24 Years to Meet a Hero

Don’t quote me on the year, but I think it was 1994. Don’t quote me on the exact way this memory took place, because it’s been a while and I may have jazzed it up a bit.

The memory I’ve chosen to replay is that in 1994, my dear friend Candace let me borrow a Harper’s Bazaar magazine (or was it Glamour?), and that I flipped through it and landed on a short piece about a woman who walked around Austin’s Town Lake, and how the walk was important to her because it gave her time to think and reflect on what was happening in her life. I loved the way it was written so much that when I finished the article, I asked Candace if I could rip it out, and somewhere in stacks of sentimental papers (I have a little sentimental paper hoarding issue), I still have the article, wrinkled and loved.

The short author bio was something like this: Spike Gillespie is a writer who lives in Austin, Texas.

At the time I wasn’t writing for anyone other than myself. I had piles of notebooks with handwritten short stories, notes for script ideas, little jokes, and random little scribbles. I’ve been doing that my entire life, from the time I was a little kid. In some fashion, I’ve always been a writer. The Town Lake piece inspired me so that when I read it, I would think about Spike — this writer I really knew nothing about — and would say, “I want to be THAT woman. I want to do what she does.”

This is how we find our heroes.

When I started dating Tim in my late 20’s, I told him about how I wanted to Be Like Spike.

“She lives in our neighborhood,” he said. “You could easily meet her.”

“But what would I say to her? I couldn’t do that!” Back then, I probably couldn’t have. I was dating a man 14 years older than me, fumbling around trying to figure out how to be the girlfriend of a man with kids, and feeling desperately insecure about my place in the world.

Years passed. Tim and I got married and had ER. I never ran into Spike in the grocery store or in the halls of the elementary school where my stepchildren and her son attended. Spike continued to write and publish books. I did my corporate jobs, and kept scribbling on papers. I wrote short stories and sent them to my mom to read, edit, and praise.

In 2012 I got gutsy and pitched a story idea to the parenting editor at The New York Times. Knowing that writers are faced with piles of rejections before getting a nod of yes, I wrote the editor with very low expectations, and when she wrote me back and said, “I love this!” I nearly fainted. On the day the post went live, Tim and ER and I went to the coffee shop where I write and celebrated, and I framed the check and hung it on the wall over my desk. I started my own personal blog. I snuck into Huffington Post as a contributor, and wrote posts at my leisure, grumbling that I didn’t cash checks from them, but grateful to have the audience and experience of writing what I wanted to write about when I wanted to write it. I kept my corporate job and my wonderful insurance and steady paycheck, and did my best to balance writing and working.

A year ago this weekend, my darling friend Tim invited me to be his plus one at an outrageously fabulous same sex wedding that included a crazy array of celebrity guests from Brian Knobbs, professional wrestler from The Nasty Boys, to Sweet L.D., former MC Hammer dancer and rapper from Oaktown 357, to absolutely stunning drag queens.

When we arrived at the venue, Tim and I went inside to see where we would be seated for dinner, and though I was certainly amused that we landed at the celebrity table with the wrestler and the MC Hammer dancer, when I saw the name on the place card next to mine, I nearly fainted.

Spike.

I couldn’t believe that my first time to meet Spike was going to be over dinner at a Big Fat Fabulous Gay Wedding! As it turns out, by this time in her career, Spike had begun officiating weddings in addition to writing. And as one could expect, she was great at it, striking the perfect balance of funny stories of Nathan and Benny’s first date, to keeping it together while the grooms said their vows and everyone sobbed.

When we sat down for dinner I prepared myself to meet Spike for the first time since I ripped out the article years before. However, Spike wasn’t able to stay for dinner, so we didn’t meet. I decided that perhaps it was one of those things that just wasn’t meant to be.

Several months ago, two friends of mine asked me to officiate their wedding, which is coming up in July.  It’s an incredible honor that I take very seriously. After knocking out the very simple online instructions, I really quickly became an official minister of the Universal Life Church. I’d just like to mention that I share that distinction with none other than Conan O’Brien, Benedict Cumberbatch and Fran Drescher. (I’ll be sure to tell Benedict you said hello when I see him at our Universal Life Church pastor’s retreat.)

Last week, out of nowhere I got a weird gutsy wild hair and decided to email Spike and ask to pay her for an hour of her time to help me prepare for the wedding. The title of the email was nice and click-baity: “Unusual Wedding Request.”

What followed was a series of mind-blowing emails where Spike wrote me back, I cried, she said she would explain why she didn’t attend dinner the night of Nathan and Benny’s wedding, and that yes, she would meet me, and I cried again. We worked out that I would go out to her ranch on Memorial Day. I spent most of the weekend in the kind of excited frenzy you save for right before you get on a roller coaster. Those are my favorite times in life – I think if something makes you feel that way, you should absolutely do it. Unless it’s heroin. Or killing someone.

So today I drove out to Spike’s ranch, belting out Gillian Welch tunes on the drive out and psyching myself up to meet one of my heroes. I gave myself the mental lecture that sometimes, when you meet someone you’ve put on a pedestal, it’s disappointing. That I’m glad I never put Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top on a pedestal because man, he was an asshole. That she might be an egomaniac. That she might not care about my stupid passion to write – she probably meets countless people in the same boat.  Worse yet, she might not like me.

I shouldn’t have bothered setting myself up for disappointment because Spike was everything I’d hoped for and then some. Gracious, hilarious, self-deprecating, but also comfortable giving herself praise in a remarkably humble way — she’s a truly terrific person. We talked straight through my first hour there, so much that she let me stay on for the wedding she conducted today and I got to act as her assistant so I could see how she does what she does so very well. I jumped in to help where I was able, and we unrolled extension cords to use to turn on the window unit of the tiny little chapel on her property. I schlepped a card table so the couple getting married could use it for a champagne toast after the wedding. I lint-rolled Spike before showtime. If you’d told me 24 years ago that one day, I’d be lint-rolling Spike Gillespie before she officiated a wedding, I would have laughed in your face.

I sat at the back of the amazing tiny chapel while Spike married the sweet couple in a short but lovely ceremony, and cried when she read the Apache Wedding Blessing Tim and I used in our wedding. I snapped photos, all the while wondering how in the hell did this all work out so beautifully.

In between wedding things, Spike gave me excellent advice and encouraged my writing. She told me about a writing workshop she holds that I absolutely have to figure out how to squeeze into my schedule. I told her about the wrinkled article that I still have somewhere in a box, and how much she inspired me 20+ years ago, and how she inspires me still because she’s figured out to live a great life doing what she loves.

I hope you get to meet your life heroes in person, and that you get the opportunity to tell them what they mean to you. It took me 24 years, but it was worth the wait.