moving forward, doing our best. Dallas, specifically Plano, would be our next, and quite long, stop.