A love story
Ann Arbor, 1959
He ... was a lot of things: a Korean War veteran; a Manhattanite; a woodworker, inventer, and tinkerer: the youngest of six children of a disabled immigrant watch repairman. When he was a boy, he used to dress in his best suit on Sundays and be chased all the way to the Metropolitan Museum, where he'd spend the day looking and sketching, and then be chased all the way back home. These days he was a doctoral candidate in mathematics. But what he primarily was, on that evening, was drunk.
She ... was a lot of things: a teacher, by profession and by nature; an adventurer, in her quiet way, who had once moved from Maryland to Egypt to teach school; the eldest daughter of a very minor Anglo-American industrialist. A shy voice and a social conscience, in a ladylike skirt. She'd always been the one to ask the hard questions in catechism class and be sent to the headmistress. Right now she was a graduate student in linguistics. What she mostly was, that evening, was unimpressed.
"Where are you from?" he asked.
"Baltimore," she said.
"Baltimore!" he said. "I hate that place. No matter which way you approach it, it always looks like a slum!"
And that should have been the end of it.
But his friends knew one of her roommates, and told them that he'd been talking all about this little linguist he'd met at the party, and how cute she was. For a girl who'd been told all her life that she was "almost pretty", this was strong beer. So when he phoned and asked her out, she said yes.
Today is their 50th wedding anniversary: my parents.
He ... was a lot of things: a Korean War veteran; a Manhattanite; a woodworker, inventer, and tinkerer: the youngest of six children of a disabled immigrant watch repairman. When he was a boy, he used to dress in his best suit on Sundays and be chased all the way to the Metropolitan Museum, where he'd spend the day looking and sketching, and then be chased all the way back home. These days he was a doctoral candidate in mathematics. But what he primarily was, on that evening, was drunk.
She ... was a lot of things: a teacher, by profession and by nature; an adventurer, in her quiet way, who had once moved from Maryland to Egypt to teach school; the eldest daughter of a very minor Anglo-American industrialist. A shy voice and a social conscience, in a ladylike skirt. She'd always been the one to ask the hard questions in catechism class and be sent to the headmistress. Right now she was a graduate student in linguistics. What she mostly was, that evening, was unimpressed.
"Where are you from?" he asked.
"Baltimore," she said.
"Baltimore!" he said. "I hate that place. No matter which way you approach it, it always looks like a slum!"
And that should have been the end of it.
But his friends knew one of her roommates, and told them that he'd been talking all about this little linguist he'd met at the party, and how cute she was. For a girl who'd been told all her life that she was "almost pretty", this was strong beer. So when he phoned and asked her out, she said yes.
Today is their 50th wedding anniversary: my parents.