Love and An Old Car

What makes you most proud? What’s been your greatest adventure? What’s the hardest, most rewarding thing you’ve ever done?

We get asked questions like that in interviews, and you might think I would answer by talking about an ultra. But a challenging daylong ultramarathon really isn’t that big of a deal.

Thirty years of marriage—that’s a big deal.

Today I celebrate my 30th wedding anniversary to my high school sweetheart, and I’m more in love and appreciative of this life partner than ever. Our marriage has been three decades of devotion and friendship, along with work, intention, compromise, rebuilding and communication.

Dancing at our wedding, June 30, 1990

It’s not a given that we’ll stay together forever. We could take each other for granted and let our relationship slip into platonic autopilot, as happens to so many couples and as happened to us when our kids were little, and then we could grow apart and get a divorce late in life.

Or one of us could die. Make that, one of us will die, leaving the other alone, unless we are in a freak accident that takes us together. (We updated our estate plan and wills this past winter—something I recommend everyone do—and it’s funny how it makes you consider so many possible death scenarios in a dispassionate, practical way.) This past winter, I learned of the loss of a few remarkable people who died in accidents and left behind a spouse to suffer. Three months ago, we lived through Morgan’s brush with mortality when the coronavirus threatened to shut down his lungs. I feel highly attuned to death’s specter.

I’m working on writing something about our relationship. It’s about love and personal growth, and how what happens early in life shapes us forever. But it’s not ready to publish yet, so instead I am sharing two short pieces below—relationship advice and a toast.

My Top 5 Relationship Tips (Learned the Hard Way)

In no particular order, these are five things I believe will help build a loving, long-term committed relationship:

1. Be transparent, don’t keep secrets. Never send an email, text or have a conversation with someone that you wouldn’t feel comfortable having your partner read or overhear.
2. Don’t try to fix or change your partner. You should encourage and give supportive feedback, but leave it to him or her to figure things out and grow. Also, realize that people don’t fundamentally change. Everyone is flawed and insecure and the same person they were as a kid or teen. Accept, but don’t focus on, your partner’s weaknesses and imperfections; see the positive characteristics that others see when they meet your partner and that made you fall in love.
3. Deliberately make time for intimacy, scheduling it into your week if necessary. Sex is like running or writing; if you wait for the natural urge to start, it may never happen. You need to get started even if you don’t feel like it, and you’ll be glad you did, because as with running or writing, you know you’ll find it satisfying once you get warmed up, and it may take you to some wonderful unexpected places.
4. If you are fundamentally unhappy, then chances are it’s you who needs to look in the mirror and deal with some deep shit and self-growth, not necessarily your partner. Love and take care of yourself; don’t rely on your partner to satisfy all your needs and desires.
5. Be kind. Talk to your partner, and treat him or her, the way you’d want to be talked to and treated. Do things for him or her for the sake of being generous, because it’s a nice thing to do, not keeping score or expecting anything in return.

A Toast to My Husband

I wrote this in 2006, for Morgan’s 40th birthday, and it’s a short story (not the whole story) about how he captured my heart.

I want to toast—or rather, pay tribute—to Morgan’s second true love: His first car. Because I believe that car has something to do with us being together.

As many of you know, Morgan and I became friends when I was 13, and he became my boyfriend when I was 15, but it was the summer of ’85—the summer after his senior year in high school—when I believe we really fell in love and became inseparable, and a lot of it had to do with his ’69 Mustang.

Morgan’s first car, a ’69 Mustang

It was a massive, loud Mustang that Morgan bought with his own money from a little old lady down the street. It started out white, but then he painted it black—himself, but that’s another story—and it had a V8 engine and more horsepower than even my dad’s 4-wheel-drive truck. It also had a brand-new CD player, which was a big deal in those days, and giant speakers that he had installed himself.

In the summer of ’85, when Morgan was 18 and I was 16, he would drive to my house at the East End of sleepy little Ojai and he would take me all over Los Angeles, up the coast to the Bay Area, and even across the desert to Colorado in this monster muscle car.

What added an element of risk to our road trip adventures—aside from the fact that our parents inexplicably were okay with us being on our own like that, and I still haven’t figured out why they trusted us together so much, or whether they simply abdicated their responsibility as parents—is that this Mustang was constantly breaking down and falling apart. Pieces of its interior would fall off in my hand. But Morgan was like MacGyver, always able to fix it. He would reach back to the back seat, grab some black electrical tape or a canister of brake fluid, and he’d get under the hood and restart the car, and we would be on our way. That summer was so fun and full of love that it stands out as the highlight of my adolescence.

Morgan and me in the summer of ’85, age 18 and 16, after he graduated from high school. This was also his first visit to my parents’ home near Telluride; we’re standing on the deck of their cabin with Wilson Peak in the background.

Finally the day came, though, when we realized the ’69 Mustang would have to be put down, like a beloved old pet.

It happened on his father’s 50th birthday, during our sophomore year at UC Santa Cruz, when we drove down to meet my future in-laws, George and Ann, in Monterey. The Mustang died—literally would not start—at the entranceway to the Monterey Plaza Hotel. There was Morgan, in a T-shirt and frayed jeans, frantically fiddling with wires under the dash and trying to restart his car. Eventually, after several luxury cars backed up behind the dead Mustang while trying to enter the hotel, Morgan helped the valet parkers push it out of the way. His father looked on, not amused. (Morgan, to his credit, did figure out how to restart it the next day, and it worked long enough to drive us back to Santa Cruz.) His dad took this incident outside the hotel as an opportunity to suggest that Morgan get a car that was more practical.

Morgan and me in college in October 1987, celebrating our third anniversary since we got together in the fall of my junior year in high school. As you can see from my curvy appearance, I had not yet become athletic. And we had So Much Hair. That’s our first pet, Fang.

Fast forward to my 19th birthday. Morgan proposed to me that night while we ate dinner at a Santa Cruz restaurant called Seychelles, which had low tables and big pillows so diners could sit cross-legged on the floor, and he suggested we get married as soon as we graduated from college. Of course I said yes—I had no doubt. Some friends said I was too young, and we were too old fashioned, and that it couldn’t last.

But I new I had made the right choice, and let me tell you about the day when I knew for sure that Morgan was the person I wanted to be with for the rest of my life.

Again, it has to do with the car.

We had been car shopping after that incident in Monterey. We had our eye on a used 1985 Toyota Celica. It was in great shape, low mileage, very practical and reliable. A great deal.

Morgan went off to test drive the Toyota with the intention of buying it and trading in the Mustang, and for some reason I stayed behind in our rental house, which was near West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz. I said good-bye to the black ’69 Mustang and waited for him to drive back in the Celica.

I will never forget what happened a few hours later: I was standing in the house and looked out the window when I heard a deep rumble of a V8 engine, which sounded familiar yet somewhat different from Morgan’s old car. The car stopped, and I saw Morgan step out of a polished, pristine 1968 Mustang. He had gone out and replaced his first car with a classic ’68 Mustang that was all shiny chrome and the color of butterscotch.

The ’68, the car we had as newlyweds.

I thought, who cares how many miles it has? Who cares that it has no air conditioning and we’re about to move to Sacramento? He looked so happy. I was so happy! It was unbelievable.

Morgan, that day you gave me one of the best surprises ever. More importantly, I knew then and have always known that you are a guy who follows your heart, who stays true to your character, and who is loyal to the things and the people you really love.

You showed me that you love imperfection, you love adventure, and you are willing to work on fixing things that are broken, and for that I love you and always will.

Morgan and me this spring.

With the family we raised. We still have a fondness for a lot of horsepower.