I'm teaching this week through Thursday. We've been sailing in 20 knot winds and intense sunshine. Reminds me of the Virgin Islands.
There are two versions of how Cathy and I met. One version is we met through church. The second is we met at a pub. Both are true.
A woman I was dating before I met Cathy got me started at attending an occasional service at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Portland. I'd been curious about the Unitarian Church long before this, for reasons I won't go into now. I kept going to UU services after I stopped seeing this woman. This was after 9 11. Times were very weird. I was still rather new to Portland and trying to connect with a community. The lead minister at the UU church was a woman whose sermons were very good. She was a writer and excellent story teller - often amusing stories from which great wisdom could be drawn. In addition, the UU community was active politically as well as socially. I was in tune with their politics and looking for social connections.
Portland is famous for its microbreweries and brew pubs. Once a month a group of Unitarians would meet on a Friday evening at one of the many brew pubs. At one such evening, seated at a long table with many others in the group, I found myself seated next to this interesting woman. She didn't stay long, but at the following Sunday service I saw her again and asked to sit next to her. After the service we had coffee together. We started dating and in time were living together. We married about a year and a half after meeting.
Cathy's family is Italian, hence she was raised a Catholic. But she was done with Catholicism and through a friend at her office had heard about the UU church and it's community. She had been in Portland only about a year longer than me. She attended UU services for much the same reasons I did.
Cathy's family lived on Long Island until she was I think 12. Her father then moved them all down to West Palm Beach. He was a charismatic alcoholic who restored furniture for an income. He and Cathy's mom split up and divorced some time after moving to Florida. He remarried. His second wife had died before I met him, which was a few years back. Old and frail, even then he was a piece of work. I liked him, but then he hadn't been my father. Cathy's mother is also a piece of work but for very different reasons. She never forgave her husband. Never remarried.
Cathy, with little encouragement or support from her parents, went on to university in Tampa and then did a Master's program in Kansas. She went to work for EPA afterwards and married. That marriage lasted a decade or more and then ended. She left Kansas for the Pacific NW, first in Seattle and then Portland, where she got a position with NOAA. She was trained as a biologist, but she hasn't been in a lab or done field work in a very long time. Her work is policy analysis and management. In Portland she was in the middle of salmon protection issues, which in the Pacific NW are huge issues and very political. It was the BP disaster that brought her here. Now her work is marine mammal protection: turtles, dolphins, whales.
This is a highly simplified explanation of what she does. I don't understand it all. It's very complicated and very political. She sometimes tells me about meetings she's in and the difficult personalities, as well a issues she deals with. I couldn't do it. Somehow she seems to thrive.on it. She is a very good project manager. I think she could also have been a very good lawyer. Or diplomat.
So naturally the question is - why is she with me? Exactly. She is not enthusiastic about my motorcycle racing, but she is supportive. She has always been both enthusiastic and supportive about my involvement in sailing. It was she who encouraged me to get involved in an ASA facility in Portland, which led to my certification as an Instructor. Before meeting me she had never been sailing, but had long been curious.
Her first experience of cruising was on our honeymoon. I chartered a Freedom 30 out of Bellingham WA for a two week cruise through the San Juan Islands and up into the Gulf Islands of Canada. This was late in their season, after Labor Day. Weather was not always ideal. Her friends back at the office were taking bets on how many nights she'd be on the boat before getting off to check into a hotel. But she loved it. We had a wonderful time. We've gone on many cruises since, mostly in the Caribbean.
Cathy's interests outside of work are all things in nature. She's still a biologist. But she's also an enthusiast of art. Our walls are not enough for all the artwork she has, and she keeps buying more. She is also very fashion conscious. I've often heard other women in her office comment on Cathy's fashion sense, which I think must be high praise. (I'm somewhat oblivious.) She shares these interests with her brother Stephen who works in Manhattan as a commercial artist in advertising.
I need to get on with my day - another sunny, windy one teaching on Tampa Bay. . .
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