Up Till Now: The Autobiography

in a woman. I created my fantasy woman: obviously she had to be single. She didn’t have to have children of her own, but she couldn’t want to have children with me. Certainly I had to find her attractive. Okay, beautiful. She had to be free to travel with me. She had to have a big sense of humor. And she had to truly love horses. It was an impossible list, I knew, I could never find anyone like that. I was resigned to spending the rest of my life alone. That was hard for me to accept because I had all the desires and the passions and the physical ability that I’d always had.
    After Nerine’s death I had received hundreds of letters from people offering their condolences or advice or sympathy. Eventually I read them all. One of them attracted my attention, mostly because the calligraphy on the envelope was so striking. It was from a woman named Elizabeth Martin, whom I knew vaguely from the horse world. Elizabeth and her husband, Mike, had owned and operated a very successful saddlebred stable in Montecito, near Santa Barbara. They were well-respected trainers and had won several championships. I knew them from competing against their horses. I remembered having thought in passing that she was a beautiful woman, but I don’t think we’d ever said more than a few words in passing. I had heard that her husband had gotten cancer and she’d nursed him forseveral years until his death. The last time I’d seen her I’d been with Nerine at a horse show. Elizabeth had been one of the judges.
    Her letter was a surprise. “My husband died of cancer two years ago,” she wrote. “Since then I’ve been through all the stages of grief. I know what it is. And if there is anything I can do to help you get through this period, I’d be delighted.” When I read the letter I thought fate had handed it to me: you gave me the list, here’s the woman who fulfills that list. I remember telling some friends, “There’s a girl in Santa Barbara that I think I’ve got to meet.”
    Other women were sending me letters with their pictures in them. This was a lovely letter offering what I most needed, understanding of what I was going through. It was a sincere letter of sympathy and the message that eventually you heal; she didn’t even include her phone number. She had trained a horse owned by my business manager’s wife, so I got her phone number from him. And I called. We became friends on the phone. We spoke every day for several months, but she just didn’t have time to meet me. She was too busy; in addition to running a large business she was helping her mother deal with her father’s Alzheimer’s. Her parents were staying with her and, as she explained, she had learned enough about loss to know how to make the most of the time you have with the people you love. All she wanted to do was help me get through this period. I was so fearful of being alone that I wanted to cling to someone right away. As often as I told myself I didn’t want to get married again, that it was too painful, I also admitted to myself I needed to be with someone. Somehow that seemed logical at the time.
    Finally we made plans to meet for dinner. I’d spent that day in San Francisco, interviewing scientists for a show we were planning about the Human Genome Project, which fostered a competition between the government and private industry to map out the entire human genome. Fascinating stuff, and as I was listening to these brilliant people discussing the very matrix of life I was thinking, I can’t wait to see her tonight.
    I was exhausted when I got home; I drove up to Santa Barbara inthe last stages of sleep deprivation. We met on the pier in Santa Barbara. I got out of my car and immediately saw this beautiful lady standing beside her car, looking so elegant and dignified. We had dinner that night in a quiet restaurant on the pier, a place she had often gone with her husband. She sort of knew I was an actor, but had never seen a full episode of Star Trek and knew nothing about the show. In fact, many months later we went to dinner with Patrick Stewart and his wife, and Elizabeth was listening to our conversation and interrupted, “I’m not sure I understand. How can you be the captain,” she said, pointing to Patrick, “if he’s the captain?”
    So it became obvious she wasn’t after me for my Star Trek action figures—which, by the way are still available at The Store on Shatnervision.com. In fact, it quickly became even more