"It Was Twenty Years Ago Today."

This journal can't help but be a personal memoir as well as a chronicle of doing the pageant.
In 1991 - twenty years ago - my wife Lisa and I were having trouble. Without going into the gory details suffice it to say that she and I had hooked up when she was 21 years old (I was 26) and she had our first child when she was 25 and the second two years later. By the time she hit her early 30's she really needed a break.
There was this guy who worked with us in Durham named Robbie Fearn (remember him?). We produced a lot of shows during the fall, winter, spring - but every summer he would disappear to someplace called The Lost Colony. One summer Lisa attended a beach party there called Crab Carnage. The following winter she auditioned for The Colony and was cast in the Choir.
So one fine day in May she packed up her red convertible and headed for the Outer Banks, leaving me with our kids who were then ages four and seven. It was not the friendliest of partings and was the beginning of about two years of rocky marital road. There were tears when she left.
Needless to say we reconciled. Not only that - the following year the kids and I auditioned for The Colony, I was cast as Old Tom and the kids were cast as...um...kids, and the four of us started our run on Roanoke Island. Eventually we moved to Manteo, opened a retail business which we worked our asses off at for ten years. The kids both graduated Manteo High School and then went off to make their way in the world. After ten years in the tourist business Lisa and I burned out. We sold out and split for Moore County.
Now I'm back.
This time it was a friendly parting.
Lisa and I have always been about "reinventing" ourselves. We have always been different than other couples. In addition to living together, being life partners, raising a family together we have always also worked together. And every decade or so we reinvent ourselves together. We started as theater gypsies, always ready to throw our shit in the cars and drive across the country for a job. When it was time to settle and raise a family we picked Durham and opened a theater of our own. About ten years later we chucked that, moved to Manteo and reinvented ourselves as retail business owners. When that expired we relocated to Moore County and got heavily involved in that local theater scene, with Lisa more and more involved in animal rescue and rehabilitation. Now she is entering school again to become a certified vet technician. Reinventing herself.
And this is the thing - this is the first time in our thirty years together that we are reinventing ourselves in different directions - going our separate ways. Together - but separate.
So yesterday, twenty years after she headed off alone, I packed my car up and headed off alone for the Outer Banks. Gonna reinvent myself.
There were tears.

Tomorrow morning is the first meeting of the 2011 Company of The Lost Colony at Waterside Theater.
I can't wait.