Are You Busy?

On Love, Life, and Finding What You Need

By Eric R. McQuiston

To whatever degree I might be considered a success in this life, a good deal of the credit belongs to my wife, Betsy.

She would disagree, of course. She would tell you that I saved her. That I gave her strength, protected her, defended her, and gave her a life she might never have imagined.

I find that rather amusing, because I would tell you precisely the same thing about her.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

This story begins with a bumblebee.

Well, not exactly a bumblebee. It was a photograph of a woman dressed as a 1920's flapper. At least, that's what she insists it was. To me, she looked rather like a bumblebee.

She still gets irritated when I bring that up.

I met Elizabeth, whom everyone calls Betsy, on a dating website. Nothing particularly unusual about that, except that Betsy hadn't actually joined the dating website. A friend had taken it upon herself to create a profile for her, without her knowledge or permission.

Apparently, her friend thought Betsy needed a little help in the romance department.

As it happened, so did I.

I was twice divorced, raising a son as a single father, and trying to make some sense of my life. I had decided that if I ever married again, I was going to find an amazing woman.

What exactly constituted an amazing woman, I couldn't have told you. I had some vague notion of what she should look like, how she should behave, and what qualities she should possess. I had built an image in my mind, and I was determined to find someone who fit it.

Betsy didn't. Not even close.

And yet, something about that photograph caught my attention. So I sent her a message.

"Are you busy?"

That was it. Three words and a question mark. Not exactly the stuff of great romantic literature.

Her friend, who was apparently keeping an eye on the profile she had secretly created, excitedly informed Betsy that a man had expressed interest.

Betsy was not pleased.

She answered anyway.

And that was the beginning of the most wonderful adventure of my life.

Over the following weeks, we talked. We went to dinner, saw movies, walked in the park, and gradually got to know one another. I discovered a woman who was attractive, intelligent, sensitive, confident, funny, and extraordinarily kind. She had a wonderful sense of humor, a delightful silliness, and a smile that seemed almost permanently attached to her face.

I was smitten. And more than a little surprised.

Here was a woman who bore almost no resemblance to the imaginary ideal I had constructed, yet somehow embodied everything I had actually been searching for.

Years earlier, a professor I greatly admired had offered a bit of advice to his landscape architecture students.

"A client will always tell you what they want. It's your job to figure out what they need."

I've carried that lesson throughout my professional life. It has served me well in understanding clients, evaluating projects, and finding solutions to problems that aren't always what they first appear to be.

Apparently, I had neglected to apply it to my own life.

I knew what I wanted. I hadn't the slightest idea what I needed.

Betsy did.

---

The Woman Behind the Smile

As I got to know Betsy, I began learning about her life.

She was one of five children, born in Southern California and raised in a family of modest means. Her father had served in the Navy before pursuing a civilian career in photography and related work. Her childhood was not unlike my own in many respects.

She was shy, awkward, athletic, and bright. A runner who never quite felt she fit in. She had been bullied, as so many of us were, and learned early that life isn't always fair.

But she had spirit.

As a little girl, she once decided to run away from home. She packed a bag, gathered her entire fortune of three pennies, and made it as far as a nearby store, where she stood contemplating what she might purchase with her considerable wealth.

On another occasion, she decided she wanted to go to school with her older siblings. So she simply walked there, and her mother had to retrieve her once her unauthorized enrollment was discovered.

Later, when the family moved from Georgia to Louisiana, Betsy drove the family Volkswagen Beetle, accompanied by a pet bird that apparently complained about the arrangement the entire way.

These are the stories that make me smile.

Then there was the beautiful blue Mustang convertible she bought with money she had carefully saved. She generously allowed her brother's girlfriend to drive it. The girlfriend took it to the beach and wrecked it. Betsy was never compensated.

To this day, she is still angry about that Mustang. Frankly, I don't blame her.

There were more consequential disappointments, though.

Betsy was accepted to college. She was intelligent, ambitious, and interested in the law. I believe she would have made a wonderful and fair attorney. Unfortunately, her family couldn't afford to send two children to college, and when one of her brothers decided he wanted to go, Betsy gave up her chance.

Her brother never graduated.

Years later, Betsy would find herself working as a paralegal for a prominent law firm. I've often wondered what she might have accomplished had she been given the opportunity to pursue her education.

But Betsy has never been one to spend much time wondering what might have been. She gets on with things.

And goodness knows, she has had plenty to get on with.

Her first marriage was unhappy. She had two children, a daughter and a son, and endured financial difficulties, broken promises, and circumstances that eventually left her without a home. At one point, she found herself alone, living in a van at a truck stop while continuing to work two jobs.

Think about that for a moment. Here was an intelligent, hardworking woman, a mother, someone who had spent much of her life caring for others, living in a vehicle and still getting up every morning to go to work.

She had every reason to surrender to bitterness. She didn't.

When Hurricane Katrina approached South Louisiana in 2005, Betsy was managing a McDonald's. She was so busy with her responsibilities that she hardly appreciated how serious the approaching storm was until she closed the restaurant and returned to her van. She picked up her mother, from whom she had been estranged, and evacuated to Baton Rouge, where her daughter was attending college. Her young son, Christopher, evacuated with his father and paternal family to Texas.

When they eventually came back, her mother's house had taken six feet of floodwater. They moved into a FEMA trailer in the driveway.

Betsy went back to work. Then, after working all day, she came home and started tearing the ruined house apart. Sheetrock, carpeting, furniture, appliances. Everything.

When the demolition was finished, she began rebuilding.

There's something remarkable about that image. A woman who had lost her own home and family, working all day and spending her evenings rebuilding someone else's. And yet, if you asked Betsy about it, I suspect she'd simply tell you it needed to be done.

There were other hardships, too. Relationships that brought disappointment rather than companionship. People who took advantage of her generosity. Physical and emotional abuse. Financial losses, family conflicts, and even an encounter with the justice system that she experienced as a profound injustice.

I won't recount them all. Some stories are hers to tell, not mine. But I share these glimpses because they reveal something about the woman I came to know.

As Betsy tentatively shared the stories of her life with me, I found myself increasingly astonished. She was scared that I would reject her. I just laughed, "Is that all? I confidently remarked."

Now, I'd had my own share of disappointments, failures, and heartbreaks. Two failed marriages, the challenges of raising a child on my own, professional setbacks, and all the other difficulties that come with living a life. I had occasionally felt rather sorry for myself.

But listening to Betsy, I began to feel almost ashamed of my complaints. Not that my experiences were insignificant. They were real enough, and painful at the time. But compared to what this woman had endured, they seemed rather ordinary.

I couldn't imagine being abandoned by people I trusted, losing nearly everything I owned, struggling to provide for my children with no place to call home, putting them through college, and then somehow finding the strength to get up the next morning and do it all again. And again. And again.

I began to wonder how I would have handled it.

I like to think of myself as a reasonably strong person. I've faced danger, accepted challenges, and occasionally shown courage when circumstances demanded it. But would I have come through those experiences with my optimism intact? Would I still have trusted people? Would I still have believed in goodness, in love, and in the promise of tomorrow?

I don't know. I'm not certain I would have.

Betsy did.

And here's the truly remarkable thing. She didn't seem to consider herself extraordinary. She wasn't asking for sympathy or admiration. She was simply telling me about her life.

She had experienced things that might have hardened her heart, yet hers remained open. She had been given countless reasons to lose faith in people, yet she kept believing in them. She had endured enough disappointment to justify a lifetime of bitterness, yet she remained one of the most joyful, compassionate, and optimistic people I had ever met.

I had gone looking for an amazing woman. Sitting across from me was someone whose strength of character I was only beginning to comprehend.

I was humbled. And I was falling very much in love.

During the birth of her daughter, both Betsy and her baby briefly lost their vital signs.

Betsy experienced what she describes as a profound encounter with something beyond this life. She has never forgotten it. She tells me she isn't afraid of death, because she knows what awaits her, and it is good.

I can't speak to what she experienced. That belongs to her. But I can tell you that her faith, her optimism, and her certainty that life has meaning are among the most beautiful things about her.

She doesn't just talk about hope. She lives it.

Yet if you met Betsy tomorrow, you wouldn't know any of this. You would simply meet a delightful woman with a ready smile, a mischievous sense of humor, and an almost inexhaustible capacity for kindness.

People love Betsy. I mean that quite literally. People who have known her for years and people who have known her for minutes seem equally captivated by her warmth.

She is compassionate, thoughtful, generous, funny, occasionally ridiculous, and wonderfully human. She is, without question, the most beautiful soul I have ever encountered.

---

Miss Betsy

Some years after we married, I found myself involved in a landscape contracting business with a young colleague.

It was a business I had never particularly wanted to be in, but circumstances have a way of carrying me into adventures I probably should have thought through a little more carefully.

Betsy left her job and joined us as office manager. Before long, she became something more.

She became Miss Betsy.

That's what everyone called her. She kept the office running, looked after the employees, managed the paperwork, solved problems, and somehow became the unofficial mother of the entire company. She was loved, respected, and indispensable.

When my business partner effectively disappeared from the operation, leaving us with serious financial problems, Betsy held things together. I was doing my best to manage a business I hadn't wanted to run, dealing with problems I hadn't anticipated, and trying to keep us afloat.

Betsy was my rock.

Then, one morning, everything changed.

I was at a training session when I called to tell her they had her favorite doughnuts. It was an ordinary phone call, the kind married couples make without a second thought.

But something was wrong. Betsy didn't sound like herself. She said she wasn't feeling well and was going home.

I told her okay and hung up. Then I had a bad feeling. I called her back.

"Where are you?"

"In the parking lot."

"You're in your car?"

"Yes. At home. In the parking lot."

We didn't have a parking lot. We had a driveway.

I knew immediately that something was terribly wrong.

I raced home and found her sitting behind the wheel of her car in the driveway. I got her inside and told her we needed an ambulance. She insisted she only needed to rest.

My years in the Coast Guard had taught me enough to recognize the signs of a possible stroke. I told her what I, and others, suspected and, over her objections, eventually got her to the emergency room.

Her condition deteriorated rapidly. The doctors prepared to fly her by helicopter to a neurological trauma center in New Orleans, but the weather grounded the aircraft. She went by ambulance instead.

Betsy had suffered an ischemic stroke that developed into a hemorrhagic stroke.

For two weeks, I thought I had lost her.

Few things in life can prepare you for sitting beside someone you love, wondering whether you'll ever hear their voice again.

My sister was experiencing that at the same time.

My brother-in-law was dying of undiagnosed and rapid cancer, and I had to travel to New York to be with my sister after his death. The business was in chaos. My family was grieving. And the woman who had become the center of my life was fighting to recover.

After weeks in the hospital and rehabilitation, Betsy finally came home. She still couldn't speak.

Meanwhile, I was practically losing my mind trying to keep the business functioning.

And Betsy? Betsy was making cookies.

I'm serious. The woman had just survived a massive stroke, spent weeks in hospitals and rehabilitation, could barely communicate, and she was in the kitchen baking cookies.

At some point, apparently deciding I needed a little help, she stopped what she was doing, got out the checkbook, and proceeded to show me exactly what needed to be done.

Without saying a word.

Then she put the checkbook away and went back to making cookies.

That's Betsy.

That was about eight years ago. She has made an extraordinary recovery. There are still some lingering difficulties with attention and memory, but she is very much the woman I fell in love with.

And I'll take it. Every bit of it.

---

What We Give Each Other

Betsy and I have never had a fight. Not one.

Oh, we've occasionally frustrated one another. We're human, after all. And there remains the unresolved matter of whether that costume was a flapper or a bumblebee.

But we have never been angry with each other.

I sometimes wonder why.

Perhaps it's because we've both experienced enough of life's disappointments to understand how precious peace can be. Perhaps it's because we recognize something of ourselves in one another. Our childhoods were remarkably similar, and neither of us ever felt we belonged.

Or perhaps it's simply that we've never felt the need to change each other.

Betsy lets me be me. And believe me, that is no small undertaking.

I've spent much of my life chasing ideas, pursuing opportunities, starting businesses, changing directions, and occasionally plunging headlong into adventures without the slightest idea how they might turn out. Some have been successful. Others have been, shall we say, educational.

At an age when many people are contemplating retirement, I'm still writing, designing, studying, and finding new ways to complicate my life.

Betsy doesn't always understand what possesses me. Frankly, I'm not sure I do either.

But she believes in me. She encourages me, supports me, laughs with me, and occasionally shakes her head at my latest enthusiasm. She doesn't need me to be more successful, more accomplished, more conventional, or more sensible.

She simply loves me. Exactly as I am.

I've come to believe that may be the greatest gift one human being can give another. The freedom to be yourself, knowing you are loved.

If you ask Betsy, she'll tell you that I saved her. That I gave her security, protected and defended her, supported her, and provided the strength she needed to build a new life.

I find that rather touching. Because if you ask me, I'll tell you exactly the opposite.

Betsy saved me.

Not from some dramatic catastrophe, but from the notion that I had to become someone other than myself to deserve love.

She gave me confidence when I doubted myself. She believed in my abilities when I questioned them. She stood beside me through successes and failures, through difficult decisions and uncertain futures.

She gave me something I had never fully understood before.

Peace.

And I hope, with all my heart, that I've given her the same.

She sees me as her strength. I know she is mine.

Perhaps that's what a good marriage is supposed to be. Not two people completing one another because they're somehow incomplete, but two people making each other's lives richer, freer, and more meaningful simply by being together.

Neither of us is perfect. But we are very good together.

---

Are You Busy?

I began this story by telling you that whatever success I've enjoyed in life is due in large measure to my wife.

I believe that.

But perhaps success is the wrong measure.

Businesses come and go. Careers rise and fall. Money is earned and spent. Accomplishments that once seemed terribly important eventually fade into memory.

What remains are the people who shared the journey. The people who believed in us. The people who made us laugh when life got difficult and reminded us that tomorrow was still worth looking forward to.

Betsy has done all of that for me, and so much more.

But there's another reason I wanted to tell you this story.

Opportunity has a peculiar way of presenting itself. It doesn't always arrive with a grand announcement or a clear set of instructions. It doesn't always look like something we recognize, and it certainly doesn't always fit the expectations we've built in our minds.

Sometimes it looks like an inconvenience. Sometimes it looks like a mistake.

And sometimes it looks like a shy woman dressed as a 1920s flapper who, despite her vigorous protests, bears a remarkable resemblance to a bumblebee.

I could have passed over that photograph. In fact, by the standards I had set for myself, I probably should have.

Betsy wasn't what I thought I wanted. She was something infinitely more important.

She was what I needed.

Had I ignored that little opportunity, I would never have known the most extraordinary woman I've ever met. I would have missed her laughter, her kindness, her optimism, her faith, and the remarkable life we've built together.

I would have missed the woman who can survive a devastating stroke, come home unable to speak, and still find time to make cookies while her husband is having a nervous breakdown over the company checkbook.

I would have missed Miss Betsy.

And that would have been the greatest loss of my life.

So if there's a lesson in all of this, perhaps it's simply this.

Don't become so convinced that you know what you want that you fail to recognize what you need.

Stay curious. Be willing to explore the unexpected. Give people a chance. Say hello.

You never know what remarkable possibilities might be waiting just beyond the boundaries of your expectations.

All those years ago, I was searching for an amazing woman.

I found one. I just didn't recognize her at first.

Fortunately, I was curious enough to ask a simple question.

"Are you busy?"

And she was kind enough to answer.

I've been grateful for that answer every day since.

~ Eric