OVERHAULING A LIFE
Over the course of our marriage, I’ve always maintained that a regular overhaul of our lives was of paramount importance — whether it was to pick apart bits of an old house or to question the trajectory of our careers. My husband claims that I’m too hung up with change for the sake of change. My retort to that has always been the same: “If that were the case, why would I not have changed my spouse?” Pat comes his answer: “Because I’m your golden goose.”
Now there is truth to that even though some people may raise an eyebrow at the patriarchal whiff of the words. After I quit a stable career in software development for a life in writing over twenty years ago, it was my husband’s trusted income that fed our family, put our children through college and helped me steer into my new career. And it was the steady flow of money from his job that now allowed us the flexibility of a bathroom overhaul during a pandemic that had eroded lives and jobs around the world. This summer, as we juggled our remodel and my husband’s impending retirement (after 38 years) from his company, we looked back fondly at an employer that had given him both a voice and a life.
I’ve long admired his core principles for a fulfilling career: Work hard and deep at a few things; be unafraid to speak your mind; become an expert in the field; build your brand in the things that matter; expand your network; collaborate, always letting others in on your own adventures; finally, be your own self-appointed evangelist because no one else will do it for you.
I enumerate these because in our three decades together, I’ve envied my husband his obsessive love of work. To him work has been unadulterated fun. The manner in which he has chosen to perform it — by never assuming the role of a manager — meant that he would have to prove his leadership qualities in a myriad other ways: By diving into problem solving; by taking on senior naysayers and fearmongers; by collaborating with people in his research lab and elsewhere in the company; by messing around with his company’s many products, by being in touch with others in the length and breadth of the high tech industry; by forging relationships with universities; by remembering to give back to his alma mater in India.
While doing all of this, he danced the night away with his colleagues in exotic locales; he fed kangaroos in Australia; he downed one too many shots of Moutai in Beijing; he posed with the smartest women in every corner of the world; he gossiped late into the night with Tunisians, Egyptians, Israelis, Turks, Greeks, Germans, Brazilians and countless others. With each of them, he seemed to find something in common with himself. My Facts King listened to their life stories and came home from trips to narrate them to me in excruciating detail, never failing, of course, to mention the names of their thesis advisors and the universities they’d graduated from. Let me state that each of my husband’s stories is its own Eiffel tower of pylons, girders, trusses, rivets, joists and beams in which no nail or nut may be missed.
I’ve had endless arguments with my partner for choosing to stay with the same company for decades. Why do that in Silicon Valley of all places? Who does that, I asked him, especially when he knew people in the right places who would likely want him to join forces with them? But his answer was always the same, that it went against the grain of what he had established for himself as his key personal and professional values. “And, in any case,” he said, “who needs money — beyond a certain point?”
Over the years, many friends went on to a life of great luxury by job-hopping. But my husband stayed with his stodgy old institution. Database fledglings working alongside him grew wing and muscle to start their own companies or flew away to more lucrative careers at younger, sexier workplaces. But my old man didn’t budge. Some became serial entrepreneurs. One of them now has a net worth of $1.4 billion — and almost no hair. My husband still has a luxuriant head of silver-gray that may need braiding by the time a vaccine is available for the coronavirus.
In his long history with the company, he has enjoyed several perks and privileges. Our children and I were part of memorable trips recognizing and honoring his talent and hard work. Many personal moments are hard to forget. The company sent out silver spoons for the birth of our children, invited the family for Easter, Halloween and Christmas and several other special occasions at the cafeteria of his research lab in the spectacular hills of Almaden Valley in California’s San Jose. Ah, those hills. I knew that most of all, my husband would miss the scenic drive to and from his lab.
The September day my husband and I went to fetch his things, we rode up those familiar hills one last time. My husband had insisted that we rent a van. I’d balked at it. A capacious trunk meant lugging all sorts of stone-age artifacts back into our home. But he won. As we drove up we were spooked by the red sun shimmering behind Californian smoke and fog. We were learning to accept a pewter sky in place of Californian blue. The climate itself was on overhaul. We’d simply change with it.
Our day in his office was long and filled with reminiscences (and tsk-tsks). We argued over what to save and what to chuck. We boxed up keepsakes as well as tons of papers that my husband may never ever look at. As I stared at the reams of paper in his filing cabinets, I recalled how, years ago, I’d been frustrated with his long hours at work. I bore most of the burden of juggling work and the demands of our two children while he traveled frequently on business. I wrote to his manager saying that I wished he’d spend more time at home. I’d felt, in some way, that the company owed him and our family so that the two of us could better balance our lives. His boss responded saying that my husband was self-driven and that he simply charted his own course. I was vexed. I suspect, however, that my frustration was more deep-seated. I recognized self-assurance and, most of all, contentment, in my husband.
Many of these feelings — and the recognition that I must love my work so much that my vocation must feel like a part of myself in order for me to thrive — impelled me to pursue a life of writing after ten years in high tech. I wanted to discover what my husband had found. Twenty years later, I can say that I have found it although I still haven’t discovered the moolah. But as long as I have my golden goose, I suppose I will live.
