Mack and Myla

My neighbors who inspire me to engage life, and love, on my own terms.

New readers may learn about me here.

This post kind of straddles my normal life-is-funny style of articles and what some might call the real reality of the world I live in. And yes, I know that’s a confusing statement right off the top.

The people that live on my street come in several different packages. Judgmental ones, Free thinking ones, Too Busy ones, and Inspirational ones. I’m sure there are others, but I’m going to focus on this last group, and the stand-out leaders there are Mack and Myla.

They’ve been married forty plus years. They were here when we moved in, and they, together, were one of the first to introduce themselves. Mack offered us a plate of home-baked cookies and Myla offered conversation rate of about eight hundred words per minute, firing off questions and commentary nonstop. We stood on the porch — this was before we had porch furniture — and I did the polite social thing while thinking both “Who TF are these people?” and “This is a nice gesture.”

I admit, my thinking in the moment was limited due to the nonstop stream of verbal artillery that Myla was launching. Mack’s amused expression and sharp eyes, in retrospect, should have told me that this was how he found amusement in life. But I’m getting off topic.

This story is more about relationships than cookies, but that first interaction really set the tone of things to come. After the cookie transfer, Myla latched onto Mack’s arm, and settled into her rhythm. In rapid fire, I learned that Mack was the baker, Myla was the space cadet. They had had frozen pizza and steamed broccolli for lunch, and planned an outing to Publix later in the day and did we need anything?

All together, Myla crammed about six hours of conversation into less than ten minutes before Mack guided her off to let us have some space, but the open invitation to drop in anytime was left as their calling card.

After they left, Gus put a finger in his ear and wiggled it, resetting his brain or something. “That was interesting.” He reached out for the cookie plate and unwrapped one side, extracting a large chocolate chip masterpiece.

“They seem like the midwest followed us here,” I replied, looking down the street where they were still visible, walking arm in arm.

“They were here first,” Gus pointed out, with his mouth full, because of course dumb waffles have to lord their observations over everyone as soon as they can.

“Forty years is a long time,” I said, thoughtfully. “Like, more than a lifetime.”

“We need stuff,” Gus said, changing our direction, and of course I followed along like an obedient puppy because he was right, he was a man of action, he had cookie fuel, and I still had no idea about anything except that I had push all of us onto this rock with little more than a vague plan to build us a fortress to keep the outside world at bay.

I admit, it was weak sauce, as a plan. But it was sincere sauce.

Fast forward a couple weeks and I was out for a morning walk, because Key West is absolutely perfect for morning walks as long as you beat the sun’s baking schedule. I bounced with my strides because I was on “My Program” and moving right along, like I had stuff to do and no time for slingshots, when I passed by the M&M house, as it came to be known.

They were out on the porch, because that’s what they do, and they waved. Not being a total yankee-fied yokel, I waved back and turned into their yard, climbing the three steps onto their outpost.

“Good Morning,” I said, recalling the flow of our previous conversation and wanting to get my part in and done early.

In rapid fire, I was offered a seat, a glass of tea, and a chance to fill in Myla on our first two-ish weeks on the island. Mack rose like a gentleman to pour and offered a small cloth towel along with my glass of iced southern hospitality.

That was when an odd thing happened. There was silence on the porch, and Myla looked at me expectantly through large thick-framed glasses. I may have started to panic, so I sipped as a delay, trying to recall if a question had been offered. I had nothing except puffy white cotton in my brain, which was not unusual, but was totally unhelpful.

“We’ve been getting settled in,” I said, hoping a generic answer would answer whatever question had been flung out.

I listened more closely to the next round from Myla. Tyler, their son, was coming to visit, I learned. This seemed to be a regular thing. He lived in Kansas, and did things to make airplanes do airplane things.

“He’s an engineer,” Mack clarified. The way he slipped that phrase in was masterful in his timing, but of course he’s had decades to practice.

Tyler’s girlfriend was working through family issues and would not be visiting, but she was an adorable mate for Tyler and such a pretty girl, too. She is a drug person at a hospital -

“A pharmacist,” Mack said, again with the perfect timing, like a whale surfacing just enough to cycle air before going back under.

- and they didn’t have any children yet, but maybe when they were ready -

Somewhere along the line, the two had linked hands, and Myla caressed Mack like her treasured center-of-the-universe anchor. And Mack for his part, smiled and made sure the contact was easy for her to sustain.

It was about that time that I began to realize that there was a lot more going on with these two than I had realized, and that something about them was absolutely magical.

Forty years is a long time. More than a lifetime, from my perspective. It was on their porch that I started having a niggling little suspicision that I didn’t know anything. What I thought I knew about guys in general, and Gus in particular, went from “pretty confident” to “pretty sure I know nothing at all.”

Mack and Myla are legends in my world. Generous to a fault, but never intrusive. Consistent in all ways, including offering a hand up when needed. There’s a depth to them that reassures me at a molecular level, somehow.

I see posts on substack, especially by women, who are struggling to figure out who they are, and how to find a mate that is a good match for them. We’re not all the same, and there isn’t a recipe, as far as I can tell, but the M&M house is living proof that lifetime relationships are not only possible, they can bring the absolute joy of life to its peak.

-Mills