Things grow in the valley.
It’s where the fertile ground is, and it’s where the water cuts through the mountains on its way to the sea. But springtime in the Ojai Valley was unusually dry when we arrived. The land was very hard and chilly, and everything was still in the process of awakening.
However, a long-standing drought was to blame for this noticeable sense of brittleness in the normally lush and abundant area. Everything looked parched, and like it needed a huge gulp of life-giving water.
I guess you could describe my marriage like the Ojai Valley at that time.
We were coming out of a dormant and frozen season, and we just needed a safe place to grow together and thrive again. There was still love and life in us, but we needed space and time to reawaken. Lou and I had just experienced our own kind of spiritual drought in Utah, and now, we were in dire need of a safe place to retreat, pray, and heal. It wasn’t going to be a simple process for either of us, but the isolation and the calm that comes with an emotional season in the valley was just what we both needed.
So most days, we read books in the morning, and then we went for long hikes in the afternoon. On some of our hikes, we picked oranges from citrus trees that were exposed to the public hiking area. Lou and Lynn are both taller than me, so they would pick, and I’d carry. Sometimes we’d end up with multiple bags of oranges — which weigh more than you think when you’re hiking back to your car!
When we’d get back to the cottage, Lynn would squeeze the juice, and Lou would add a touch of vodka. Then we’d have a sticky little cocktail party with Lynn that ushered in laughter and great conversations about life, love and staying in the fight.
Ojai is only about two hours (in good traffic) away from LA, and so once a week, Lou and I would head down so Lou could take meetings with his potential employer. Even though Lou would often come away from those meetings feeling excited about what the company was planning to do, the fact that the funding was always “another month away” was just too familiar for us to stomach. We had spent so much time waiting for promised money that after one month in Ojai, Lou and I started to get real with ourselves about the probability of things working out.
I was also in a holding pattern with Roy and Ira.
Ira decided to extend his overseas trip by a few extra weeks, and so all we could do was wait for him to get back to start his review of the pilot. And, it was anyone’s guess how long that could take. But Roy was so encouraging, and whenever I was in LA with Lou, we’d try to get together for a coffee. I always enjoyed my time with Roy because we so easily talked about our mutual passion for storytelling. Each encounter I had with Roy was exciting and important to me — but they also left me wanting answers.
I journaled a lot during my time in Ojai, and some of the entries that were about the pilot and my time with Roy reveal how needy I felt at that time. I wanted someone to show up and do something for Lou or for me. I wanted our lives to make sense or to be fixed somehow — and, I felt like I didn’t want to have to work so hard anymore. I was exhausted from treading water, and I just longed for something to be easy…
It wasn’t that I wanted to be lazy, or that I was afraid of working hard for what I wanted. But rather, I think I was just so tired of waiting for people to engage. I just wanted one person to tell me a Truth (good or bad) that I could count on so I’d know how to take my next step. All of the waiting around made me feel stuck and fearful. But I couldn’t let go of the chance that something could come through for one of us. So my mind was always writing new narratives of hope about Lou’s job offer, or about Ira buying my series.
