How a Bag of Donuts and a Single Question Changed My Life

Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, 2003

This is going to reveal just how old I am, but screw it. I'm gonna tell the story.

This was back in 1988 and I was a senior in high school. I had just gotten a job as a courtesy clerk—we called them box boys—at a neighborhood grocery store. I’d had this type of job the previous year at a much larger store with a much more physically demanding routine, and I thought I was hot shit at this smaller neighborhood joint.

Well, as soon as I started the job, I got to know a girl who was also working there as a box boy. And we just didn’t hit it off. First time I saw her, she told me, “You need to replace the bottle cart.” And I was like, Who the hell is this girl telling me what to do? I know my shit. I said, “Yeah, I know that.”

And we just didn’t really get along.

At one point, early on, I couldn’t remember how to pronounce her name—and I needed to address her by name. So I thought I’d get away with being breezy and just call her “dude.” After all, being a box boy like the rest of us, she was just one of the guys.

And she looked at me and said, “You don’t remember my name, do you?”

No—let me correct that. She said, “You don’t remember how to pronounce my name, do you?”

And I just went… gut punch.

Just to give you a picture—I was used to going to a well-to-do private school with lots of more petite girls, athletes, mean girls, and things like that. Obviously, my impressions were superficial, from the outside... I was not a popular student.

But then here is this girl who’s—you know, not tall by today’s standards, but 5'9", my own height. Shoulders and back just… broad. I mean, she was strong. And she had what I thought of as a “rocker chick” look. She had a spiral perm and the way she dressed… like a nosebleed spectator at a Bon Jovi concert (but that’s another story).

Kara in feathered hair mode in high school

And she acted kind of goofy… but something told me she wasn’t as goofy as she made out to be. And really the true dingbat was me, for thinking: Wow, imagine a girl pretending to be stupider than the guys around her.

But anyway, I just couldn’t figure her out.

One time, she and some friends drove by me on the street, and she cat-called me. I didn’t know what a catcall was. I just thought she was screaming at me for some reason.

Later on I asked her about it. I said, “Was that you?” And she said, “No, that was my evil twin.”

And I said, “You… have an evil twin?”

“Yeah, Charles. I do.”

I hadn’t talked to girls much back then, but none of this made any sense to me.

And one more story: I was in the back room, sweeping with the big push broom. I used to do this at the other grocery store I’d worked at. And back then the managers—who were rather snaky—would follow you and remove obstacles that you’d cleaned around, things like end displays, so they could point and say you hadn’t cleaned that area.

So there I was in this back room, going back and forth, and for some reason I couldn’t get the damn floor clean. More and more crumbs kept showing up where I’d just swept.

And I found myself thinking, I just cleaned that spot. But there weren't any PICs (Persons In Charge) around to mess with me... What was the deal with all these crumbs?

And finally I looked up, and there was this pallet piled with boxes, freight, mostly bags of chips. And at the very top of this mountain of boxes and chips was the girl I was working with—sitting there with her feet dangling, like Huck Finn or something—and she’s just snacking on a bag of Ruffles chips and tossing some of them onto the floor. Smirking at me like Ice Man from Top Gun.

And I thought: Who does this?

A papier mache severed head... who does this?!

I did not have much of a sense of humor back then.

Well, some months went by. And again, we did not really get along too well. But little by little… we did.

And there were a few times when I thought: Is she flirting with me?

And finally, I decided—to make a long story not quite as long—I’m going to ask this girl out.

I went into the store. I’d been shooting baskets all day. It was getting close to summer and I was wrapping up four years of high school. I was wearing a high school gym shirt that I’d cut in half and tied off on each side, so it was (yeah…) a midriff-baring shirt. That was the fashion of the times. Sleeves cut off. I was wearing some rather small gym shorts, too. And I had a bag of donuts with me.

I went into the store with a friend and told him, “I’m going to ask this girl out.”

Senior year football portrait, 1988

So we were standing around up front, and I could see this girl stocking in the pop aisle. My heart was pounding. I couldn’t get myself to move. I was rubbing my fingers and thumb into the paper bag of donuts, just smearing it black—made it all oily.

And finally my friend said, “Are you going to ask her out or what?”

So I went down the aisle and I kind of made some small talk—which was not a very common thing for me to do—and finally I said: “Would you like to go out sometime?”

And she said: “Is this a joke?”

And it took some effort to convince her I was not kidding. I really did want to go out with her.

Well, she said yes. And the next night, we sat in her living room and watched this movie with John Candy called The Great Outdoors on VHS.

And we went on some more dates.

And then we got married.

And that was the most amazing ride of my whole life. The most amazing, educational, surprising, dazzling ride I’ll ever have.

That girl—not “dude!”—was named Kara.

And today, we celebrate the 36th anniversary of our first date.

Sitting on the steps outside our brand new Accessory Dwelling Unit, summer 2018

And I look back now... and I’m goddamn proud of what we accomplished.

Kara Sparkled On in September of 2023, so this is not the first time I’ve sat with an anniversary like this since her passing. And you know, the experience of anniversaries—whether it’s the first date or the last time we went in for a CT scan or that one time we saw a really bad Cindy Crawford movie with William Baldwin (which I would have no idea when we saw that—bad example)—the experience of them is always different, right?

But I can say that this time around... well, one: Since May 20, 2019, I’ve never not observed this day in a bittersweet way. It was the 30th anniversary of our first date and the day Kara went in for a colonoscopy, where we were told she had a significant, very likely cancerous mass in her rectum. So that’s six anniversaries now, all carrying that layer of memory. I don’t get to have one without the other.

But in addition to that, today I’ve got a long-term renter moving into both the apartment and Kara's massage space. This person comes from a circle of friends—a community of artists—with a very special connection to Kara. So it feels... I don’t know. Serendipitous? Synchronistic? Miraculous? Fortuitous?

Simply because I’ve been desperately needing to stop running the apartment as a short-term rental—with all the scheduling and messaging and troubleshooting and constant turnover. It’s just too much work for the kind of workload I’m carrying these days. I’d been really worried about how to move forward with even the goal of financial survival, let alone improvement, while the Airbnb business just kept dragging me down. And now—here we are, at the perfect time.

At the same time, it all feels like it’s happening so fast. Of course, we’ve been preparing for this for a couple of months, but still—when it actually happens, it feels sudden.

And I’m not just clearing out Kara’s massage room so it can become an art studio—though that’s something she would have absolutely loved: The space becoming a place of creative activity and magic instead of just a room full of... I don’t know, things I didn’t know where to put—that’s wonderful.

But going through those drawers—her medical supplies—touching that equipment again. That bit into me a little.

The day Kara wrote her final blog post, Aug. 21, 2023

I look around at the apartment now, cleared of all the books and DVDs and furnishings Kara had chosen for our Airbnb guests. Watching it become a simpler space—still furnished, but with room for someone to live there for a long time—it’s weirdly profound.

I’ve hidden the Airbnb listing. I don’t plan to go back to that platform. If I ever do need to do short-term rental again (knock on wood), it won’t be through Airbnb. It just wasn’t a good fit for us after a certain point.

But looking back on the six years we ran our Airbnb...

We had the place built when Kara was starting to struggle with her health. It hadn’t even been open six months when she got her diagnosis.

Doing the landlord thing–that was the most “adulting” thing we’d ever done together. She’d been saying, “Our neighborhood’s becoming a tourist destination—we should get passive income off that.” It was supposed to be a 10–to–12 year plan. We’d pay off the home equity line of credit, then have some steady passive income.

It was all built on this dream of doing it together.

Portland Air Guitar, Paris Theatre, June 16, 2017, photo by Lenny Gotter

We took one-night rentals. Two-night rentals. We had four-hour turnarounds. We hustled. Kara ran everything—scheduling, messaging, troubleshooting. I did the bulk of the cleaning. She cleaned the bathroom, made the bed. We kept that going for four years and three months, the two of us.

And she never missed a beat. Not with dozens of surgeries. Not with radiation or chemo. Not with nerve pain or fevers or abscesses. She did not miss. Not until six months before she passed, when she was struggling so much that she asked her aunt Jeanna to take over the cleaning.

Jeanna and I kept the business going. We maintained our Superhost status. One five-star review after another. And I look back now... and I’m goddamn proud of what we accomplished.

There were a lot of people—maybe even hundreds—who stayed in that little apartment. And most of them experienced exactly what Kara had envisioned: A sanctuary. We called it the West Nest. And the West Nest gave people that sanctuary.

Now it’s changing, in a way that feels right and good. But it’s still weird.

People like to say this kind of thing is the “end of a chapter” or “closing the book.” I’ve never loved those metaphors. End of an era—that’s a lighter way of talking about transitions.

But my go-to metaphor for the big life changes is: Death and rebirth. And hey—that’s what I’ve been doing for a long time now. Deaths and rebirths.

But that doesn’t make it easier.

So, I guess, on this date... I just wanted to give a hug to the 36 years of our togetherness, and the six years we gave something special to the world from the end of our driveway.

And I guess that’s how I want to close: We’re keeping it going. We’re not stopping. Just because her body is now contained in an urn on the built-in shelf in the dining room—that doesn’t change the fact that the Mission continues.

Happy every single second we’ve ever spent together, babe.

Until next time.

–Charles Austin Muir

(This post was recorded and transcribed with Voice Memos)

P.S. You want to see our Airbnb then and now, check it out!