During the holidays, there are many celebrations: Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanza. At a certain point about 15 years ago, when there seemed to be so much confusion about which holidays belonged to whom, and what sort of greeting would cause the least offense, my colleagues at Kern County Superintendent of Schools in Bakersfield, Calif., decided that the most prudent, harmless approach to holiday greetings was to collapse all of them into one word. From that day forward, the standard office holiday greeting became “Happy Christma-Hanu-Kwanzica.” It seemed an elegant solution to a vexing problem.
As celebrations go, it is hard to compete with all of the events occurring between the last Thursday of November and the first day of the new year, when most adults, having worked themselves nearly to death to ensure a festive season, surrender to complete exhaustion. By New Year’s Day, everyone collapses, grateful that they have 10 months to recover before they pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and do the whole thing all over again.
But my favorite day of each holiday season is not Thanksgiving, not Hanukkah, not Christmas, not Kwanza, and not New Year’s Eve. My favorite day of the holiday season is December 8, the date when I met the love of my life, absolutely by chance, 27 years ago. That date will forever mark the moment when fate stepped in, took the wheel, and delivered her to my hotel room.
The day we met, I was residing in a small town in the middle of nowhere: Pahrump, Nev., where I had created and was running a program for high school students with emotional and behavioral disorders. She was living a life very different from mine, an incandescent member of the Hollywood A-List. Two people could not have had less in common.
We met in neither of those locations but in Manhattan, at an exceptionally luxe hotel, during the course of an extravagant 60th birthday party that our mutual friend, Phyllis, had arranged for herself. Phyllis had decided to invite the six women whose company she most enjoyed to join her for this very ritzy, three-day birthday bacchanal in the big city. Five of us were ushered into a waiting stretch limousine at JFK airport, whisked into Manhattan, and deposited, along with our luggage, on Fifth Avenue at East 61st Street.
We five stayed with Phyllis in a well-appointed three-room suite at the uber-swanky Pierre Hotel, and Phyllis generously paid the cost of the entire vacation for all of us, none of whom could have afforded even one day of that trip on our meager incomes. My $40,000 annual salary as a public school teacher in “Where-the-Hell-am-I” Nevada might have equipped me to stay for one night at the worst hotel on the outskirts of Las Vegas, but even that would have been a stretch.
I had worked for Phyllis as her live-in Beverly Hills cook and housekeeper during my mid-20s, at the conclusion of the decade-long lost weekend that followed the sudden death of my father during my adolescence. I had no real skills, no higher education, and could not have been more grateful to be welcomed into a family who inexplicably tolerated my “interesting” personality and who actually paid me to be a 24-hour-a-day pain in the ass.
I was the only housekeeper in the history of Beverly Hills who spoke Yiddish instead of Spanish. I was a surprise to Phyllis, with whom I spent as many hours conquering the Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle as I did cooking, cleaning, and schlepping. She never stopped prompting me to go to college, and eventually, I did. Phyllis attended my graduate school commencement, and we have remained friends through all of the intervening years.
Meanwhile, back at the Pierre, one of Phyllis’s guests was MIA. Although this particular guest lived in Los Angeles and was Phyllis’ oldest friend on Earth, I had never met her—or even heard of her—during the several years that I lived with and worked for Phyllis. This particular guest traveled continually during my time as Phyllis’ cook and housekeeper, and I had no idea who she was. I knew that instead of staying at the Pierre with us, she was staying with another close friend of hers—the inestimable Bobbie Hallig—at Bobbie’s apartment somewhere in Manhattan, but that was the extent of what I knew about Phyllis’ mystery friend.
We arrived in New York on December 7, the day before Phyllis’ birthday. That night, the five of us dined with Phyllis at the iconic Tavern on the Green (lousy food, great location at the entrance to Central Park). The holiday mood was merry, indeed. The following day, we were scheduled to attend a performance of “Chicago.” I was told beforehand that Phyllis’ mystery friend was sponsoring that performance for all of us in honor of Phyllis’ 60th birthday. She would swing by before the matinee.
At about 1 p.m. that afternoon, there was a knock on the door of our hotel suite. I was standing right there, so I opened the door—one simple gesture that changed my life forever.
On the other side of the door stood the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She said, “Hello,” and like Renée Zellweger’s character in “Jerry McGuire,” that was all it took for me to fall hopelessly in love.
For her part, although flattered by my admiration, she thought I was nuts. Time has proven her correct in that assessment, but that was no deterrent to me at all.
From that moment forward, I found a way to see her every time I visited Phyllis in Beverly Hills. My inamorata was always gracious and warm, but it was not until the following December, when Phyllis decided to bring the six of us together again to celebrate her 61st birthday, that my heart’s desire finally started taking me seriously.
Our relationship was of the long-distance variety for the next 12 years. Although navigating long distances when one has a full-time job in another state is exhausting—all that driving, all that time apart—I think now that getting to know each other slowly, over the course of time, was the best scenario for two fiercely independent women. It enabled us to see the vague contours of what a life together, under one roof, might someday be.
Finally, in 2010, my partner decided to pull up stakes permanently and move to New York full time. I had grown comfortable with having a partner who was only 90 minutes distant, by car, from my then-home in Bakersfield, Calif., and a 2,000-mile journey seemed less than desirable when trying to arrange a weekend date. So my partner, ever-generous, decided to buy a house in the Berkshires, where I had been offered a job.
A year after she left Los Angeles forever, my partner flew to Bakersfield and helped me pack for the big move. We caravanned across the country on Route 66—she in her car, I in mine—communicating by phone as we drove through the seven plagues of winter weather (rain, sleet, snow, ice, hurricane-force winds, thunder, and lightning) to Massachusetts. We arrived in the late morning of December 23, 2011. It took more than a month for our belongings to arrive, during which time we slept on an air mattress on the floor with two cats who hated each other’s guts; ate at the kitchen counter on two rickety stools; watched a 12-inch television; and lived, in general, like hobos.
Thirteen years later, almost to the day, we are making our last move together, to another state entirely. At this point, nothing can tear us apart. We know this because there are few things more likely to destroy a relationship than the daily stress of packing for a major move. So far we have not killed each other, which I consider a major victory. In difficult circumstances, love has prevailed.
What has this relationship taught me? Foremost, it has taught me the difference between “improbable” and “impossible.” I would have been the first person to predict, in December 1997, that the relationship we now enjoy was never going to happen. It seemed utterly impossible. We were too different: I was geographically unavailable, occupationally undesirable, and completely unlike anyone else with whom she had previously partnered; I was gay; she was not. Yet here we are, decades later, still together and still in love. All those years ago, Princess Charming threw caution to the wind and decided to kiss the frog, in spite of the social consequences of that act, and in spite of the fact that in the end, the frog remained a frog.
I have also learned, over the course of time, that destiny provided me with my perfect partner: smart; hilariously funny; deeply compassionate; always willing to roll up her sleeves for a good cause; and, always, a concerned, supportive, and thoughtful mate. After all this time, there is no human being I would rather spend the rest of my life with than my sweetheart, the most impressive woman I have ever known.
Because she is a very private person, my now spouse prefers not to be mentioned by name in a public forum like The Berkshire Edge, and I respect her wishes. Just because I choose to stick my neck out every week does not mean that she is interested in sharing the guillotine with me. I do not blame her.
A number of locals who regularly peruse this column are already very familiar with the woman I will love until my last day on Earth. They are friends of ours and know exactly who she is. They have promised not to savage either of us following one of my typical weekend rants, although other readers may be armed with pitchforks and truncheons. For those weapon-wielding readers, my name is Vickie Shufton and my partner’s name is “None of Your Business.”
Happy anniversary, love of mine, and happy birthday to Phyllis, the fairy godmother who made all of my dreams come true at the Pierre Hotel, in New York City, 27 years ago.
