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A Valentine for my husband
In honor of Valentine's Day, this is a love letter
to my husband. But it's kind of a sad love letter because he doesn't
read my column, so he will never read the letter.
Last time I complained about his disinterest, he said,
"OK, fine, read me your columns."
So I read a column out loud to him. And in the middle,
he fell asleep.
To test him, I said, "So, what do you think?"
He jerked his head up, like a college kid in an 8
a.m. class, and he said, "Uh. It got slow after the first couple
of paragraphs."
I do not love my husband because he is a good listener.
But I love him because he is never scared to change his career,
and he always does something interesting that he loves. His excitement
with what he does makes our life together more fun.
My husband's first job was as a composer. When he
was 10. For most kids this wouldn't be a job, but his parents didn't
have money for private school in LA, so my husband got a scholarship
to a top-tier school for his musical talents.
In college, he decided that to be a great composer
you need to have something very new to say, and he did not have
anything that new to say about music. So he quit music.
He went to film school and earned spending money by
editing soft-core porn: "The Magic Blanket Bikini." (He
says it was very, very soft because the star announced midway through
filming that she didn't want to take her clothes off.) He made video
art for his master's thesis, and his work became so well known that
it is part of the curricula at UCLA's film school.
But he got tired of the film industry after one too
many Magic Blankets. So when he graduated, he took a job designing
video games. He learned to say Ka-pow! and Ouch! in four languages,
and he got to wheel and deal with big budgets from major gaming
companies.
I married a game designer with a penchant for piano
and a portfolio of films that featured ex-girlfriends being constrained.
("The director," he explained, "always dates the
actress.")
On Sept. 11, my husband found himself looking me over,
dust-covered and shaken in a hospital bed. Suddenly, he wanted to
save the world. He worked for free for nonprofits until one hired
him. Now he helps people who would make me too sad to face every
day. He works with them in ways that would stretch my patience (admittedly,
thin) to its limits.
My husband drives his parents nuts: "We drove
to all those music lessons and then you go to film school! ...
We paid for five years of film school and you make video games!"
He drives my parents nuts, too: "What is his
job? Video is not a job! ... Volunteering is not a job!"
But my husband makes me excited. I grew up with people who picked
a career and stuck with it forever, even when it turned sour.
Our careers are not who we are. But the choices we
make for what we do with our days definitely reflects our values.
I picked a partner who won't put up with being bored or uninspired,
and his standards for his life make me raise the standards for my
own. His career choices also help me to see him more clearly; he
has a bigger heart than I ever saw when I married him -- except
when it comes to reading my columns.
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