He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing. – S.A., Author

Love and Choice. Let’s talk about both of those things on this, the 10-year Hookversary, the anniversary of Hook’s passing from this life into some unknown.

Choice is what I forgot to mention at the 50-year renewal of vows between two friends, Alex and Jo Ann, who live on north Padre Island on the Texas coast. We held the ceremony in the quaint Chapel on the Dunes, one of the highest points in Port Aransas, which is not at all high considering the majority of that small town is mostly at gulf level.

The chapel seats 12 people comfortably or 20 sweaty people in the summer, and it is still owned by the Aline Carter family. Aline was an educator of the sciences and the arts, and she had the structure built so that people of any denomination would have a place to find peace without judgment. Interestingly, Aline Carter also believed in everlasting love making her chapel the perfect place to remember why we marry who we marry.

Another Anniversary

For the last several years, I’ve managed to escape the Austin heat for the entire month of September, while simultaneously escaping the melancholy that seemed to set in when I stayed in Austin on September 3^rd, the day Hook died in 2013. And, I would have left for any cooler climate except that I was officiating this 50^th anniversary, which I was both honored and scared to host.

This renewal, though, was not my first visit to the Chapel on the Dunes. Hook had discovered the chapel years ago on one of our many visits to Port Aransas.

“I have a surprise for you,” he said one morning as he convinced me to take a ride with him, insisting that I keep my eyes closed until we arrived. Hook escorted me along the sandy path to the entrance of the chapel. It was so unlike him to lead when it came to spiritual avenues, although I can see today how his reverence for nature, his loyalty and respect for the insects he collected, was very much a spiritual journey for him. And I do not mind confessing that I had envisioned Hook’s and my renewal of vows in that chapel at maybe the 20-year mark, maybe 30. We could not know that he would be dead in less than two years.

The Rolling Stones sang that we can’t always get what we want but that sometimes we get what we need.

The beginning of the 50-year marriage between Jo Ann, 15 years old, and Alex, 16 years old, began in 1973. They were still young enough to be precious children yet their bodies were old enough to create a baby. Jo Ann’s father told Alex, his future-teen-in-law, that he did not have to marry his daughter, that no one expected it of him. This is where I began the ceremony.

I was given a 30-minute slot in the program which sort of freaked me out, not because I couldn’t ramble on for 30 minutes; I could blather on for 30 hours if needed. But as a storyteller, all of my stories are in the first person; they are true stories in which I’m either the main character or one of the primary characters. The closest I’ve ever come to telling someone else’s story did not involve a stage: it was a blog post I’d written about my mother after she died. 

In the world of storytelling, every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning, of course, was Alex and Jo Ann finding out they’re pregnant. She was in 9^th grade; he was in 10^th and if I understand the origins correctly, they were making goo-goo eyes at each other years before: it was practically destined! But in Texas in the 1970s, one had to be at least 16 years old to marry so that even with her parents’ consent, Jo Ann was not legally able to marry in the state of Texas. She and Alex drove across the Mexican border into Reynosa and with both sets of parents standing in attendance, these two barely teenagers looked at one another and said “I do.” When Jo Ann turned 16 years old, she and Alex re-married in the United States.

What is Love, Really?

Jo Ann and I met 23 years ago when we were both working at a Fortune 500 tech company in south Austin. We were in field marketing. I was on the U.S. team and she was running the Latin American one. What I remember most from those years was that everyone loved Jo Ann; everyone respected Jo Ann; Jo Ann was a workhorse who only produced quality programs. I was remembering all of this several months after I’d already agreed to officiate her renewal of vows. I wanted to deliver what she needed and wanted to hear at this once-in-a-lifetime family event.

In order to do that, I did what I do sometimes: I called on Hook to help. I tapped into the passion that I always feel for him, dead or alive, here or not here. For these feelings forever simmer under the surface, on the ready. I remembered with clarity how all of my emotions were jacked to 100% when he was dying. The closest intensity to this is the wild rollercoaster of feelings two ripe teenagers might have, together and separately.

Alex and Jo Ann didn’t even know what they didn’t know. They both quit high school, finishing with GEDs at a later date, and then Alex took on three jobs to support his budding family. One son turned into three sons over the years and still, Alex and Jo Ann clung to one another. That’s choice; that’s choosing one another. So is staying when one of you is dying. In traditional marriage vows when couples are asked, ‘For better, for worse; in sickness and in health,’ they always agree, mostly because they cannot comprehend the depths of ‘worse’.

I talked about how compromise and showing up are part of “I do”; I talked about how Shakespeare said love was a verb; how the feeling of love was simply an emotion, and that actual love was in the giving and the doing and the being there for the person. True romantic love is in the respect you give to your spouse; it’s how you always have their back no matter what; it’s in the showing up late at night to give their car battery a jump; it’s in keeping the dinner warm because you know they’ll be exhausted when they come through the front door. Love is listening without trying to fix it, without trying in any way to make it better. Sometimes a situation simply sucks and isn’t it great that you have your favorite person there to physically lean on, to rub your back, and maybe even pour you a glass of wine?

The laundry list of things going against Alex and Jo Ann’s teen marriage was extensive. The list of things going in their favor– State of Residency, Political Party, and Ethnicity—was interesting to learn how and why these variables increased the likelihood that they would remain married and not end up a divorce statistic. (Yes, people in Texas, on average, stay married longer. Probably has something to do with the damn heat.)

As I typed out what I hoped to convey during the renewal of vows, I allowed my thoughts to go back in time to those last weeks with Hook, when everything we did or said was ultra important. I shared a piece of this during the ceremony by declaring that there were three miracles that exist: birth, death, and love.

We have all lived the experience of birth, maybe even witnessing the miracle of another’s birth. Some of us have experienced the miracle of death, standing watch over that last breath as it leaves a loved one’s lungs one final time. And we were all standing in that Chapel on the Dunes to look upon the third miracle, that of love. Teenagers whose frontal lobes were still forming could not have comprehended what love really was, but they did comprehend choice. Alex and Jo Ann were choosing to keep their child; they were choosing to get married; and now 50 years later when as high as 65% of marriages end in divorce and almost 30% of partners exit the marital union when one is diagnosed with a terminal illness, it’s about choice.

Love is choosing one another, for better and worse, when they’re healthy and when they’re dying.

“We chose one another,” Hook had said. I did not understand it in 2013 but I do now, because I’m still choosing him.

We chose one another

I did not leave

And now no more

Do I dare grieve

I asked and I pleaded

For answers not there

Talk to me, please

But you were no where

To hear, to see

Pathetic tears late at night

One wet pillow

Those first years a plight

I did the best I could

Hunkered down, persevered

Today I work on character

Coming up from the rear

What can I say to you now

That you don’t already know

I’ve tried and I’ve tried

To give new love a go

But none of them are you

I cannot feign interest

Leaving me to clean up

One lingering mess

You’re as dead today

As ten years ago

The only difference, how I feel

Mostly high with few lows

Still, I run here and there

Speaking into microphones

Words created about you

The real place I call home

Yes, my spirit moved forward

While my heart no one took

It’s forever locked in time

With you, Allan Hook

Wild Basin Events:

• Come and hear Hook Fellow and Avian Ecologist, Dawn Houston. She will be the guest speaker on Thursday, September 21st, at Wild Basin’s Speaker and Social Series. Topic: Songbird Migration in Central Texas: Herculean Feat of a Little Bird.

• Enjoy a 2^nd Saturday hike at the Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve with a seasoned naturalist. The next two dates are September 9th and October 14th. They limit these hikes to 15 ppl and your rsvp is what gets you a parking pass.

• Visit the Wild Basin for a quarterly hike with the Executive Director. Deepen your knowledge of the programs, research, and operations of this gem in the heart of Austin. Reservations required on the weekend only. Open dawn till dusk. https://www.stedwards.edu/wild-basin/visit.

On behalf of Wild Basin, an eternal thank you to Allan Hook. In 2009, he was the one who convinced then provost, Sister Donna, to put the 227 acres known as the Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve under the co-protection and financial management of St. Edward’s University (and in partnership with Travis County). Without Hook’s unrelenting persistence on the scientific benefits and educational programs that the Wild Basin would bring to campus and to the city at large, this breathtaking preserve would forever be in danger of Homo sapien encroachment.  

Never underestimate the determination of a solitary wasp.

From YNN Austin, a 2-minute memorial video about Hook’s passing: https://youtu.be/OmFFv0hfYbI