"He's teaching you about WHAT?" they hollered long distance.

"About sets."

"He's teaching you about SEX?"

"About SETS," I protested. "You know, sets of numbers, the null set ..."

I did not progress much beyond these initial math lessons with David, although I'd like to claim otherwise. When we first dated in college I read him poetry, and he looked over my shoulder at the cash machine, did calculations on the back of his program at the theater, and figured out my computer password. Yet, from the beginning, although our minds were so far removed, our personalities meshed. We were both creative spirits, flaky and excitable. We were both eager to spin new ideas into the world and make our names by crafting something beautiful. I was eager to become a literary artist and, as mathematical as David was, he aspired to be an artist too. To him proofs were aesthetic objects. The black hole that math had become for me after years of painful classes and textbooks was to him bright with patterns and shining constellations, numbers infinite as stars.

But accepting mathematical ideals of beauty is not the same as understanding them, and accepting the culture that comes with David's vocation is another challenge entirely. As I discovered soon after we got married, that culture is nocturnal. According to computer science lore, at the dawn of the computer age programmers and computer scientists had to work at night so they would have the computer time and bandwidth necessary for their projects. This is no longer called for because computers can now handle heavy traffic at all times of day. Still, the tradition remains. Great ideas in computer science, brilliant programming and brainstorming sessions are supposed to happen in the wee hours of the morning. This schedule is less than ideal for a spouse with diurnal rhythms. When it comes to raising children, it's downright impractical, except when there's a screaming newborn in the house at 3 a.m. Then David really shines. In terms of adjusting his schedule to fit that of our growing children, he manages to get to bed by 1 a.m. most nights, but he's still a nocturnal creature. Getting the kids to school is just not something he can manage -- except with heroic effort when I'm out of town.

Studying literature and writing fiction, I have dedicated myself to valuing and examining what it is to be human. I am interested in tone and texture and moral ambiguity -- qualities that David doesn't seem to look for in books. True, he can read my work -- which is more than I can do for his. But his comments are those of an outsider looking in: "That was a fun chapter," or "That story went really fast." Or "Something about the tone of those pages -- I don't know -- seemed kind of grumpy."

David's culture is about technology rather than humanity; it is futurist rather than contemplative. My novels are about character and community and the way we live now. I know that in his heart, David thinks "now" is old hat, as obsolete as the computers currently on the market. David enjoys prototypes, predictions and the prophecies of science-fiction books -- of which he has a massive, dog-eared collection. As a writer of lovingly published hardback fiction, I find my husband's library of over 1,000 mass-market sci-fi paperbacks just a little distressing. But science fiction is ingrained in David's scientific life. David cannot part with his collection any more than he can stop watching "Babylon 5." I've tried to keep the books out of sight. Call me a literary snob, I just can't allow my Keats to share a shelf with David's Arthur C. Clarke. When we were in graduate school, I lined the big closet under our stairs with bookcases and David kept his science fiction there, double-shelved. When friends came over they had to push the coats to one side to get in and see David's books. I have to admit, while I hated the books, the hidden library had its appeal. We called it Narnia.

We'll have our ninth anniversary this summer, this numbers person and I. My math phobia has persevered unabated and I continue to turn up my nose at space odysseys. I will never understand my husband's research or get inside his mathematical mind. Still, this marriage of two minds has its advantages.

David and I will never compete with each other. We will never come home from the office and talk about the same people. Indeed our diverse fields allow us diverse friends. We cannot be completely parochial about our individual views of the world and in this we enrich each other.

I've learned from David. I've watched him pace for hours around the living room trying to solve a problem and I've tried to emulate his tenacity. I've seen his love of reasoning and the way he looks in the most unexpected corners for the answers that he seeks. I admire his creative spirit. I've learned about myself in the way that married people always do. I've come to see myself more clearly in the contrast, the juxtaposition, of my mind and my husband's. At night my narrative imagination and his mathematical mind dream together, the voices of my fictional characters murmur along with his conjectures.

When it comes to our life's work, David and I will never be insiders for each other, but we can be fans. And there is something particularly sweet about enjoying an effort entirely foreign to your own. It takes a longer leap of the imagination, a greater attempt at empathy, to appreciate the differences. Therein lies true romance.
salon.com | April 19, 1999

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