10 Years

Ten years ago today Valarie and I met for the first time. It was at a house-warming party on New York's Upper East Side, thrown by Valarie's former roommates, who I knew through a mutual friend.

I remember I was really hungry and just inhaling cheese and crackers, but luckily in between chomps I got into a conversation with this bespectaled stranger about Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho, which it turns out we were both big fans of. I also remember talking about the cultural divide of the time, the battle for the Best Picture Oscar between Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction. I had recently read an article that cited a part of Tarantino's script in arguing that the art and culture you select as your favorites says something about who you are. Needless to say, Valarie and I bonded over being Pulp Fiction fanatics and not falling for that hackneyed Gump drivel.

We went out to dinner six days later and got together again on my birthday a couple days after that. But soon I had another matter to attend to: graduation from college at NYU, with my family flying in. Oh, and after that, I had already planned to move home to Oregon.

We talked for about three hours by phone every other day during the summer, and somehow I talked Valarie, whom I had spent a total of about four days with in person at that point, to visit Oregon. We went to the beach, over to Bend, up to Portland, and around the farm land and vineyards surrounding my parents' house in McMinnville.

Aside from that one-week reprieve, we spent about ten months apart while I earned the money to move back to New York. It was tough before the move being apart, and then in New York  it was tough at first there too because aside from Valarie I really didn't have any interest in being in NYC anymore.

After a little more than a year living out there, Valarie made the bold suggestion that we move to Portland. I had been pretty clear that I wasn't crazy about NYC, but I never wanted to dictate that she leave the East Coast, especially since her family, with whom she was and remains very close, was all there.

But Portland, I'd like to think, sold itself as a great city. I moved out here about six weeks before Valarie to get settled with an apartment, and I remember we laughed out loud at how cheap the rent was and how big the space: a one-bedroom place downtown at 11th and Jefferson, appropriately for Star Wars fanatics like us called The Empire.

A lot has changed through the years in Portland for us. Valarie started as a customer service rep taking personal ads at Willamette Week and was soon promoted to manager of the section as well as being in charge of the paper's website (she was very web savvy when most of us were just figuring out email). Then she moved to adidas, where she remains, writing and coordinating events and so on.

I started out here working at a series of temp office jobs. I worked in high tech out in Hillsboro, for a neurosurgeon at OHSU, in a trailer at the jobsite of a microchip plant being built in Gresham, and at a health insurance company. Then I moved on from temping to the Urban League and the American Institute of Architects. But it was thanks to a want-ad for a restaurant critic in a tiny and now defunct free weekly paper called Our Town, which Valarie insisted I apply for, that my fortunes changed and set me on the road to being a writer.

I didn't get the food critic job, but by applying I got my foot in the door writing video reviews at the paper, and that led to me writing movie reviews at Willamette Week, which Valarie also assisted on by giving me the inside scoop on when they were short on reviewers and when I should apply. In the years since, as I've been able to write for the New York Times and several other publications, she has remained my unofficial but deeply trusted editor. Valarie gave up a job at a literary agency reading manuscripts to move to Portland, and she has first-rate sensibilities about writing.

Jobs aside, we've also had great fun visiting places like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Vancouver (BC), New York, Philadelphia, London, Paris, Bruges (Belgium), Amsterdam, London again and Edinburgh. Now we've got Germany, Denmark, Argentina, Hong Kong and several other locales on the radar. And yet my favorite thing is still when we hang out together in the living room with our beloved cat Ruthie, reading or watching TV.

And there have been dark times, like September 11, when Valarie woke me up with a phone call to my hotel room in rural British Columbia (I was on a wine tour) to tell me "The World Trade Center is gone." Plus there were two presidential elections that didn't go our way -- officially at least. And there was the time the Blazers choked in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals. But the dark times were easier with a shoulder to cry on, and I must say they've been far, far outweighed by the good times.

Which is one of the millions of reasons I'm hoping for another 10 years and many more decades after that.

Comments

[Valarie]

You betcha, buster!

[justin]

You know you're from Portland when...

You compare the Blazer's Game 7 collapse against the Lakers to the tragedy on September 11.

...and sad as it may be, truth be told, the Blazer Game hit me harder...

[BK]

Congratulations. You're a wonderful couple. Salud! To another 10 years.
BK

[Ned]

Rolling w/ Valarie is like flying first class. Best wishes for the next ten years -- may they bring you two happiness, health, and success!