Anna Schmidt | A Life's Journey...

LAST CHANCE COWBOYS: THE LAWMAN the second in my Where the Trail Ends series. Readers of book one (The Drifter) will remember the character of Addie Wilcox, a feisty young woman determined to focus on her career as a frontier doctor and forget all about Jess Porterfield, who chose a life in the city over staying in Arizona with her. She’s doing just fine until Jess decides city life is not for him, returns, pins on a badge and becomes the local marshal. These two, hot-blooded (and hot-tempered), set off fireworks in more ways than one on their way to figuring out what the whole town has always known: they were meant for each other. Which character from LAST CHANCE COWBOYS: THE LAWMAN do I most relate to? ADDIE!! Because? Oh, come on—this woman is the epitome of what women have been fighting for lo, these last several centuries. And believe me, I did not write Addie—Addie told me how to write her character starting back in book one, THE DRIFTER, where she showed up as a secondary character and was so loved that she had to have her own story. She is Everywoman—intelligent, outspoken, feisty, a dreamer, a fighter, a woman who stands for something, who works to make life better today and one who has big ideas for the way the world might look in the future.

As a woman of the south who grew up in a small mountain town in the hillbilly
country of southwest Virginia, then met and married a fabulous guy from
Milwaukee, I have known my share of challenges. Always a big dreamer, it wasn’t
so much that I longed to escape those hills and that small town as it was that I
early on began to question and wonder about that bigger world. So I moved on
(but never away—that town and its people are my roots and I never forget that!)

Between my junior and senior years in college, an anonymous donor made it
possible for me to attend a summer theater workshop in NYC. It was my first time
there and I was going to be there for six whole weeks!!! We lived in a dorm at
NYU in Greenwich Village; the theater was then located in the village (it has
since moved ‘uptown’ to Broadway). That summer changed my life—while I was there
my father had a major heart attack back in Virginia. My parents insisted I stay
and see the experience through. My roommate’s boyfriend stole every dime I
wasn’t carrying with me (fortunately I had no credit card, just cash and my air
ticket for going home). I ate a lot of Italian ices and slices of pizza that
summer. It was my first encounter with people (including my roommate – a wealthy
young woman from CT) who experimented with hallucinogenic drugs and the first
test of my own moral standards in terms of drugs and sex. It was a life-defining
summer for me and one, despite the trauma, that I cherish as the time when I
defined who I was and who I would be.

Years later I moved to Milwaukee and married that fabulous guy—and faced a whole
new set of challenges. My husband and most of our friends were Jewish and I had
to learn a new culture, new traditions, new ways of looking at personal history.
Our friends started having families—we learned we could not have children. We
tried adoption at a time when agencies frowned on mixed-religious couples taking
in a child…so no adoption. We found other paths for our lives—paths that taught
me much about aging and caring and how to survive the physical challenges of
life. I became the long-distance caregiver to my parents and then helped see my
husband’s mother through her final days. We breathed and thought—at last—and
then I was diagnosed with cancer and once we got through that—my husband was
diagnosed with two incurable lung diseases. In Dec. 2011, we were told there was
no more to be done—it might be weeks or months but certainly not even a year
before he would be gone. Another challenge—how to spend that time wisely and in
such a way there would be no regrets.

I am proud to say we did it our way—he died at home with me beside him. He had
been prepared for this moment for months, taking it in stride as he did all the
challenges of his life—“It is what it is,” he would tell me with a smile and
then turn the conversation to something else. I truly believe he must have
originated that catch phrase! It took me longer to come to a moment of
acceptance—I wanted to fight even when I understood on an intellectual level,
that continuing to put him through such attempts was selfish. Eventually I came
to accept that this was his life, his choice. Do not misunderstand: he did
everything he could, continued to take his meds, continued to exercise his mind
and body; continued to socialize with friends and family—continued to LIVE!

Now it’s been nearly five years since we got that death sentence and I look back
at the road I have traveled without him physically here. And what I know for
sure (as Oprah would say) is that the experiences that shaped me before I met
him and those that shaped our lives together continue to sustain me.

And it is that incredible experience that I brought to the writing of Addie’s story.