Dragonflies and Angels: Happy 64th, Tom and Jackie!

Today, January 29, 2009, my parents are celebrating their 64th wedding anniversary. Sixty four years, and I can remember only about sixty-one of them! My mother, Jackie, was not yet nineteen and in her third year of college when she decided to leave college to marry my father, Tom, a twenty-three year old electrical engineer and a graduate of Carnegie Institute of Technology, (now Carnegie Mellon University).

They were poor those first years of marriage, and used to ride their bicycle to work. Notice I said bicycle, they had only one, and would take turns standing on the pedals and pedaling while the other one sat on the seat. Good thing they worked at the same place!

Later they had an old car, and I can remember (I would have been about two and a half) sitting in the back seat while they tried to get it going; one would push while the other steered, then they would trade places. I imagine they were trying to po

p the clutch. I think this even worked sometimes!

My father is a man of superior intelligence and an inventive mind, and a great lover of nature, in its raw state, untouched by man. He took us for long walks in the woods, pointed out different species of birds, wildflowers, and trees. He taught us other things too, for instance when I was five years old showed me a certain tree, and told me that if I were ever chased by a bear, that would be the right size tree to climb, because the trunk was too sturdy for the bear to shake down, but too narrow for the bear to climb. I've always remembered that, and can still picture the tree in my mind, but thankfully, I've never had to test the theory.

My mother is artistic and creative; she taught me and my four younger sisters to

sew; she also gave us drawing and painting lessons. One time when I was four years old and playing outside by myself , as I was too old for a nap, my mother called me over to the window to show me her latest creation. She had heated crayons to soften them and then molded them into tiny animals, which she had placed on the windowsill. I was enchanted..

So many years have passed since those early childhood memories. Not only are my four sisters and I all grown up, but our children are all adults, and three of us are grandmothers.

And my parents? They live in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After retiring from his long career as an electrical engineer, my father took up gardening, and at least twice won the Golden Trowel award for having the most beautiful garden in Ann Arbor. He reads the New York Times every morning while watching the birds in his bird feeder, and continues to ride his bicycle, weather permitting. My mother continued her artistic pursuits, and graduated from the University of Michigan in 1997 with a BA in Fine Arts, at the age of seventy-one. She was also very active in The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and served as president for a few years. Now she enjoys playing internet scrabble with her daughters. My parents are both engaged in writing stories of their childhoods and family histories; I wish my grandparents had done more of this.

This weekend I expect my two sisters who live near my parents will visit and take some home baked fruit pies, my father's favorite (after corn pie). We are all quite good at pie baking, and I mean from scratch; starting out with flour, shortening and fresh fruit, or corn, as the case may be. We learned to bake pies early, I could do it when I was six. It's a Pennsylvania German thing.