Ruby Sparks Inspires: Words, Music, Love

Today, my husband celebrates his 53rd birthday. In addition to a handsome box of his favorite cigars, I gave him a gift of words to music, inspired by a film I saw recently.

Ruby Sparks is 21st Century Pygmalion; a young writer's obsession with a character he sculpts from his soul, the conception of his true love. Ruby is Allan's Venus, blooming not from a seashell in the ocean, but from the pages of his DeLuxe typewriter.  Early in the film, Allan describes her to the psychologist who is trying to help him break through writer's block. He notes the roots of Ruby's origins and wanders through a string of observations about her character--her charms, her idiosyncracies, the honor of her affection. This piece of gentle monologue is captured and set to music on the soundtrack in a song that bears the same title as the film. I have not been able to let go of it just yet, and wondered, in the way that I like to set my own life to music, what words would I use to describe my love, were I the Pygmalion whose conceived love leaps from imagination to life. And so, having shared that piece of words and music with my husband, told him how I would describe him, and as I did, violin from Ruby Sparks continued to rise and fall in the background. This is what I said:

You're tall, and walk with the tall-man gait-- a confident stride of men who seem to accomplish much, yet not all tall men have done what you have. You can't open your mail. Nor can you tolerate the calamity of child's play, stuff which rolls off my own back. But you feel things, notice things. You note the changing of light in a room.

I don't remember what else I said before he reached his hand across the table to mine, only what I felt as I tried to rein in the rest of the words.

Happy Birthday, Husband. Know that I see you. I love you.