No one knows!
Tom and Lisa met when they were ready for each other. She had just started understanding more of herself. It had began with a breakup she had initiated upon understanding that her boyfriend wasn’t right for her anymore.
Tom had been alone for some time, and was ready for someone to soften him, which she did quite successfully, with well aimed arrows that seemed dangerous but disintegrated once they hit his heart.
They’d slowly figured out that they seemed right for each other, even though they were so different. They both cared for one another in an unspoken agreement kind of way, which compounded and made them care about each other even more.
She was a creative artist, unadmitted yoga lover, and spiritual warrior. She spent most of her day creating or mending something. He, was a logical, hard working guy, who lived for his work 11 hours a day, but when done, was able to become totally hers. That space they created together became their own world and refuge.
Lisa would, once in a while, come up with exciting places for them to visit, so she would arrange to teach yoga there or reach out to some unknown person to host them, in exchange for a painting or other work of art. Tom, always surprised, and nonetheless accepting, went along with it. They’d made about a dozen new friends that way, that they had either revisited or hosted after. Except the woman that had made a pass at Lisa and then kicked them out at the refusal.
“She was number 13” Lisa would claim.
It all seemed to change in 2016, when Lisa first got pregnant. They lost the baby on the 5th month. Soon after her art became darker, and Tom became quieter. But the friends kept visiting, one of them eventually arranging a showing of her classic artwork, in an attempt to remind her that life has many aspects and not all ends when one of those parts takes a downturn. The reception was very warm and successful. Lisa cried that night after the show. She cried In a different way, for the baby she never met out here, and for the mom she did not become, for the way she thought she let Tom down, for some feelings that came from her body that she did not fully understand, and for realizing that this was just the way it went, and her life should not be tied up in this one single moment. In her sleep, she had a vivid dream of light, and storms, and fury.
When she woke up, she had understood a bit more, so she thanked her friend Arthemisa for hosting them in Buenos Aires and for sponsoring her art show. She apologized to Tom, and asked him to forgive himself and her. He cried upon hearing those words, tears, as he explained later, he had unknowingly held back.
Two days later they flew back to NY. Her art became about second chances!
She painted two lovers pulling to each other, chains connecting their hearts.
In another painting, she drew a hazy background where you could see a patient tending to her broken heart, while sitting in a hospital bed and wearing a tree as her hair.
In another one, an older mother pulling her daughter out of a lake created from her daughter’s gigantic tears, with the daughter clutching an infant in her arms.
In the next year, Tom was promoted at work, and then lost his father within months. He acted as if the world had tricked him.
But Lisa did not give up on him, she shot him with her soft pointed arrows, and fed him ambrosia, and combed his real and imaginary hair, until they grew to be miles long. She would tuck him into sleep and sing lullabies that would slowly heal his broken heart. That became the inspiration for one of her new paintings, a painting showing her sitting down while holding him in her arms, him laying on her lap while clutching his broken heart that she was putting back together with her paintbrush. Her other hand, brushing away “Oh’s” and “Ah’s” in his hair. A tree shading over both of them, with some of the roots wrapped under them in a supportive way.
Soon after, they celebrated their 50th anniversary. As their friends gathered round them, they held hands and sang to each other a song they had sang when they first discussed getting married, something about caring about each other, being accepting of one another, and creating an admirable blanket of love that had wrapped them for fifty years!