I have been reluctant to put fingers to keys, afraid, I think, that it will break the spell that was cast by our week in Italy.
First, the backstory.
Eight years ago in the summer, on a short flight from Boston to Martha’s Vineyard, I was seated beside Marc. I did something on that flight I rarely do: talked with my seatmate. Usually I put my headphones on, pull down my hat, a book or magazine. I like to read. I like to look at the clouds. It’s awkward to talk to someone sitting just inches from your shoulder.
But Marc asked good questions and when I discovered he was an actor I had some questions myself. I always want to know how does this work? How do you do this thing? and I’ve never known anyone who has committed to the world of acting, so I had my specimen and was ready to do the research.
At the time I was working as a chaplain in a hospital and I think that drove some of Marc’s curiosity.
I also think that there was something deep within both of us that allowed us to make a real connection in a short time. He was headed to the island to meet a friend; I was going out to collect my kids to drive them back to Vermont for a wedding.
We talked to each other for the entire flight and when we landed we parted ways, but our time together had planted a little seed that nestled somewhere in our hearts and compelled us to continue the conversation. Which we have done, for eight years now.
Over those years Marc’s star has risen, slowly, steadily. I have watched from afar as he has gone from a man trying very hard to make it work, the true struggling, living in NYC actor, to a person who has gotten good breaks at the right time and has parlayed those into new opportunities so that by now you have probably heard of him: Marc Menchaca, who played Russ Langmore on Ozark. If you look at his IMDb, however, you see just how long and hard he’s worked to get there.
I remember when Marc bought his first painting, his first piece of art. He was so delighted by what felt like this rite of passage into adulthood. He described the whole thing to me: how he saw it, how he loved it, that it wasn’t cheap, how he brought it home to Brooklyn and hung it on his wall.
Over the years of our friendship Marc has described many, many things to me, via Voice Memo, which is an app on your iPhone.
This is our glue: Marc and I tell each other the stories of our lives from across the miles, lifestyles, time zones and years.
We have probably sent each other hundreds of stories since we first met. We record and send messages on a regular basis. And though it sounds sweet, maybe even cute, what it is, at the heart of it, is loving intention. We are intentionally working to keep our friendship alive and humming. We matter to each other.
I am a pastor who lives in a very small town in very small Vermont. For a long time I have been raising my three kids and on some sort of mysterious and weird path through chaplaincy and Congregational ministry.
I would send Marc stories about watching my kids play lacrosse or sitting with a dying person or going skiing and Marc would send me stories about shooting an episode of Black Mirror with Miley Cyrus in South Africa or meeting Lena Headey on a blind date in L.A..
At some point Marc and I made a promise that we would be there for each other’s important things: a wedding or a funeral. Neither one of us ever thought there would be any weddings, I think, and so we made promises: he would sing at my funeral, I would speak at his, depending on who left first.
On the surface Marc and I have virtually nothing in common. He grew up in Texas. I was born in North Dakota and raised in upstate New York. I have been married twice and have three kids; he dated lots of women but none seemed to really stick. He loved his gypsy life, which I understood completely as I have a terrible case of wanderlust myself. I am grounded in a small New England place, serving the lonely, elderly, hungry, putting on a little shindig each Sunday. He is someone we can see on TV.
And yet …
Our friendship has withstood the test of time, space, place and age difference. But not by accident. We have both remained committed to keeping the conversation alive.
I’m going to pause the story here and tell you this: this is everything in life. Everything. The choice, the intention. The care, the love, the kindness. Marc and I took curiosity and infused it with kindness, sprinkled it with generosity and all of these years later what we have is love.
This, my friends, is everything in life.
Everything.
I’m happy for you if you drive a nice car. If you go to sleep at night in a warm and cozy home, this is so great. If you eat well, wear nice clothes, perhaps even a fancy watch: kudos. I want you to know, however, that in the end none of that matters. The only thing that matters in the end is the love that we have shared, the connections that we have nurtured and the kindness we have extended.
Coco and I traveled to Italy this past week to witness (and co-officiate with the amazing Michele Knight) the wedding of Marc and Lena. When I asked Marc, about a week after the blind date, how it was going, his response was it’s still going! and I think I knew in that moment that he had finally met his person. Two months later the world went into lockdown and Marc and Lena and her kids hunkered down in the U.K. and fell deeply in love.
During that time we were doing online church and I was inviting my friends to participate by reading poems or prayers or singing songs. For my birthday that year I asked Marc to sing one of my favorite songs: If I Needed You, Townes Van Zandt. He did, he sang it for us. It still makes me cry, not only because it’s a gorgeous song, but because I know that Marc would, indeed, swim the seas to ease the pain of the people he loves.
I know that Marc has my back and I, without hesitation, have his. This matters. A lot.
So Italy, a wedding, a week in the Italian countryside at a magnificent villa that we shared with about twenty other people. Marc and Lena did this amazing thing: they brought together all the people they love and they put them together in houses for a week. They created time and space and held gatherings (a pig roast, a beach party) for everyone to come to know each other. And in the middle they got married. They vowed some things, exchanged beautiful rings, they cast an enchanted spell over an entire ensemble of movie stars, musicians, doctors, artists, culinary wizards, kids and this lady from tiny Peru in tiny Vermont.
I made a fool of myself by asking Rick Astley if he was a musician, too, after he sang Never Gonna Give You Up with the members of the Lone Bellow at the service. I also made a fool of myself when I asked the esteemed Charles Dance what he does for a living 🙄.
Charlie and his lovely partner, Alessandra, were two of the people staying in the house with Coco and me. There was also the photographer, Reid Rolls (what a name!) and his wonderful wife, model Linda Soenderskov. We shared the space with Marc’s warm and loving family (and good friend) from Texas, the Ozark actress Jordana Spiro and her enchanting family. Lena’s parents and children and some of her good friends were with us. All of us from places all over the world, disparate lives whose paths would probably never have crossed otherwise. We became family over the course of the week.
We sat at the long dining table in the gorgeous Italian kitchen and we talked and talked and ate and played with little Nora and tried to learn some Italian. Mostly we talked. And through our conversation we came to care about each other. Twenty or so strangers living together for a week in Italy. By the time we were saying our good-byes we had come to mean something to one another.
In a world melting down and falling apart I believe with all of my heart that this is the antidote. Perhaps the only antidote.
There were so many moments, so many light-filled, heart-exploding moments: when I met the man who created the yogurt we eat (Siggi) and the man who makes the glasses I wear (Tim Parr, Caddis), learning how kind they are! There was the lovely human with the colorful beard and his two enchanting daughters … discovering one of the most interesting people at the wedding to be the guy in the sweatshirt who runs boxing gyms (Martin Snow). Seeing a pomegranate tree for the first time, watching Coco in a gelato shop. Watching Coco explore a brand new world. I could go on all day telling you stories of all that went down in the Italian countryside this past week. But I have written this story for one reason, really: in the hopes that you, too, will choose to cherish the people you meet, to move through this life with a curious heart and to tend to the strands of loving connection you make along the way.
I met Marc Menchaca on a plane eight years ago. A thirty-minute plane ride from Boston to Martha’s Vineyard.
Busy, as so many of us are all the time, is a choice. It will get you from one end of life to the other and you will be productive, no doubt, but I daresay you will also miss out on the point of all of this. Life can and should be be a warm, rich and engaging conversation from beginning to end. Make it so. You will discover all kinds of magic woven into the fibers, I promise.
Photo by the Reid Rolls 💗📷.
You write so beautifully….and the love lesson you shared through this peace is much appreciated.
Beautifully written, Melissa! What a joy-filled week it was. I loved getting to know you and Coco and what I am calling our Pistola family. Cherishing every moment and looking forward to a reunion before too long.❤️🇮🇹❤️