LOVE STORIES
After 15 years on divergent paths, pair finds spark undimmed

By Tanya Bricking Leach
Advertiser Staff Writer

Cyn and Lisa Connais met nearly 21 years ago in the Army in Texas, before the days of "don't ask, don't tell," and before even they knew that they had some kind of secret.

"We were just sort of joined at the hip," said Cyn, 44, a marriage and family counselor originally from Missouri. "Everybody else knew we were gay before we did."

For years they went their separate ways, partly because they were stationed in different places and partly because they knew how difficult it might be to stay together.

Cyn went on to marry a man, and Lisa, 43, originally from Wisconsin, came out as a lesbian to her disapproving parents 18 years ago and moved on to other relationships. She said she let go of Cyn for 15 years out of love.

"I didn't want her to wake up at 40 and hate me," Lisa said. "I didn't want her to miss me. I wanted her to go forward."

But in 2000, around their birthdays, they both broke up with their significant others and found themselves thinking back to each other.

Lisa, a hospice nurse, unsure where Cyn ended up, used US Search, a business that searches public records, to find her old friend. She just wanted to know how Cyn was doing and if she ever married and had kids.

Cyn never did have children, and her marriage was over.

There was still a spark between the old friends, as well as the amazing connection the two had shared years earlier. They even knew what the other was driving.

"I always pictured you in a little red pickup," Lisa told Cyn during the phone call that changed everything. Cyn stared in her driveway at exactly that.

Cyn told Lisa she had nearly been bowled over that week by a red-headed woman in a black Jeep Cherokee.

Back in Hawai'i, guess what Lisa was driving?

Shortly thereafter, Cyn moved to Hawai'i and decided it was where she wanted to make a life with Lisa.

They chose a last name together, "Connais," which not only brought them higher in the alphabet than their former "T" names, but also contained seven letters, the same as their old names. Plus, it was fitting. In French, it means, "to know, to experience, to enjoy," the way they felt about each other.

On Feb. 2, 2002, the women who had shared room 222 back in 1983 merged their paths once more in a commitment ceremony.

Six attendants wearing solid colors of the rainbow gathered with 75 people in their back yard on the Windward side of O'ahu and formed a circle to bless them.

The ceremony was a mixture of Jewish, Bohemian, African-American and Hawaiian influences.

"Everybody cried," Lisa said.

Then, this month, when they heard about gay couples marrying in San Francisco, they wanted to be legally wed as well. When they learned the California Supreme Court ordered San Francisco officials to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, they headed instead to Portland, Ore., where county officials were still issuing them, and got one of their own.

"This wasn't a political statement," Cyn said. "This wasn't about anything but us furthering our commitment to each other."

Even if their legal marriage is overturned in three months, at least for now, they say they're as married as anybody else.

"I had never loved another person in the whole world the way I loved her," Lisa said. "I believe that we should be able to enjoy the freedoms that the rest of our country enjoys. Look, we're just like you. We want the same rights too."

They say they have now what they never had before: unconditional love.

"I've never found that before, not even with my family," said Cyn, who is from a Jewish, African-American family that holds close to traditions. With Lisa, a white woman whose parents raised her in a conservative Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints environment, she discovered the unlikely bond. "We're in this together. This was the last thing that I could do to show her I was in this for the long haul. This was like the icing on the cake. So, let's have dessert."

Tanya Bricking Leach writes about relationships for The Advertiser. If you'd like her to tell your love story next, send the details to tbricking@honoluluadvertiser.com or call her at 525-8026.