A Son Graduated in the Manner of the Layers of Colors in the Sunset
Hilton Garden Inn, Room 302, Rye Brook, New York
Jacqueline Leung and Tim Huth, Rye Brook, New York (20 May 2011)
I am still 50 years of age (until five days from today), and all of my children have graduated from college. I think of myself as young, and believe that people think I'm old, and I'm so far ahead of where most people are of my age (in terms of the age of my children) that it seems like a life has ended as a life begins.
My children have been a blessing. I doubt that very many parents have ever had children who were so little trouble, who did so well with so little apparent effort from their parents, and who caused so little trouble. When talking to my son's girlfriend Jackie Leung (who is a wonderful person herself: talented, smart, funny, kind, pretty), about my son Tim, who graduated today from Purchase College, I told her that the only problem I could think of with Tim was that he played World of Warcraft too much for one semester in high school, which led us to restrict his computer use and which I believe he wasn't in the top ten of students in his large graduating class. He was twelfth. In a class of almost 600 (much better than I had done).
He is a good man. A hard worker. Intelligent. Focused. Dependable. And even kind, even when he thinks he may be smarter than the people he is working with--and that is a balancing act. He graduated today cum laude (and there were very few people graduating with honors) with a BFA in theater design technology, but his concentration and his field is lighting design.
The world of lighting design is strange, as is the world of television producing (where my daughter Erin works), so most of the jobs he will have, at least for the short term, will be short-term jobs. Still, even though not too many of his classmates have jobs, our son has more jobs than he can accept, though the longest lasts only a couple of months. He starts work tomorrow, out at the end of Long Island, in Sag Harbor. Then he'll probably take a very short-term job in between before he spends two months at a theater at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.
I don't understand lighting design, but I can tell that my child knows what he is doing, and lighting design seems like the work for him. Nancy and I have attended all of these plays that Tim has ever worked on at his schools, and one that he worked on over the summer as an intern. After the one play he had designed the lighting for, I noted one part of the lighting that I particularly liked, but I added that I didn't really notice much of the lighting or know how to evaluate it. He said that was fine, that usually lighting succeeded if you did not notice it.
He is a person who understands his abilities but is not overtaken by ego. He is happy to work in the shadows yet create the light that shines on others and makes others look better, work better. It is rare to find a man as good as my son, and I believe I can take some credit for creating a person better than I will ever be, but I know this was a joint effort with my wife Nancy. Despite all of our faults, we were created with one skill that we both shared (well, besides a capacity for language): we were born to be parents. Or we learned to be parents because we were both eldest children. I don't understand what is difficult about parenting. It has been one of the few things in my life that I have done well.
I like to say, and so I say it all the time, that I have only two skills: talking and typing. But I need to add parenting to it, because I've made great children, though only with Nancy's leavening. I am lucky to have the children I have: smart, dedicated, skilled, fun, and even good-looking.
Tonight, we give the last (and only the second) of our children over to the world. We ask the world to take care of them, and to take particular care of our last child to enter that bitter cold of adulthood.
And to Tim we ask him to be exactly who he is, because he is perfect just so.
Good luck to all our children: To our daughter Erin, who works skillfully in the heartless world of television. To our son-in-law Jimmy, who is an extremely talented video editor, whose work in commercials you have probably seen (because I have, and I watch almost no TV). To our son Tim, who will immediately join his profession the day after graduating from college. To his girlfriend Jackie, who has a year of school to finish, but whose skills in scenic design continue to amaze us.
They are all in entertainment in some way, but you will almost never see them on a stage or a screen, though they will make those stages and screens better for you.
ecr. l'inf.
Jacqueline Leung and Tim Huth, Rye Brook, New York (20 May 2011)I am still 50 years of age (until five days from today), and all of my children have graduated from college. I think of myself as young, and believe that people think I'm old, and I'm so far ahead of where most people are of my age (in terms of the age of my children) that it seems like a life has ended as a life begins.
My children have been a blessing. I doubt that very many parents have ever had children who were so little trouble, who did so well with so little apparent effort from their parents, and who caused so little trouble. When talking to my son's girlfriend Jackie Leung (who is a wonderful person herself: talented, smart, funny, kind, pretty), about my son Tim, who graduated today from Purchase College, I told her that the only problem I could think of with Tim was that he played World of Warcraft too much for one semester in high school, which led us to restrict his computer use and which I believe he wasn't in the top ten of students in his large graduating class. He was twelfth. In a class of almost 600 (much better than I had done).
He is a good man. A hard worker. Intelligent. Focused. Dependable. And even kind, even when he thinks he may be smarter than the people he is working with--and that is a balancing act. He graduated today cum laude (and there were very few people graduating with honors) with a BFA in theater design technology, but his concentration and his field is lighting design.
The world of lighting design is strange, as is the world of television producing (where my daughter Erin works), so most of the jobs he will have, at least for the short term, will be short-term jobs. Still, even though not too many of his classmates have jobs, our son has more jobs than he can accept, though the longest lasts only a couple of months. He starts work tomorrow, out at the end of Long Island, in Sag Harbor. Then he'll probably take a very short-term job in between before he spends two months at a theater at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.
I don't understand lighting design, but I can tell that my child knows what he is doing, and lighting design seems like the work for him. Nancy and I have attended all of these plays that Tim has ever worked on at his schools, and one that he worked on over the summer as an intern. After the one play he had designed the lighting for, I noted one part of the lighting that I particularly liked, but I added that I didn't really notice much of the lighting or know how to evaluate it. He said that was fine, that usually lighting succeeded if you did not notice it.
He is a person who understands his abilities but is not overtaken by ego. He is happy to work in the shadows yet create the light that shines on others and makes others look better, work better. It is rare to find a man as good as my son, and I believe I can take some credit for creating a person better than I will ever be, but I know this was a joint effort with my wife Nancy. Despite all of our faults, we were created with one skill that we both shared (well, besides a capacity for language): we were born to be parents. Or we learned to be parents because we were both eldest children. I don't understand what is difficult about parenting. It has been one of the few things in my life that I have done well.
I like to say, and so I say it all the time, that I have only two skills: talking and typing. But I need to add parenting to it, because I've made great children, though only with Nancy's leavening. I am lucky to have the children I have: smart, dedicated, skilled, fun, and even good-looking.
Tonight, we give the last (and only the second) of our children over to the world. We ask the world to take care of them, and to take particular care of our last child to enter that bitter cold of adulthood.
And to Tim we ask him to be exactly who he is, because he is perfect just so.
Good luck to all our children: To our daughter Erin, who works skillfully in the heartless world of television. To our son-in-law Jimmy, who is an extremely talented video editor, whose work in commercials you have probably seen (because I have, and I watch almost no TV). To our son Tim, who will immediately join his profession the day after graduating from college. To his girlfriend Jackie, who has a year of school to finish, but whose skills in scenic design continue to amaze us.
They are all in entertainment in some way, but you will almost never see them on a stage or a screen, though they will make those stages and screens better for you.
ecr. l'inf.
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