Although it’s now long deleted, my old X account served at least one useful purpose in life. My profile image had me looking up quizzically at a ragdoll kitten on my shoulder. That cat (once mistaken for a parrot by a bone-headed rightwing pundit) is no longer with me – but my other ragdoll, Priscilla, became a minor social media celebrity.
In April 2021 I was eight months post open heart surgery, seven months single, about to turn 50, and not about to die wondering. So, I hit Bumble. She didn’t fess up until later but the first woman to message me was one of my X followers – really, one of Priscilla’s. “Oh,” she said to herself, “it’s the man with the cat on Twitter.” And swiped right.
Lisa and I went on our first date at the end of that month, a wine and tapas bar. She looked me up and down. This wasn’t love at first sight but I’d learned to be suspicious of that anyway. What I did know instantly was this was someone who knew what she wanted, didn’t waste time and didn’t suffer dills gladly.
We made small talk over a bottle of wine and a bottomless bowl of olives. She was smart, engaging, beautiful and drily funny. She also brooked absolutely no nonsense. I started to wonder what I was bringing to the table, besides a cat whose fur was clinging to my clothes, a chequered relationship history and a tendency towards oversharing. (I’m doing it again.)
Searching for common ground, I asked what made her laugh. “Well, apparently you,” she said, grinning. The tension broke.
A second date followed, then a third. We bonded slowly. First over things we hated, like Scott Morrison. Then the things we loved: the natural world, a well-constructed sentence, the arts, walking. One day, we were driving, with Air’s album Moon Safari softly humming in the background. You Make It Easy suddenly hit home:
You make it easy – to watch the world with love
You make it easy – to let the past be done
You make it easy – so watch me fall in love
And I realised it was true. I was watching myself fall in love – not for the first time, of course, but in a new way. With Lisa, the life I’d made an art form of overcomplicating suddenly became straightforward. Details that had assumed outsized importance became trivial. She was different; she saw The Whole of the Moon.
It helped that both of us had come through health challenges. That demanded not only patience but a sense of proportion. My surgery had been more recent and I had not fully recovered. There was an existential dimension to it: I was very lucky to still be walking around. We seized our second shot at life.
Still, we hastened slowly. We became captivated by a breeding pair of powerful owls close to home, meeting after work at dusk to watch discreetly over the course of six months as they raised a healthy chick. Birds, we found, were something we were both passionate about.
In November 2021 we turned things up several notches, travelling to the remote Kutini-Payamu national park (formerly known as Iron Range) near Lockhart River in far north Queensland. It was stinking hot, with mind-bending humidity. Lisa was covered in welts from sandflies and mosquitoes.
Yet she was unfazed. One morning we were squatting in the mangroves, being eaten alive by said insects while looking for a rather plain species called a fawn-breasted bowerbird, when the heavens opened upon us – and our camera gear. We ran as fast as our legs would carry us back to our vehicle, drenched to the bone, shrieking with laughter.
Two months later the Brisbane floods of 2022 led to our first trial by cohabitation. This meant Priscilla was prematurely introduced to Lisa’s cranky old tom, Tiger, and a skittish Bengal called Florence. We were fine – the cats, not so much. (I used to think that I just needed to meet a nice cat lady and all would be well – be careful what you wish for.)
We made the move permanent 12 months later. Then my mother died, after two full decades living with Alzheimer’s disease. From the beginning Lisa had shown deep wells of compassion and kindness beneath the reserve. During a time of immense upheaval, I felt held and understood by her calm, steady presence.
At a gathering a while ago, an older gentleman asked her how long we’d been together. It was just short of three years at the time; long enough, he suggested, for her to teach me some manners.
“I didn’t have to teach him,” she replied. “His mother taught him that.” What Lisa taught me was that healthy boundaries could be safety rails. She makes it easy.
