Cobb

� Career Move | Main | Contingent Support �

March 05, 2005

A Tribute To My Wife

I generally talk about the Spousal Unit in passing, but I want you to know that she is saving my life right now.

In a highly dramatic and surprising turn of events, it seems that it is unlikely that I will be going to China after all. All I'm going to say about that is that I lost the equivalent of about.. Hmm. I'm still not ready to talk about it. But let me put it this way, I was rappin' like Special Ed two weeks ago. Now like Chuck D, I'm living low, next to the bass. (Turn up the radio). And very much like the losing finalists in The Amazing Race, it had to do with the fact that I wasn't driving the taxi and one of the members on my team went ballistic.

It is difficult for someone as brilliant as I to give up millions of dollars, and that's what this was all about, and go back to the previous mindstate. So I have been pitching an internal bitch for a fortnight.

The other day, however, in the wake of an interview I had early Friday morning in Sacramento (hell yes I have a backup plan), the wife and I sat down to lunch at our favorite mexican restaurant, Rosa's on PCH in Hermosa Beach. We met about 17 years ago in that small town on the West Coast and used to eat their excellent machaca on the regular. So every time we go back, we are kind of plunged into that pleasant nostalgia, and now that we've been married over a decade and are not so entirely resentful of the fat and wrinkles on our faces, the smiles are wholly genuine.

On this particular day we took a break from talking about the present and talked about the past. We realized something different about the context of my proposal to her. She realized that I was indeed a great deal more spontaneous about it than she thought. I realized that she didn't know. It happened sometime in the spring of 94 at a restaurant in Cambridge. I invited her out to Boston with not a whole lot of particulars in mind. She had basically given me an ultimatum - are we going to be just friends or what? So in what started out to be an attempt at rekindling an old flame to see where it might lead, ended up as an engagement for real. I was so taken by the moment, that, in front of the gathered crowd at the Border Grill, I proposed twice. I asked her to marry me and she said yes. I said something to the effect that it can't be that easy, and I really want you to know this is what I want, so I asked again. She said yes again.

Cynthia grew up in the Midwest in the Baptist tradition. I wouldn't have guessed that I'd marry such a character in a million years. But what I found out the hard way is that such a practical individual would be exactly what I needed. So we discussed coulda woulda shoulda and speculated what kind of loser I would be, had I continued in my search for a trophy wife. After all, that was one of the attractions to Boston - a veritable treasure trove of grad coeds. I was not above trolling old Harvard Yearbooks and crashing alumni functions, but that was a different me. What? Did you think I just hung out at bars and clubs? You think I hung out in Edgartown for the seafood? Quite frankly I had had it up to here with American women, but fortunately that one of Schroedinger's cats is quite certainly dead.

So I married the right girl. The girl next door, from Detroit. Never once has she ever appeared frivolous, thoughtless, careless. In many ways she is and always has been my rock. I could never think about living with anyone other than she, and I never tried. And it is in the living together that we have forged something which is extraordinary to both of us, not incidently because our lives are so very different than when we met.

At this particular point, she's a great sounding board. I may be fairly articulate when I begin to write, but there's a lot I don't say in person. Yet I expect people to know what I mean. Listening to me can be an exercise in either frustration or futility, because I'm not one of those who likes to explain himself. I've been told that my impatience with people can be rather transparent. So griping with her offline before dealing with business has spared me many an embarrassing conversation confrontation. It's a particularly useful thing when I'm in between gigs.

This time around, I'm going to do the full-time thing. I've been independent for almost four years since the dot com days, and it has been feast or famine. So the next [four?] years are for her. Some nice predictable hours and cashflow. I've swallowed hard and recognized that business opportunities of all sorts abound for those with the right networks, and this will be just another way to build another network - something I have gotten a lot better at over the past few years.

Posted by mbowen at March 5, 2005 03:35 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.visioncircle.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/3354

Comments

Posted by: memer at March 7, 2005 07:45 PM

Posted by: Juliette at March 10, 2005 03:50 PM